If the story is good enough, if it's imaginative enough, if it's moving enough it is going to reach deeper than the level of sheer information and change somebody's life two degrees. That is an enormous achievement.

He has also served on the New York Public Library's board of trustees. Fierce Pajamas: An Anthology of Humor Writing from the New Yorker (with Henry Finder eds. The Devil Problem: And Other True Stories.

He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1994 for his book Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire. He was named "Editor of the Year" by Advertising Age in 2000. Before joining The New Yorker Remnick was a reporter and the Moscow correspondent for The Washington Post.