Christopher Lasch (1932–1994) was an American historian and social critic who taught history at the University of Rochester. He is best known for The Culture of Narcissism (1979), a study of self-absorption in postwar American life that won the National Book Award and stayed on the New York Times best-seller list for seven weeks. His later works, including The True and Only Heaven and The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy, which appeared posthumously in 1995, examine faith in progress and the populist traditions of earlier generations that he felt Americans had overlooked.
