When Tolson left in 1999, Steven Lagerfeld was named editor. Lagerfeld had also worked under founding editor Peter Braestrup, joining the staff in 1981. In keeping with the times and the focus of the Woodrow Wilson Center, the magazine looked increasingly overseas, filling the period around the beginning of the Iraq War with distinctive clusters on American empire, foreign writers' views of the United States, the history of Iraq, and World War IV. Other topics have ranged from the role of competition in American life to the ideas of traffic "guru" Hans Monderman. Recent writers have spanned the spectrum from conservative economist and blogger Tyler Cowen to liberal political thinker Benjamin Barber. In 2006, "The Wilson Quarterly" received an "Utne Reader" Independent Press Award for General Excellence and in 2011 for International Coverage.