Roundtable
Opinions and analysis from Lapham’s Quarterly writers and editors.
May 14, 2025
July 22, 2020
Forgotten Best Sellers
Lapham’s Quarterly explores the history of the best seller.
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July 22, 2020
The Best Seller Who Hated Best Sellers
What Edith Wharton’s library tells us about her reading habits.
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July 22, 2020
Prizewinning Top Sellers
Since 1918 only seven Pulitzer Prize–winning novels have also been Publishers Weekly’s best-selling novel of the year.
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July 20, 2020
The Birth of New Spain
How the Spanish arrival transformed the land—and decimated the population—of Mesoamerica.
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July 17, 2020
The Rest Is History
A timeline of food, masks, and repatriated sacred carvings.
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July 15, 2020
Mithridates the Great Pharmacologist
The scholarly pursuits of a Hellenistic king.
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July 13, 2020
The Question of Monuments
Despite our long history of interrogating the memorial landscape, no movement has been able to dislodge it.
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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.
Revolutionary Lovebirds
2023:
Writers on strike search for romance at the picket line.
c. 1945:
Young communists engage in party matchmaking.