SOURCE: "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Critic: Christopher Lasch's Struggle with Progressive America," in American Studies, Vol. 33, No. 2, Fall, 1992, pp. 113-20.

In the review below, Watts summarizes the themes of and the critical responses to Lasch's works from the mid-1970s to the early 1990s, offering a general assessment of the weaknesses and strengths of his arguments.

In the volatile cultural politics of late twentieth-century America, the only thing worse than an opponent is a traitor. In many ways, Christopher Lasch has acquired precisely that image. He began his career as a radical historian in the 1960s—one of his essays, for instance, appeared alongside those of Eugene Genovese and Staughton Lynd in the 1969 dissenting manifesto Towards a New Past—and his trenchant analysis of modern liberal and radical ideology made him a darling of the New Left. Within a few years, however, the young critic...