August 14, 2015
The Rest Is History
A colonial dog, an ancient manuscript vs. a hamburger, and the utility of beards.
Read MoreRoundtable
Opinions and analysis from Lapham’s Quarterly writers and editors.
June 17, 2025
August 07, 2015
Off the Books
For a handful of towns, the libraries offered by Andrew Carnegie couldn’t blot out his anti-labor initiatives.
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August 07, 2015
The Rest Is History
The comedy of Machiavelli, advice to female authors, and modern-day fox hunting.
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July 31, 2015
The Rest Is History
An 1874 riot, the politics of teaching history, and a home guide to mesmerism.
Read MoreJuly 29, 2015
Words Without Borders
Writing began in the marketplace, with the scribbling of merchants in the Greek agora. From there it became the translator of songs, of Homer’s epic tales and Hesiod’s tales of the muses. But it would take a thousand years and a leap across a continent to the medieval scriptorium of Anglo-Saxon monks before writing would be shaped, standardized, copied, and recopied, into what we know understand to be literature.
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July 24, 2015
The Rest Is History
The Fountain of Youth, a literary Russian adventure, and the sin of ice cream.
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July 17, 2015
The Rest Is History
Segregating the sexes through architecture, fast food in ancient Rome, and the twilight of Queen Elizabeth’s corgis.
Read MoreJuly 16, 2015
Missionary, Go Home!
In the 1960s, affluent American volunteers lined up to serve the neediest abroad. But the radical Catholic priest Ivan Illich urged them to reconsider their missionary zeal—“you will not help anybody by your good intentions.”
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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.