Background
Lapham, Lewis Henry was born on January 8, 1935 in San Francisco, California, United States. Son of Lewis Abbot and Jane (Foster) Lapham.
(To people who have grown tired of self-government, the be...)
To people who have grown tired of self-government, the belief in kings and queens and fairy tales seems easier and more comfortable than the practice of politics. Lewis Lapham, editor of Harper's Magazine, author of Money and Class, and host of PBS's Bookmark, describes the passing of the democratic spirit in America.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000VYJXJE/?tag=2022091-20
(After two centuries of experiment with the theories of th...)
After two centuries of experiment with the theories of the Enlightenment and the volatile substances of democracy, America’s leading citizens have come to believe that they have safely arrived at the end of history. Substituting the wonder of money for the work of politics, (a dirty business best left to the hired help), the owners of the nation’s capital take comfort in the rising Dow Jones average (up 2,500 points in the last three years) and complacently assume that the engines of immortal oligarchy require little else except the chores of routine maintenance. Unhappily, the political servants of the corporate state find it increasingly difficult to keep their master’s house in order. Both the Republican and Democratic parties find themselves adrift in scandal, discredited by their means of raising campaign money, suspected of crimes against the common good, convicted of neglecting the poor, despoiling the environment, raffling off the prospects of the country’s long-term future for the promise of a short-term vote. Lewis Lapham received the 1995 National Magazine Award for his essay writing, in which the judges discovered “an exhilarating point of view in an age of conformity”. With invective all the more deadly for its grace and wit, Lapham presents the portrait of a feckless American establishment gone large in the stomach and soft in the head. His acerbic remarks on the 1996 Presidential election take into account Steve Forbes’ primary campaign, the non-candidacy of General Colin Powell, the comings and goings of Dick Morris, Senator Bob Dole’s triumphant return to television as a pitchman for Air France, the building of Hilary Rodham Clinton’s Potemkin village in Iowa, and the sublime vacuity of President Clinton’s inaugural address. A previously unpublished and substantial concluding piece looks at the fate of indolent ruling classes through history. “Our American political classes, being themselves complicit in the well-financed banditry at large in the world, come and go talking of Hilary Clinton’s astrologer and the sins of children’s television, about the wickedness of the National Arts Endowment and Bill Clinton’s Penis. Their insouciance unnerves me. The barbarism implicit in the restless energies of big-time, global capitalism requires some sort of check or balance, if not by a spiritual doctrine or impulse, then by a lively interest in (or practice of) democratic government. The collapse of communism at the end of the Cold War removed from the world’s political stage the last pretense of a principled opposition to the rule of money, and the pages of history suggest that oligarchies unhindered by conscience or common sense seldom take much interest in the cause of civil liberty.”
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1859848826/?tag=2022091-20
( Pretensions to Empire brings together Lewis Lapham’s re...)
Pretensions to Empire brings together Lewis Lapham’s recent political commentaries from his National Magazine Award–winning Harper’s “Notebook” column, beginning with the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 and culminating in Lapham’s eloquent (and widely cited) case for the impeachment of George W. Bush. Written in the highly literate and “self-assured style” (Publishers Weekly) that has earned Lapham a large and devoted readership, the pieces in this collection provide not only a critical perspective on Bush’s presidency—helping us understand what happened and how it happened—but also vital new information and research, including a brilliant dissection of the Republican propaganda mill’s octopus-like network and its role in the neoconservative ascent to power. As Lapham writes in the book’s preface, “these essays describe a march of folly, establish a record of moral incompetence and criminal intent, speak to the character of a government stupefied by its worship of money and blinded by its belief in miracles.” Elegant and erudite, Pretensions to Empire is a “rousing” indictment of a stumbling political regime from the “loquacious lion of the literary left” (Mother Jones).
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1595582290/?tag=2022091-20
( Widely celebrated for his political essays, Lewis Lapha...)
Widely celebrated for his political essays, Lewis Lapham is a satirist who belongs in the company of Ambrose Bierce, H.L. Mencken, and Mark Twain. Over the last twenty years he has experimented with satire in its several forms—as burlesque, pasquinade, invective, and deadpan jest. This first assemblage of Lapham’s satires presents thirty pieces that hold their currency and humor against the tide of social and political change that has engulfed American society in recent times. He reduces to absurdity many of the topics of the day that are often treated portentiously: Dickens’s A Christmas Carol is retold to praise the virtues of remorseless greed; the hydrogen bomb is introduced as a solemn dinner guest who doesn’t play tennis or speak English; gene banks take the form of well-trained pigs that accompany their wealthy owners in the first-class cabins of transatlantic jets.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1565848462/?tag=2022091-20
editor television personality writer
Lapham, Lewis Henry was born on January 8, 1935 in San Francisco, California, United States. Son of Lewis Abbot and Jane (Foster) Lapham.
Graduate, Hotchkiss School, 1952. Bachelor, Yale University, 1956. Postgraduate, Cambridge University, 1956—1957.
Doctor of Laws, Hampden-Sydney College, Virginia.
Reporter, San Francisco Examiner, 1957-1960; Reporter, New York Herald Tribune, 1960-1962; author, editor, United States of America-1, New York City, 1962; author, editor, Saturday Evening Post, New York City, 1963-1967; writer, Life magazine, Harper's, New York City, 1968-1970; managing editor, Harper's, New York City, 1971-1975; editor, Harper's, 1975-1981, 83-. Television host weekly series Bookmark, Public Broadcasting Service, also host, author documentary series America's Century.
( Pretensions to Empire brings together Lewis Lapham’s re...)
(Winner of the 1995 National Magazine Award for Essays and...)
(After two centuries of experiment with the theories of th...)
(With invective all the more deadly for its grace and wit,...)
(To people who have grown tired of self-government, the be...)
(To people who have grown tired of self-government, the be...)
( Widely celebrated for his political essays, Lewis Lapha...)
(American Studies, Economics, Social Studies)
(Book by Lapham, Lewis H.)
(Book by Lapham, Lewis H.)
(Will be shipped from US. Used books may not include compa...)
(1st edition)
Board directors Americans for Libraries Council, The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation. Member Council on Foreign Relations, Century Association, The Blind Book Club, Inc.
Married Joan Brooke Reeves, August 10, 1972. Children: Lewis Andrew, Elizabeth Delphina, Winston Peale.