THE NEW RADICALISM IN AMERICA: 1889-1963

by Christopher Lasch ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 17, 1965

Lasch is a well-informed, well-intentioned social historian and he has a sophisticated thesis on the roots of the American intellectual's cultural maladjustment, but it seems impossible for him to deal with it in terms other than academic journalism. His style is slim, his phrasing shopworn, he lacks resonance. And the representative types he has chosen are for the most part all minor figures; nothing here on Henry Adams, Dreiser, Mencken, Lewis, Eliot, Pound etc., all strong possibilities since Lasch does not use radicalism in a strictly political sense. Basically, the book chronicles the crises or continuity-lag afflicting generations since the post-industrial development, with particular commentary on Jane Addams (the stoical suffragette), Randolph Bourne (bohemian disillusionment), Mabel Dodge Luhan (sex as a power struggle), Colonel House (the governmental insider as outsider) and Lincoln Steffens (the bourgeois revolutionary) There are parallel discussions of James, Dewey, The New Republic, Wilson and the War, plus a concluding appraisal of current anti-intellectualism. The viewpoint is primarily psychological, i.e. Lasch sees public responses in terms of private needs, though these in turn are considered outgrowths of America's (or the Establishment's) inability to recognize its own evolution beyond a mere business man's civilization. Unsuspected analogies and some extremely valuable research more than save a structurally weak critique.

Pub Date: May 17, 1965

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1965

Categories: NONFICTION