Volume 25, Number 2 · February 23, 1978
The Invasion of the Family
By David Brion Davis
Haven in a Heartless World: The Family Besieged
by Christopher Lasch
Basic Books, 230 pp., $12.95
Academic entrepreneurs, who are becoming more desperate these days, refer to family as a 'buzz word.' They mean that the word, when hooked to any project, is promising bait for fellowships, jobs, participation in symposia, and competitive advances from publishers. A note buried toward the end of Haven in a Heartless World indicates that Christopher Lasch was so prescient in 1963 as to take class notes, as an auditing assistant professor, in a course on the sociology of the family. Because Lasch is a serious scholar who has long been studying American responses to the family, he is probably embarrassed by the sudden fashionability of the topic.
Review, 2955 words
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