Roundtable

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

May 8, 2025

April 15, 2015

Learning from Lincoln

By Angela Serratore

On April 14, 1865, John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln as the sixteenth president enjoyed a production of “Our American Friend” at Ford’s Theater in Washington, DC. Early the next morning, Lincoln died in a boarding house across the street—the first American president to be assassinated. With Lincoln’s death, the divided country lost not just its leader but one of its wisest thinkers, a man who had something to say on nearly every subject, and then some.

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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.

2023:

Writers on strike search for romance at the picket line.

c. 1945:

Young communists engage in party matchmaking.