A young worker at the C & NW RR 40th Street shops, Chicago, Ill, photograph by Jack Delano, 1942. Library of Congress.

A young worker at the C & NW RR 40th Street shops, Chicago, Illinois, 1942. Photograph by Jack Delano. Library of Congress.

Lines of Work

Volume IV, Number 2 | spring 2011

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Women become skilled shop technicians after careful training in the school at the Douglas Aircraft Company plant, Long Beach, CA, photograph by Alfred T. Palmer, 1942. Library of Congress.

Preamble

The Servant Problem

By Lewis H. Lapham

It is man’s nature to be doing something, or at least to fancy that he’s doing something, but to what purpose?

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Treasure Hunt

By Alain de Botton

A person’s vocation has become more than a job—it should transform us into who we are.

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Map

Cornering the Market

The countries that rule the industries.

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806 | China

Sow and Reap

The not-so-simple life of a farmer.More

1778 | Paris

Clear-Sighted Ambition

Mozart does not care to wrestle with dwarfs.More

2010 | Los Angeles

Quality Control

A guide to being naturally beautiful at work.More

Charts & Graphs

Sexual harassment in the workplace.

Cruel and/or Unusual

Sexual harassment in the workplace.

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Photograph of Thorstein Veblen

American musician Charles Mingus.

English cook and author Isabella Mary Beeton.

Black and white photograph of Sven Birkerts sitting in front of a bookshelf.

American feminist, activist, and editor Gloria Steinem.

American author Steven Millhauser.

French author Émile Zola.

Photograph of African-American poet and writer Langston Hughes.

Plough deep while sluggards sleep.

—Benjamin Franklin, 1758

Color painting early Chinese philosopher Mengzi.

Black and white photograph of a young John Ruskin wearing a suit.

Mencius & John Ruskin

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Lapham’sDaily

Roundtable

Lapham’s Quarterly Is on Hiatus

By Lapham’s Quarterly

But the American Agora Foundation is already planning for the future. More

The Colosseum, attributed to Robert Eaton, c. 1855.

DÉjÀ Vu

Monumental Mistakes

2023:

Fitness instructor carves his girlfriend’s name into the Colosseum.

c. 1850:

Thompson of Sunderland makes his mark on Pompey’s pillar.

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Terracotta funerary plaque, Greek, Attic, c. 520 BC.

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

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