Olympia, by Édouard Manet, 1863. Musée d’Orsay, Paris, France.

Eros

Volume II, Number 1 | winter 2009

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The Toilette of Venus, by François Boucher, 1751.

Preamble

Transits of Venus

By Lewis H. Lapham

The commodification of sex and love has shaped our attitudes toward both over the past half century, but eros is more than just dollars and cents.

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Three Lovers, by Théodore Géricault, 1817-20.

Not About the Money

By William H. Gass

Sensuality is often mistakenly associated with prostitution and pornography, matters with which true sensual appreciation has only distant connections.

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Map

The Grand Tour

Sexual hazards from around the world and throughout time.

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c. 800 | India

Topography

A story told on the bed sheets.More

1935 | Watts

Deciding to Wait

Charles Mingus takes it slow. More

1929 | Kent

To Harold Nicolson

Vita Sackville-West at a loss for words.More

Charts & Graphs

Carnal Knowledge

A global survey of sex.

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French author the Marquis de Sade.

English dramatist, writer, and poet Aphra Behn.

Black and white image of French classical author La Rochefoucauld.

Lewis Lapham at his desk

Japanese diarist and poet Sei Shōnagon.

What reason weaves, by passion is undone.

—Alexander Pope, 1972

Molière & Albert Camus

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Lapham’sDaily

Roundtable

Bring Him Home

By Patrice Gueniffey

How Napoleon Bonaparte’s delayed funeral came to be. More

A telescopic image of the formalhault solar system. A bright dot is surrounded by a cloud of smaller red dots. An inset shows a close-up of what looks like a planet, labeled Formalhault b.

DÉjÀ Vu

Space Oddities

2020:

Exoplanet revealed to be nothing but a large cloud of dust.

1903:

Supposed irrigation canals on Mars are merely optical illusions.

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The World in Time

Peter Fritzsche

Lewis H. Lapham speaks with the author of Hitler’s First Hundred Days: When Germans Embraced the Third Reich. More

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