The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations is a 1979 book by the cultural historian Christopher Lasch, in which the author explores the roots and ramifications of what he perceives as the normalizing of pathological narcissism in 20th-century American culture using psychological, cultural, artistic and historical synthesis. For the mass-market edition published in September of the same year, Lasch won the 1980 US National Book Award in the category Current Interest (paperback).