https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/24/business/media/lewis-h-lapham-dead.html Skip to contentSkip to site index Media Today's Paper Media|Lewis H. Lapham, Harper's Editor and Piercing Columnist, Dies at 89 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/24/business/media/ lewis-h-lapham-dead.html * Share full article * * Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load. Supported by SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Lewis H. Lapham, Harper's Editor and Piercing Columnist, Dies at 89 Born into a patrician family, he used Harper's and later his own Lapham's Quarterly to denounce what he saw as the hypocrisies and injustices of a spoiled United States. Listen to this article * 11:33 min Learn more * Share full article * * Lewis H. Lapham, wearing a pinstriped suit with a pocket square, stands behind a wooden desk in a book-filled office. Lewis H. Lapham in 2009 in the Manhattan offices of Lapham's Quarterly, a journal of history and literature that he founded after retiring from Harper's Magazine in 2006.Credit...Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times Robert D. McFadden By Robert D. McFadden Published July 24, 2024Updated July 26, 2024 Lewis H. Lapham, the scholarly patrician who edited Harper's Magazine for nearly three decades, and who in columns, books and later his own magazine, Lapham's Quarterly, attacked what he regarded as the inequities and hypocrisies of American life, died on Tuesday in Rome. He was 89. His death was announced by his children. A longtime resident of Manhattan's Upper East Side, he had been living in Rome with his wife and other family members since January. The scion of a shipping and banking family whose forebears included a founder of Texaco and a mayor of San Francisco, Mr. Lapham (pronounced LAP-um) was a nationally respected journalist whose commentaries on politics, wars and the wealthy were disparaged by conservative critics but often likened by admirers to the satires and cultural criticisms of H.L. Mencken and Mark Twain. After a decade as a newspaper reporter and magazine writer, Mr. Lapham was the managing editor of Harper's from 1971 to 1975 and the editor in chief from 1976 to 1981 and from 1983 to 2006. He offered a blend of high culture and populism: the fiction of John Updike and George Saunders mixed with reports on abortion fights, global warming and the age of terrorism -- generally, but not always, with a progressive eye. Politically, Harper's on Mr. Lapham's watch was increasingly critical of American domestic and foreign policies. His columns denounced both President Bill Clinton and President George W. Bush, and he called for the impeachment of Mr. Bush for what he regarded as deceptions that led the nation into war in Iraq. Mr. Lapham's last book, "Age of Folly: America Abandons Its Democracy" (2016), a collection of columns, argued that the election of Donald J. Trump was the culmination of decades of degradation of United States democracy under a number of Republican administrations, ending in what he called a dysfunctional plutocracy of the superrich, by the superrich and for the superrich. We are having trouble retrieving the article content. Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber? Log in. Want all of The Times? Subscribe. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Site Index Site Information Navigation * (c) 2024 The New York Times Company * NYTCo * Contact Us * Accessibility * Work with us * Advertise * T Brand Studio * Your Ad Choices * Privacy Policy * Terms of Service * Terms of Sale * Site Map * Canada * International * Help * Subscriptions * Manage Privacy Preferences