“They would take you around, introduce you to all of their contacts, translate for you, and help you put together the story,” says scholar-journalist Kira Brunner Don in this week’s episode of The World in Time. “And I often felt like, you pay them, of course, a day rate, but there was this understanding that real news was made by American journalists who flew in and told you what was what. All of us were depending on journalists from the country, or writers from the country, who knew it far better than we did and really had the context and the sensibility. But there was this unspoken rule that they’ll be biased. I really felt like I wanted to create something that instead focused on the actual voices of the people who live in the countries we’re covering.”

 

This week on the podcast Donovan Hohn hosts a two-part episode. First, he speaks with Kira Brunner Don, former executive editor of Lapham’s Quarterly, about the making of our first issue, States of War, from Winter 2008, and about the magazine Brunner Don edits now, Stranger’s Guide. In part two of this episode, Hohn speaks with Nathan Brown, translator of Verso’s new dual-language edition of Charles Baudelaire’s The Flowers of Evil, about the history of Baudelaire’s magnum opus. Brown gives us a guided tour of “Recueillement,” the Baudelaire poem read at Lewis Lapham’s memorial service, which Brown has translated anew for Lapham’s Quarterly, under the title “Introspection.”

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WORKS CITED
[In order of mention.]

 

Lapham’s Quarterly, Winter 2008: States of War.

 

Stranger’s Guide, Ukraine, November 2022.

 

Stranger's Guide, Tehran, August 2021.

 

Charles Baudelaire. The Flowers of Evil. Translated by Nathan Brown. New York: Verso, 2025.

 

Charles Baudelaire. “Introspection,” Lapham’s Quarterly, 2025. Translated by Nathan Brown.

 

Paul & Jimmy’s Ristorante in Gramercy Park, New York City.

 

Kira Brunner Don. “All Good Editors Are Pirates,” Lapham’s Quarterly, 2025. Originally published by Stranger’s Guide on July 28, 2024.  

 

Elias Altman. “The Fifth Act,” Lapham’s Quarterly, 2025. Originally published by Literary Hub on October 7, 2024. 

 

William Shakespeare. Hamlet. Edited by Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012.

 

Lewis H. Lapham. “Letter to the Reader” Harper’s Magazine, January 1984.

 

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. West-Eastern Divan. Translated and annotated by Eric Ormsby. Richmond, CA: Gingko Press, 2021.

 

Cicero. Brutus and Orator. Translated, introduced, and annotated by Robert A. Kaster. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020.

 

Lapham’s Quarterly, Summer 2018: Water.

 

Barbara Ehrenreich. “Nickel-and-Dimed,” Harper’s Magazine, January 1999.

 

Lewis H. Lapham. “Alms for Oblivion,” Lapham’s Quarterly, Winter 2012: Intoxication.

 

Evan S. Connell. Notes from a Bottle Found on the Beach at Carmel. Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 2013.

 

Evan S. Connell. Points for a Compass Rose. Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 2012.

 

Donovan Hohn. “Anatomy Lessons: Evan S. Connell and the Documentary School,” Harper’s Magazine, December 2001.

 

Annie Dillard. “The Wreck of Time,” Harper’s Magazine, January 1998.

 

Svetlana Alexievich. Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster. Translated by Keith Gessen. Funks Grove, IL: Dalkey Archive Press, 2019.

 

Lewis H. Lapham. “The Gulf of Time,” Lapham’s Quarterly, Winter 2008: States of War. 

 

Terence. “The Self-Tormenter.” In The Comedies. Translated by Betty Radice. New York: Penguin Classics, 1976.

 

Anastasia Stanko. “Diary of a Ukrainian Journalist,” Stranger’s Guide, Ukraine, November 2022.

 

Walt Whitman. Leaves of Grass. Introduced by Harold Bloom. New York: Penguin Classics, 2005.

 

René Descartes. Meditations and Other Metaphysical Writings.  New York: Penguin Classics, 1999.

 

Victor Hugo. Les Contemplations. Paris: Nelson, 1856.

 

John Keats. “Ode to a Nightingale.” In The Complete Poems. New York: Penguin Classics, 1977.