The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy

This book was written right at the end of Lasch's life and it reads like it: he pulls no punches in telling the chattering classes what he thinks about them and the cultural trends they are presiding over. It is surprising this was published two decades ago since the criticisms are not only still ap......more

When Christopher Lasch died on Valentine’s day in 1994, America lost the most profound of her critics. His final book, The Revolt of the Elites, was published a year after his death. It is a group of discrete but thematically linked essays that continue the concerns of his previous book, The True an......more

Of all the thinkers and intellectuals of the last 40 years, none were as piercing, original, and prophetic as Lasch. In the 1970s, he predicted that the student radicals would become good Reaganites, or at least that their revolt would not upset the power structure. Here, as he stared at death, he s......more

The most enjoyment I got out of reading this book is the irony at the heart of its existence. Much of Lasch’s ire is directed at academia. Rightly, he accuses the academy of being, bluntly, a circlejerk. I am left asking after the fact – who is this book for, if not those who already accept its crit......more

Great social commentary. Highly recommend. It's almost a mini-worldview primer, exploring the ways Marxism and CRT has seeped into academia and the media. But he also has lots of other things to say. Quite prophetic for 1995, though I suppose that just shows it's been a long time coming. I also enjoy......more