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.
Read MoreRoundtable
Opinions and analysis from Lapham’s Quarterly writers and editors.
September 24, 2020
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.
Read More
September 22, 2020
Your Friendly Neighborhood Inoculator
Meet Daniel Sutton, who turned smallpox prevention into his brand in eighteenth-century England.
Read More
September 17, 2020
Book of Revelation
On the power and privilege of the written word in the Middle Ages.
Read More
September 16, 2020
The Deafness Diet
Purported hearing cures, from mail-order cons to prenatal vitamins.
Read More
September 15, 2020
A True Friend
How Felix Moses, a Jewish Confederate soldier, was recast in a Lost Cause myth.
Read More
September 11, 2020
The Rest Is History
Post offices, over a hundred mammoth skeletons, and endless chewing.
Read More
September 09, 2020
The Magical Art of Selling Soap
The trends and tactics of the nineteenth-century wellness industry.
Read More- 1 of 110
- next ›
September 14, 2020
Alfresco Gender Reveals
2020:
An outdoor gender-reveal party in California sparks a wildfire.
1500 BC:
Ancient Egyptian women visit a field of grain daily to determine their babies’ gender.
August 13, 2020
The Cockerel Brief
2020:
Rooster fined 166 euros for early morning crowing in Italian town.
1474:
Rooster questioned for laying egg, perhaps at the behest of Satan.