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External videos
External videos
	Booknotes interview with Lapham on The Wish for Kings, August 15, 1993, C-SPAN
	Presentation by Lapham on The Wish for Kings, July 27, 1993, C-SPAN
	Presentation by Lapham on New American Ruling Class, January 25, 1996, C-SPAN
	Presentation by Lapham on An American Album: 150 Years of Harper's Magazine, May 25, 2000, C-SPAN
	Presentation by Lapham on Theater of War, October 3, 2002, C-SPAN
	Presentation by Lapham on Age of Folly, November 3, 2016, C-SPAN

Lewis H. Lapham
Lewis H. Lapham
	Lapham in 2010
Born	Lewis Henry Lapham; January 8, 1935; San Francisco, California, U.S.
Died	July 23, 2024 (aged 89); Rome, Italy
Alma mater	Yale University; Magdalene College, Cambridge
Occupation	Writer
Known for	Editor of Harper's Magazine and founder of Lapham's Quarterly
Spouse	Joan Brooke Reeves (m. 1972)
Children	Delphina Lapham; Andrew Lapham; Winston Lapham
Parent(s)	Lewis A. Lapham; Jane Foster
Relatives	Caroline Mulroney; (daughter-in-law); Christopher Lloyd (first cousin once removed)

Lewis Henry Lapham II (/ˈlæpəm/; January 8, 1935 – July 23, 2024) was an American writer. He was the editor of the American monthly Harper's Magazine from 1976 until 1981, and from 1983 until 2006.^[1] He was the founder of Lapham's Quarterly, a publication about history and literature, and wrote numerous books on politics and current affairs.

Early life and education

A son of Lewis A. Lapham and Jane Foster, Lapham was born January 8, 1935, in San Francisco.^[2] He was raised in San Francisco^[3] and his father was president of the Grace Line and Bankers Trust.^[2] His grandfather Roger Lapham had been mayor of San Francisco in the 1940s, and his great-grandfather, Lewis Henry Lapham, was a founder of Texaco. Through his grandfather, Lapham was the son of the first cousin of actor Christopher Lloyd, although Lapham was three years older. As a boy, he attended the Hotchkiss School, graduating in 1952.^[2]

Lapham was educated at Magdalene College, Cambridge and Yale University, where he was a member of St. Anthony Hall.^[2]

Harper's Magazine

Lapham served as editor of Harper's Magazine from 1976 to 2006 (with a hiatus from 1981 to 1983). He was managing editor from 1971 to 1975, after having worked for the San Francisco Examiner and the New York Herald Tribune. He was largely responsible for the modern look and prominence of the magazine, having introduced many of its signature features, including the "Harper's Index". He announced that he would become editor emeritus in 2006, continuing to write his Notebook column for the magazine as well as editing a new journal about history, Lapham's Quarterly.^[2]^[4] Lapham also worked with the PEN American Center, sitting on the board of judges for the PEN/Newman's Own First Amendment Award.^[5] In 2007, he was inducted into the American Society of Magazine Editors' Hall of Fame.^[6]

Lapham wrote a September 2004 column for Harper's in which he included a brief account of the Republican National Convention as if he had witnessed it, "reflecting on the content and sharing with readers a question that occurred to him as he listened", as Jennifer Senior wrote in the New York Times Book Review.^[7] The magazine arrived in subscribers' mailboxes before the convention took place, as Senior says "forcing Lapham to admit that the scene was a fiction". The columnist apologized, "but pointed out political conventions are drearily scripted anyway – he basically knew what was going to be said". Senior continues, "By this logic, though, I could have chosen not to read Pretensions to Empire before reviewing it, since I already knew Lapham's sensibility, just as he claims to know the Republicans."^[7]

Lapham's Quarterly

Lapham retired from Harper's in 2006. That year, he founded Lapham's Quarterly, a publication about history and literature. Each issue was devoted to one subject and featured pieces by ancient writers to contemporary celebrities.^[2]^[8]^[9]

Works

After spending a year studying history at the University of Cambridge, Lapham wrote for the San Francisco Examiner, the New York Herald Tribune, The Saturday Evening Post, and Life. He also contributed to Commentary, Fortune, Forbes, Vanity Fair, among other publications.^[2] Lapham served as a judge for the PEN/Newman's Own First Amendment Award.^[10]

Lapham was the host and author of the PBS series America's Century and he was host of the weekly PBS series, Bookmark from 1989 to 1991.^[11]

Lapham was until his death the host of The World in Time: radio discussions with scholars and historians on Bloomberg Radio that open the doors of history behind the events in the news. Podcasts of the weekly talks are available at Bloomberg.com.^[12]

Lapham wrote The American Ruling Class (2005), a movie done in documentary style and featuring fictional characters and real people, i.e. Bill Bradley, Hodding Carter III. and Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed, pondering the question "Is there a ruling class in America?", Lapham states at the movie's conclusion that "if you're not in, you're out". The movie aired on the Sundance Channel on July 30, 2007.^[2]

Awards

In 1978, Lapham received the Gerald Loeb Award for Magazines.^[13]^[14] In 2016, he received the insignia of Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters.^[15]

