(FORTUNE Magazine) – The financial crisis that started in Asia last year has claimed a lot of victims, but it has also revived an American institution. At the beginning of the 1990s, Foreign Affairs, the highbrow policy journal that reached the height of its influence in the years following World War II, was, to put it charitably, a desiccated relic. The Cold War had ended, and interest in traditional foreign policy matters had waned. Foreign Affairs was still running long, deathly serious articles with titles like "The Post-Cold War President," "The Cold War and Its Aftermath," and "A Republican Looks at Foreign Policy," but only the most hard-core foreign policy junkies were reading them.

Not anymore. The world matters to Americans again, although now it's reckless hedge funds, imploding emerging markets, and shaky banks--not nukes and commies--that pose the immediate threats. And Foreign Affairs, now edited not by a former State Department wonk but by veteran newspaperman James F. Hoge Jr., has been all over the story. From FORTUNE columnist Paul Krugman's now famous 1994 article "The Myth of Asia's Miracle," to Jagdish Bhagwati's critique of unfettered global capital flows this spring, to a prescient piece by Clifford Gaddy and Barry Ickes on "Russia's Virtual Economy" in the September/October issue--which came out before Russia's economic collapse--the bimonthly journal has done a remarkable job of staying ahead of the news. It has at times even done this in a lively and entertaining fashion, a big change from the old Foreign Affairs, which seemed to think its mission was to put even the dweebiest among us into a deep, comfortable slumber.

The magazine still can be a slog (unless you like reading 20 pages on "The Remaking of Eurasia"), and it still draws its authors from an inbred circle of think tanks and universities. But for anyone trying to make sense of the global economic meltdown, Foreign Affairs is essential reading again.

--Justin Fox