Lewis H. Lapham at work in the offices of Harper’s Magazine. Photograph by Matthew Septimus
We at Harper’s Magazine mourn the loss of our editor emeritus, Lewis H. Lapham (1935–2024), who died on July 23 in Rome. A dear friend and colleague for more than half a century, Lapham ran the magazine for nearly three decades, serving as editor from 1976 to 1981 and again from 1983 to 2006, while regularly contributing columns and essays that were compared to the work of Michel de Montaigne, Mark Twain, and H. L. Mencken.
“What so annoys people about the media,” Lapham once…