The Birth of Venus, by Sandro Botticelli, c. 1485. Uffizi Gallery, Florence.

Celebrity

Volume IV, Number 1 | winter 2011

Preamble

Dancing with the Stars

By Lewis H. Lapham

The vanity of princes is an old story; so is the wish for kings and the gazing into the pool of Narcissus.

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Consumer Products

By Stephen Marche

Celebrity culture may seem ahistorical, but its roots reach deeply into the past four hundred years.

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Famous adventurers, entertainers, geniuses, and outlaws.

Map

Hall of Famers

Famous adventurers, entertainers, geniuses, and outlaws.

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1897 | Reading

Notorious

Dispatches from inmate Wilde. More

8 | Rome

Whispers of Uncertain Origin

Rumor sweeps the world.More

44 BC | Rome

Last Words

I kiss thy hand, but not in flattery, Caesar.More

Charts & Graphs

Paths of Glory

The road to fame and fortune rarely runs straight.

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French critic Roland Barthes.

American social reformer Thomas Wentworth Higginson.

American actor, screenwriter, and producer Matt Damon.

English Canadian author Tom Rachman.

Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes.

American author of fiction, nonfiction and poetry Charles Baxter.

American critic, poet, and resident of Norway Bruce Bawer.

American critic Edmund Wilson.

FAMOUS, adj. Conspicuously miserable.

- Ambrose Bierce, 1906

Suetonius & Nikki Sixx

Lapham’sDaily

La Sultana Rossa, by Titian, c. 1550. Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota.

Roundtable

A Charitable Woman

By Leslie Peirce

Sixteenth-century Ottoman queen Roxelana, once a slave, makes her mark. More

U.S. secretary of agriculture Sonny Perdue meets with German minister of food and agriculture Christian Schmidt, 2017.

DÉjÀ Vu

Equal Climates

2017:

U.S. Department of Agriculture bans words related to climate change.

-350:

Aristotle denies that the climate is changing.

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The Fall of Man, by Titian, c. 1550.

LQ Podcast

#13 Stephen Greenblatt

Lewis H. Lapham talks with Stephen Greenblatt, author of The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve. More

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