Books, Arts & Manners: Lifestyles of the Rich and Anxious

Money and Class in America: Notes and Observations on Our Civil Religion, by Lewis H. Lapham (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 244 pp„ $18.95)

Under Lewis H. Lapham’s tolerant stewardship, Harper’s Magazine has wandered all over the ideological map, publishing everybody from Tom Wolfe and George Gilder to Christopher Hitchens and Edward Said. Still, one thing has remained constant: Lapham’s witty assaults, in his monthly “Notebook” column, on the foibles and follies of what he calls the “equestrian class.” People with money get under Lewis Lapham’s skin. In Money and Class in America, he returns the favor.