September 30, 2020
Escaping the Index of Prohibited Books
How sixteenth-century Italian physicians tried to preserve their libraries.
Read MoreRoundtable
Opinions and analysis from Lapham’s Quarterly writers and editors.
July 21, 2025
September 29, 2020
Form Follows Function
On Louis Sullivan’s Kindergarten Chats and the viral ideas of influential how-to books.
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September 25, 2020
The Rest Is History
A slightly misleading mummy portrait, Caravaggio, and prescient apocalypses.
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September 24, 2020
The Drama of Democracy
How ancient Greek tragedies used Thebes as a foil for Athens.
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September 23, 2020
Is a Turtle an Animal or a Fish?
A court case tests the strength of an early law against cruelty to animals.
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September 22, 2020
Your Friendly Neighborhood Inoculator
Meet Daniel Sutton, who turned smallpox prevention into his brand in eighteenth-century England.
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September 22, 2020
Rebel with a Cause
The eighty-year-old mystery of the murder of Sheldon Robert Harte, Leon Trotsky’s most controversial bodyguard.
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September 17, 2020
Book of Revelation
On the power and privilege of the written word in the Middle Ages.
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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.
May 22, 2023
Revolutionary Lovebirds
2023:
Writers on strike search for romance at the picket line.
c. 1945:
Young communists engage in party matchmaking.