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Christopher (Kit) Lasch (June 1, 1932 – February 14, 1994) was an American historian, moralist, and social critic. Mentored by William Leuchtenburg at Columbia University, Lasch was a professor at the University of Rochester. Lasch sought to use history as a tool to awaken American society to the pervasiveness with which major institutions, public and private, were eroding the competence and independence of families and communities. He strove to create a historically informed social criticism that could teach Americans how to deal with rampant consumerism, proletarianization, and what he famously labeled the 'culture of narcissism.' His books, including ''The New Radicalism in America'' (1965), ''Haven in a Heartless World'' (1977), ''The Culture of Narcissism'' (1979), and ''The True and Only Heaven'' (1991), were widely discussed and reviewed. ''The Culture of Narcissism'' became a surprise best-seller and won the National Book Award in the category Current Interest (paperback).〔 ("National Book Awards – 1980" ). National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2012-03-09. There was a "Contemporary" or "Current" award category from 1972 to 1980.〕〔 From 1980 to 1983 in National Book Award history there were dual awards for hardcover and paperback books in many categories. Most of the paperback award-winners were reprints, including this one (September 1979), but its first edition (January 1979) was eligible in the same award year.〕 Lasch was always a critic of liberalism, and a historian of liberalism's discontents, but over time his political perspective evolved dramatically. In the 1960s, he was a neo-Marxist and acerbic critic of Cold War liberalism. During the 1970s, he began to become a far more iconoclastic figure, fusing cultural conservatism with a Marxian critique of capitalism, and drawing on Freud-influenced critical theory to diagnose the ongoing deterioration that he perceived in American culture and politics. His writings during this period led him to be denounced by feminists〔Hartman (2009)〕 and hailed by conservatives〔Jeremy Beer, "On Christopher Lasch," ''Modern Age,'' Fall 2005, Vol. 47 Issue 4, pp 330-343〕 for his apparent defense of the traditional family. He eventually concluded that an often unspoken but pervasive faith in "Progress" tended to make Americans resistant to many of his arguments. In his last major works he explored this theme in depth, suggesting that Americans had much to learn from the suppressed and misunderstood Populist and artisan movements of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.〔Miller (2010)〕 His basic thesis about the family, which he first expressed in 1965 and explored for the rest of his career, was: ==Early life== Christopher Lasch came from a highly political family rooted in the left. His father, Robert Lasch, was a Rhodes Scholar and journalist; in St. Louis he won a Pulitzer prize for editorials criticizing the Vietnam War.〔〔Brown, David (2009-08-01) (Cold War Without End ), ''The American Conservative''〕 Zora Lasch (née Schaupp), his mother, who held a philosophy doctorate, worked as a social worker and teacher.〔, p123〕 Lasch was active in the arts and letters early, publishing a neighborhood newspaper while in grade school, and writing the fully orchestrated "Rumpelstiltskin, Opera in D Major" at the age of thirteen.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Christopher Lasch」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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