Roundtable

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

A view of Dara’a, Syria, from al-Ramtha, Jordan, 2014. Photograph by Rana B. Khoury.

January 25, 2017

Finding Home in War

By Rana B. Khoury

The history—and limitations—of the international refugee regime.

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“Rachel Silverthorne’s Ride,” from a New Deal mural by John W. Beauchampin at the Muncy, Pennsylvania, post office, 1938.

January 20, 2017

The Rest Is History

By Angela Serratore

Presidents consider history, New Deals, and being rendered in wax.

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March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, with Martin Luther King Jr. in the center and Joachim Prinz on the far left, 1963. American Jewish Historical Society.

January 18, 2017

On to Washington

By Leopold Froehlich

Twelve marches on the nation’s capital.

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Folio 184: John and the Angel (detail), Book of Revelation, from the Augsburg Book of Miracles, c. 1552.

January 13, 2017

The Rest Is History

Rainbows, a forbidden city, and recipes from the days of food rationing.

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Ice skating on the Bois de Boulogne, by H. Sto, 1861. Brown University Library for Digital Scholarship.

January 06, 2017

The Rest Is History

Kafka travel guides, ancient Greek tombs, and ice-skating dandies of the eighteenth century.

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An Allegory of the Tudor Succession: The Family of Henry VIII, by unknown artist, c. 1590. Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection.

January 05, 2017

A Tudor Childhood

By Tracy Borman

How to raise a prince.

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Women grading vanilla beans, Sambava, Madgascar, 2001. Photograph by Jonathan Talbot, World Resources Institute.

January 04, 2017

The Marriage of Vanilla

By Sarah Lohman

In 1841 twelve-year-old slave Edmond Albius invented the technique that made the vanilla industry possible.

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News of Russo-Japanese Battles: For the Fourth Time Our Destroyers Bravely Attack Enemy Ships Outside the Harbor of Port Arthur, by Migita Toshihide, March 1904. Ukiyo-e print from the Sharf Collection, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

December 29, 2016

The Train to Port Arthur

By Matthew Stevenson

Revisiting the Russo-Japanese War in the Chinese harbor city where the Japanese sank the Russian fleet.

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Still Life (detail), by Paul Klee, 1927. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Berggruen Klee Collection, 1984.

December 28, 2016

Everything Else Is Bric-a-Brac

Three vignettes about home.

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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.

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May 22, 2023

Revolutionary Lovebirds

2023:

Writers on strike search for romance at the picket line.

c. 1945:

Young communists engage in party matchmaking.

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