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Lewis Lapham (pronounced /ˈluːɪs ˈlæpəm/) (born January 8, 1935) was the editor of the American monthly Harper's Magazine until 2006. Most recently, Lapham has founded a quarterly publication on history entitled Lapham's Quarterly. He has also written many books on politics and current affairs.

Lapham was born and grew up in San Francisco. His grandfather, Roger Lapham, was mayor of San Francisco, and his great grandfather was a founder of Texaco.

Lapham was educated at the Hotchkiss School, Yale University, and Cambridge.

Lewis Lapham served as editor of Harper's Magazine from 1976 to 2006 (with a hiatus from 1981 to 1983). He was managing editor from 1971 to 1975, after having worked for the San Francisco Examiner and New York Herald Tribune. He is largely responsible for the modern look and prominence of the magazine, having introduced many of its signature features including its famed Harper's Index. He announced that he would become editor emeritus in Spring 2006, continuing to write his Notebook column for the magazine as well as editing a new journal about history, Lapham's Quarterly. Lapham has also worked with the PEN American Center, sitting on the board of judges for the PEN/Newman's Own Award. This February, he will be inducted into the American Society of Magazine Editors' Hall of Fame.

Lapham is currently the host of The World in Time a radio show airing Sundays on Bloomberg Radio. Opening the doors of history behind the events in the news, The World In Time features scholars and historians.

Lapham wrote "The American Ruling Class", a movie done in documentary style and featuring fictional characters and real people, i.e. Bill Bradley, Hodding Carter III and Barbara Ehrenreich, author of "Nickel and Dimed", pondering the question "is there a ruling class in America?"

Mr. Lapham makes the rather salient point at the movie's conclusion that "if you're not in, you're out".

The movie was shown on Doc Day on the Sundance Channel, July 30, 2007.

Lapham wrote a September 2004 column for Harper's in which he included a brief account of the Republican National Convention as if the event had already happened and he had witnessed it, "reflecting on the content and sharing with readers a question that occurred to him as he listened," as Jennifer Senior wrote in a New York Times book review. But the magazine arrived in subscribers’ mailboxes before the convention had actually taken place, "forcing Lapham to admit that the scene was a fiction." The columnist apologized, "but pointed out that political conventions are drearily scripted anyway — he basically knew what was going to be said. By this logic, though, I could have chosen not to read Pretensions to Empire before reviewing it, since I already knew Lapham’s sensibility, just as he claims to know the Republicans’."^[1] It was later pointed out that, while Senior had said that the Lapham essay in question was "conspicuously" missing from Pretensions to Empire, an edited version of that essay actually leads the book. The New York Times published a correction and Senior described her error as "an honest mistake."^[2]

In 1972, Lapham married Joan Brooke Reeves, the daughter of Edward J. Reeves, a stockbroker and grocery heir, and his wife, the former Elizabeth M. Brooke (formerly wife of Thomas Wilton Phipps, a nephew of Nancy Astor). They have three children:

• Delphina (married Prince Bante Maria Boncompagni-Ludovisi)
• Andrew (married Caroline Mulroney, a daughter of former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney)
• Winston (the boyfriend of Amanda Hearst, the publishing heiress)

• Fortune's Child 1980; ISBN 0385148879
• Money and Class in America 1988; ISBN 1555841090
• Imperial Masquerade 1990; ISBN 1555844499 (hardcover); ISBN 0517110180
• The Wish for Kings: Democracy at Bay 1993; ISBN 0802114466
• Hotel America 1995; ISBN 1859849520 (hardcover); ISBN 1859840620 (paperback)
• Waiting for the Barbarians 1997; ISBN 1859848826
• Lapham's Rules of Influence 1999; ISBN 0679426051
• The Agony of Mammon 1999; ISBN 1859847102
• Lights, Camera, Democracy! 2001; ISBN 0679647139; ISBN 0812991621
• Theater of War 2003; ISBN 1565847725 (hardcover); ISBN 1565848470 (paperback)
• 30 Satires (a collection of essays) 2003; ISBN 1565848462
• Gag Rule 2004; ISBN 1594200173
• Pretensions to Empire: Notes on the Criminal Folly of the Bush Administration, by Lewis H. Lapham (The New Press: 2006), 288 pages; ISBN 159558112X

His writing has appeared in Life, Commentary, Vanity Fair, National Review, Yale Literary Magazine, ELLE, Fortune, Forbes, American Spectator, New York Times, The Walrus, Maclean's, The Observer (London), and the Wall Street Journal. Lapham also served as a judge for the PEN/Newman's Own First Amendment Award.

Lapham is the host and author of the PBS series, America's Century, and he was host of the weekly PBS series, Bookmark.

• Lewis Lapham to Become Editor Emeritus of Harper's Magazine at the Harpers site
• Lapham's Quarterly
• Lewis Lapham at the Internet Movie Database