SOURCE: "Christopher Lasch, The New Radicalism, and the Vocation of Intellectuals," in Reviews in American History, Vol. 23, No. 1, March, 1995, pp. 176-91.

In the essay below, Westbrook examines the influence of The New Radicalism in America on the American intellectual community.

The New Radicalism is really a brilliant book, a book of such importance that people will be talking about it as long as they are talking about 20th Century history. It is an unconventional book, because it is based not on massing evidence but on thinking about history, an endeavor that has largely gone out of fashion.

           —William Leuchtenburg to Christopher Lasch, July 5, 1965.

In a foreword to the twenty-fifth anniversary edition of Richard Hofstadter's American Political Tradition (1973), Christopher Lasch paid tribute to the late historian and teacher who, above all others, had provided a model for his own vocation.

Even though his career was cut short in its...