Christopher Lasch

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Christopher Lasch (June 1, 1932, Omaha, Nebraska - February 14, 1994, Pittsford, New York) was a well-known American historian and social critic. He studied at Harvard and Columbia, taught at the University of Iowa and then was a professor of history at the University of Rochester since 1970.

Lasch's books ranged across a broad cultural field, but a common theme was dissection of the extent to which radicals had become implicated in the assumptions of progress. This had led to "the Left" becoming implicated in professionalised roles supporting commoditised lifestyles which hollowed out communities' self-sustaining ethics. In his works (notably The True and Only Heaven) he sought out those points where alternative positions had seemed feasible for a time - positions sometimes dismissed under the label of "populism".

Journalist Susan Faludi claims that by the early 1990s Lasch had replaced George Gilder as the leading antifeminist intellectual, "castigating pro-choice women and calling for a constitutional ban on divorce for couples with children". (Backlash, 281) Lasch did, however, engage with feminist ideas in several of his books, beginning with 1984's The Minimal Self.

[edit] Books

• 1962: The American Liberals and the Russian Revolution
• 1965: The New Radicalism in America 1889-1963: The Intellectual As a Social Type
• 1969: The Agony of the American Left
• 1973: The World of Nations
• 1977: Haven in a Heartless World: The Family Besieged
• 1979: The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations
• 1984: The Minimal Self: Psychic Survival in Troubled Times
• 1991: The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics
• 1994: The Revolt of the Elites: And the Betrayal of Democracy
• 1997: Women and the Common Life: Love, Marriage, and Feminism
• 2002: Plain Style: A Guide to Written English