Haven in a Heartless World

In the American political vocabulary, "family" and "family values" no longer simply evoke pictures of harmonious scenes; they also push our buttons (left and right) about what is wrong with society. One of the earliest and sharpest cultural commentators to investigate the twentieth-century American family, Christopher Lasch argues in this book that as social science "experts" intrude more and more into our lives, the family's vital role as the moral and social cornerstone of society disintegrates—and, left unchecked, so does our political and personal freedom.

Mr. Lasch combines an analytic overview of the psychological and sociological literature on the American family with his own trenchant analysis of where the problem lies.

"There is no more brilliant exposure of the collective self-deceptions of a 'therapeutic' society in quest of psychic security. . . . [Lasch's] indispensable contribution is the argument that public concern for the plight of the family has commonly masked efforts to subject the family to new forms of outside influence." —David Brion Davis, New York Review of Books

"A brilliant little book. . . . As an analyst of social science literature on the family, Lasch is superb. On balance, his book is the best essay available today on the modern history of the family." —David Hackett Fischer, New Republic

"A fascinating, alarming, profound study. . . . [A book] to ponder for years to come." —Chronicle of Higher Education

SBN 0-393-31303-4 / 256 pages / SOCIOLOGY

• Christopher Lasch (1932-1994) was professor of history at the University of Rochester; he was also the author of The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy (Norton).
• Also by Christopher Lasch in Norton paperback: The Minimal Self, The New Radicalism in America, The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics, and the bestseller The Culture of Narcissism.