Queen Elizabeth I, c. 1600. National Portrait Gallery, London.

Queen Elizabeth I, c. 1600. National Portrait Gallery, London.

Politics

Volume V, Number 4 | fall 2012

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Preamble

Feast of Fools

By Lewis H. Lapham

How American democracy became all about the rule of money.

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Henry James, by Jacques-Emile Blanche, 1908. National Portrait Gallery, Washington D.C.

Between the Lines

By Robert Boyers

A look at the crossroads where literature and politics meet, and the relationship between art and ideas.

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Map

Powers That Be

Tale of the tape: monarchy, theocracy, democracy.

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Miscellany

“A horrid-looking wretch he is, sooty and scoundrelly in aspect, a cross between the nutmeg dealer, the horse swapper, and the night man,” declared a Stephen Douglas–leaning newspaper of Abraham Lincoln during the presidential race of 1860.

c. 525 | Denmark

Words to the Wise

Beowulf receives a lesson in kingship.More

1849 | Concord, MA

Declining the Honor

Henry David Thoreau quietly declares war with the state.More

1918 | Munich

Unbroken Spirit

Max Weber on the necessity of heroes in politics.More

Charts & Graphs

Anything for a Vote

Creative ways of electioneering.

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Photograph of former Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev.

Black and white photograph of a young Mark Twain with dark hair.

Photograph of professor and editor Robert Boyers.

Photograph of Chinese nationalist leader Sun Yat-Sen.

Portrait of Alexis de Tocqueville wearing a black suit and standing in front of a chair.

Portrait of Swiss-born philosopher, writer, and political theorist Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Black and white photograph of English writer Virginia Woolf.

Classical engraving of Aristophanes with a long beard.

I shall be an autocrat: that’s my trade. And the good Lord will forgive me: that’s his.

—Catherine the Great, c. 1796

Portrait bust of presumed author of the Iliad and the Odyssey Homer.

Painted portrait of English poet John Milton.

Homer & John Milton

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