Dr. Marvin Olasky is the Editor of WORLD magazine as well as the writer of the graphic novels 2048 and Echoes of Eden with Kingstone. Dr. Olasky was born in Malden, Massachusetts, United States, to a Russian-Jewish family and graduated from Yale University in 1971 with a B.A. in American studies. In 1976 he earned his Ph.D. in American culture at the University of Michigan. He became an atheist in adolescence and a Marxist in college, ultimately joining the Communist Party USA in 1972. He left the communist party late in 1973 and in 1976 became a Christian after reading the New Testament and a number of Christian authors.

Olasky was a professor at the University of Texas at Austin from 1983 to 2007 and provost of The King's College in New York City from 2007 to 2011. He is now dean at the World Journalism Institute and a senior fellow at the Acton Institute. He joined World Magazine in 1990 and became its editor in 1994 and its editor-in-chief in 2001. Earlier, he was a reporter at the Boston Globe and a speechwriter at the Du Pont Company. Since 1996 he has been a ruling elder within the Presbyterian Church in America.

Dr. Olasky’s most famous book is The Tragedy of American Compassion, which in 1995 Newt Gingrich distributed to incoming Republican representatives of the 104th Congress. The book, an overview of poverty-fighting in America from colonial times to the 1990s, argues that private individuals and organizations, particularly Christian churches, have a responsibility to care for the poor, and contends that challenging personal and spiritual help, common until the 1930s, was more effective than the government welfare programs of recent decades. Olasky argues that government programs are ineffective because they are disconnected from the poor, while private charity has the power to change lives because it allows for a personal connection between giver and recipient