Since 1983, Lewis Lapham has been editor of Harper's Magazine. Between 1989 and 1991, he was the host and executive editor of Bookmark, a weekly national public television series. He is the author of several books, including The Wish for Kinds, Money and Class in America, Waiting for the Barbarians, and Lapham's Rules of Influence.

For fifteen years, Lewis Lapham has written a monthly column in Harper's Magazine, for which he won a 1995 National Magazine Award for his "exhilarating point of view in an age of conformity." This major collection of Lapham's essays defines his distinct view of the way the world really works, through vivid analysis of media, language, culture, and education. Lapham brings an acute eye to the ways of Washington, the manners of the money class, and the stirrings of the global economy. With originality and breadth, he illuminates the quirks and essential truths of the American character.