Roundtable
Opinions and analysis from Lapham’s Quarterly writers and editors.
July 31, 2025
May 14, 2019
Nothing But Solitude
When Renaissance explorers went north, they found a lunar landscape here on earth.
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May 13, 2019
Mankind, Unite!
How Upton Sinclair’s 1934 run for governor of California inspired a cult.
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May 10, 2019
The Rest Is History
Codpieces, a missing piece of Stonehenge, and a soap obsession.
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May 08, 2019
American Beauty, Explained
When a women’s magazine editor enforced an ideal of the slender Anglo-Saxon Protestant woman.
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May 07, 2019
The Bubonic Plague Hits Hawaii
How prejudice helped spread disease at the turn of the century.
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May 06, 2019
The Universal Cause
A history of reformers targeting sex trafficking in pursuit of other aims.
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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.