The transition to editor-at-large was energizing. In the short run, Podhoretz produced a flush of essays under the rubrics of literary criticism, sexual politics, and the Middle East – each an expansion on themes he had been exploring since the fifties. In the long run, he published three books between 1999 and 2002: Ex-Friends, My Love Affair with America, and The Prophets. The first two brought his memoirist-cum-critic treatment of America's cultural politics up to the end of the century. The third brought the wisdom of classical Hebrew prophecy to bear on that politics while, as a bonus, providing a pedagogic introduction to the relevant books in the Bible.

To begin with literary criticism: after turning sixty, Podhoretz complained of failing concentration. Granted, he still read for hours a day at the office – the manuscripts needing to be shaped, the galley proofs, the competing magazines, the daily papers – but in the evening, for recreation, what? Light fiction (mysteries, romances) wouldn't do, though oddly its aesthetic equivalent on television or at the movies often seemed to satisfy him: he and Midge would “[while] away a restless evening” watching dramas that were often as good as they were because they had been written by Ph.D.s in English who had gone to work in Hollywood. But this wasn't literature, and literature was what Podhoretz loved.