Fitness instructor carves his girlfriend’s name into the Colosseum.
Acrobats (detail), Japanese handscroll, nineteenth century. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Mrs. Henry J. Bernheim, 1945.
VIEW:
Miscellany
President Herbert Hoover once praised a group of PR professionals. “You have taken over the job of creating desire,” he said, “and have transformed people into constantly moving happiness machines—machines which have become the key to economic progress.” It was 1928; the Great Depression began the following year.
O, how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man’s eyes.
—William Shakespeare, c. 1599Lapham’sDaily
Stay Updated Subscribe to the LQ Newsletter
Roundtable
Lapham’s Quarterly Is on Hiatus
But the American Agora Foundation is already planning for the future. More
The World in Time
Robert D. Kaplan
Lewis H. Lapham speaks with the author of The Tragic Mind: Fear, Fate, and the Burden of Power. More