Chicago Sun and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The Lasches were determinedly secular, and read American history as it had been written by Charles and Mary Beard and the progressive historians—the struggle of a resolutely enlightened people against the lies and malevolence of the wealthy and powerful. The social legislation of the New Deal years confirmed Zora and Robert’s belief that American history proceeded in a straight line, its occasional jaggedness entirely the result of temporary accidents that could be remedied by right-thinking people like themselves. They were immensely proud of their son, an only child, but when he became fascinated with history’s temporary accidents they grew anxious that he would abandon familial convictions. Lasch remained in close and loving touch with his parents throughout his life, but he discarded their intellectual and political pieties as he grew older. He had considered a literary career and experimented with short stories and a novel. His historical writing, at once sparse, even parsimonious, in narrative yet rich in analogies, asides and metaphors, was intended for the educated public and those historians not shackled to disciplinary conventions. He distinguished historical background from political foreground, he was a master of argumentative clarity and he possessed unusual cultural sensitivity. His literary style and intellectual demeanor were of a sort that has become rare.