Design for a House for a Cosmopolite, by Antoine-Laurent-Thomas Vaudoyer, 1783. Private Collection / Archives Charmet / Bridgeman Images.

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Volume X, Number 1 | winter 2017

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Preamble

Castles in Air

By Lewis H. Lapham

The American democracy and dream are the building of castles in air. Whither goeth the one so goeth the other, these days up in smoke and the spout.

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Home Loans

A history of seven homes—now for rent on Airbnb.

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Miscellany

“When the maids are beautiful and the concubines charming, this is not a blessing,” warns Confucian master Zhu Bolu in a seventeenth-century work of household advice. “For servants,” his next maxim advises, “don’t employ handsome boys.”

An American will build a house in which to pass his old age and sell it before the roof is on.

—Alexis de Tocqueville, 1840
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