Personal life

In 1972, Lapham married Joan Brooke Reeves, the daughter of Edward J. Reeves, a stockbroker and grocery heir, and Elizabeth "Betty" M. Brooke (Elizabeth Muhlenberg Brooke, formerly the wife of Thomas Wilton Phipps, a nephew of Nancy Astor, born in Philadelphia on April 14/25, 1916 - Newport, August 8, 2016, daughter of George Brooke Jr. (Birdsboro, Pennsylvania, July 5, 1867 - Philadelphia, August 10, 1953) and wife Lucile Stewart Polk, firstly married to William E. Carter, both Titanic passengers together with their two children). They had three children:

Delphina Lapham (born on April 26, 1976 in New York City, married as his second wife in Rome on October 15, 2005 Prince Don Bante Maria Boncompagni-Ludovisi, born on October 8, 1970 in Geneva), and has two children^[16]
Andrew Lapham (married Caroline Mulroney, only daughter of former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and Mila Mulroney), and has four children^[2]
Winston Lapham^[2]

Lapham, previously living on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, moved to Rome at the start of 2024. He died there on July 23, 2024, at the age of 89.^[2]

Books

— (1980). Fortune's Child. Doubleday. ISBN 0-385-14887-9.
— (1988). Money and Class in America. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN 1-55584-109-0.
— (1990). Imperial Masquerade. Grove Weidenfeld. ISBN 1-55584-449-9.
— (1993). The Wish for Kings: Democracy at Bay. Grove Press. ISBN 0-8021-1446-6.
— (1995). Hotel America. Verso. ISBN 1-85984-952-0.
— (1997). Waiting for the Barbarians. Verso. ISBN 1-85984-882-6.
— (1999). Lapham's Rules of Influence. Random House. ISBN 0-679-42605-1.
— (1999). The Agony of Mammon. Verso. ISBN 1-85984-710-2.
— (2001). Lights, Camera, Democracy!. Random House Publishing. ISBN 0-679-64713-9.
— (2003). Theater of War. New Press. ISBN 1-56584-772-5.
— (2003). 30 Satires. New Press. ISBN 1-56584-846-2.
— (2004). Gag Rule. Penguin. ISBN 1-59420-017-3.
— (2005). With the Beatles. Melville House Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9766583-2-0.
— (2006). Pretensions to Empire: Notes on the Criminal Folly of the Bush Administration. The New Press. p. 288. ISBN 1-59558-112-X.
— (2016). Age of Folly: America Abandons Its Democracy. Verso. p. 400. ISBN 978-1-7847-8711-0.

Articles

— (January 2009). "Notebook: By the rivers of Babylon". Harper's Magazine. Vol. 318, no. 1904. pp. 7–9.

References

^ "Lewis Lapham", Guest, Charlie Rose, archived from the original on May 14, 2008, retrieved July 7, 2008.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j ^k McFadden, Robert D. (July 26, 2024). "Lewis H. Lapham, Longtime Editor of Harper's, Dies at 89". The New York Times. Vol. 173, no. 60227. p. B11. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on July 24, 2024. Retrieved July 24, 2024.
^ Adams, James (October 29, 2004). "Lewis Lapham". The Globe and Mail. Archived from the original on June 11, 2024. Retrieved June 11, 2024.
^ Otis, John (July 24, 2024). "Lewis Lapham, editor who revived Harper's magazine, dies at 89". Washington Post. Archived from the original on July 25, 2024. Retrieved July 29, 2024.
^ "France Honors Deborah Hay, Lewis Lapham & Theodore Feder – French Culture".
^ Past recipients, Magazine, archived from the original on June 26, 2012, retrieved September 16, 2011.
^ ^a ^b Senior, Jennifer (September 24, 2006), "Takin Aim", The New York Times Book Review (review of Pretensions to Empire by Lewis H. Lapham and How Bush Rules by Sidney Blumenthal), archived from the original on December 4, 2011, retrieved September 23, 2006.
^ Arango, Tim (November 30, 2009). "Present-Day Soapbox for Voices of the Past (With a Web Site)". The New York Times. Archived from the original on July 30, 2024. Retrieved July 27, 2024.
^ Morris, Bob (May 16, 2012). "Just Like Old Times". The New York Times. Archived from the original on July 28, 2024. Retrieved July 27, 2024.
^ "France Honors Deborah Hay, Lewis Lapham & Theodore Feder – French Culture". Archived from the original on February 23, 2024. Retrieved July 29, 2024.
^ Goodman, Walter (December 5, 1993). "TELEVISION VIEW; Making the Case for PBS (And It's Not So Easy)". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on January 17, 2018. Retrieved April 5, 2019.
^ Lapham, Lewis, "Interviews", Bloomberg, archived from the original (audio podcasts) on May 16, 2008.
^ "Historical Winners List". UCLA Anderson School of Management. Archived from the original on April 8, 2019. Retrieved January 31, 2019.
^ "Times' stories on dollar win '77 Loeb Award". Los Angeles Times. Vol. XCVII, no. 164. May 16, 1978. p. 16 Part III. Archived from the original on March 1, 2019. Retrieved February 28, 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
^ "Deborah Hay, Theodore Feder, and Lewis Lapham Awarded the French Order of Arts and Letters". April 21, 2016.
^ "Gotha", Royalty, Chivalric orders, archived from the original on June 13, 2010.