I’ve been reading Christopher Lasch’s The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics. Why didn’t any of you people tell me to read it two years ago? It would have saved me a lot of time. Anyway, I think it’s great. It’s not exactly light reading, but for intellectual history, it’s amazingly breezy and accessible and its sweep is astounding. I’ve read some of the reviews, which were all raves from what I can tell, but if anybody who has read it has any serious complaints about it I’d love to know what they are. I have some quibbles, but they’re penny ante in the big scheme of things. Two thumbs up.

Of course, the Amazon reviewers are all nasty pieces of work approaching parody.