Roundtable

Opinions and analysis from Lapham’s Quarterly writers and editors.

August 13, 2019

Land of the Free

By Sarah Schrank

A brief history of early American nudists.

Read More

August 12, 2019

Glossary: Happiness

By Leopold Froehlich

From allicholy to wretch, the language of bliss.

Read More

August 09, 2019

The Rest Is History

By Jaime Fuller

Ancient yeast, love letters, and Toni Morrison.

Read More

August 07, 2019

Everything’s Coming Up Agrippina

By Emma Southon

Untangling the gossip that defined a Roman empress for centuries.

Read More

“The ‘Borometz,’ or ‘Scythian Lamb,’ ” from Connubia Florum, by De La Croix, 1791, reproduced in The Vegetable Lamb of Tartary: A Curious Fable of the Cotton Plant, by Henry Lee, 1887. The Internet Archive, University of Toronto.

August 05, 2019

Animal, Vegetable, or Both?

By Benjamin Aldes Wurgaft

Making sense of the Scythian lamb.

Read More

August 02, 2019

The Rest Is History

By Jaime Fuller

Lucifer, watery places, and 1999.

Read More

Detail of a photograph of the inscription on the tomb of Tiberius Claudius Tiberinus, Rome, by Kleuske. Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).

July 31, 2019

The Literary Arena

By T.P. Wiseman

Remembering the poetry of Augustan Rome.

Read More

July 29, 2019

“Old Paris Is No More”

Baron Haussmann wanted to build a barricade-proof city, but the people he displaced defied his plans.

Read More

July 26, 2019

The Rest Is History

By Jaime Fuller

Catacombs, the Melvilles, and peyote.

Read More

From Déja Vu

August 07, 2023

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.

Read More

May 22, 2023

Revolutionary Lovebirds

2023:

Writers on strike search for romance at the picket line.

c. 1945:

Young communists engage in party matchmaking.

Read More