SOURCE: "Man of the People," in The New York Review of Books, Vol. XXXVIII, April, 11, 1991, pp. 39-44.

In the following review, Menand surveys Lasch's critique of liberalism throughout his works, including The True and Only Heaven, and concludes that Lasch's insightful but sometimes limited cultural criticism neglects the influence of both literature and "the political doctrine of rights" on twentieth-century society.

Christopher Lasch began his career as a historian and critic of American liberalism. His analysis of liberalism led him to an analysis of some of the alternatives to liberalism in American political thought and, eventually, to a long excursion into social history and cultural criticism. It is clear from this work that he is unhappy with the dominant political and intellectual traditions in American life, and distressed by the mess he thinks those traditions have gotten us into. But it has not been clear what he thinks...