but who is 2008's biggest public brain?

We just put the Christmas edition of the magazine to bed, at 3am on Wednesday morning. If you join up for our Facebook group you can see the new cover, and get an overview of the contents. If you aren’t on Facebook, like David Goodhart, our hold-out editor, I’ll put it up here in a day or two. The magazine, meanwhile, arrives at a train station near you in the middle of next week.

Personally, I’m most excited about the results of our public intellectual of 2008 poll. This is different from our previous public vote poll, run with Foreign Policy, to find the greatest living public intellectual. This one is just about the figure who did best in 2008 – and is picked by us, and a team of all-star judges. Thanks to any of you who threw names into the hat for consideration, when we announced it here on First Drafts a month or so ago.

I can’t put the winner on here just yet, but will put the shortlist up shortly. In the meantime, below, are the people who just missed out on the top 10 – those we liked a lot, but didn’t make the cut. More on who actually won in due course – along with the judges’ decisions, and the eventual winner. If this lot didn’t win, who would you have given it to? And what do you make of this longlist – just the same old group of old white English-speaking men? Click the more button to see the list…….

-Public Intellectual of 2008 -

** the ones who just missed out on our top 10 **

Ben Bernanke
Ingrid Betancourt
Paul Collier
Niall Ferguson
Thomas Friedman
Gary Kasparov
Doris Kearns
Goodwin
Naomi Klein
Paul Krugman
Bernard Henri Levi

Lawrence Lessig
Toni Morrison
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Barack Obama
Louis Moreno Ocampo
VS Ramachandran
Robert Shiller
Hu Shuli
Polly Toynbee
Adair Turner
Martin Wolf

Paul Woolley

Muhammad Yunus
Fareed Zakaria