As a writer, Macdonald published essays and reviews in "The New Yorker" and in "The New York Review of Books". His most consequential book review for "The New Yorker" magazine was “Our Invisible Poor” (January 1963) about "The Other America" (1962), by Michael Harrington, a social-history book that reported and documented the socio-economic inequality and racism experienced by twenty-five percent of the U.S. population. The social historian Maurice Isserman said that the War on Poverty (1964) derived from the Johnson administration having noticed the sociological report of "The Other America" by way of Macdonald's book-review essay.