Roundtable

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

July 31, 2015

The Rest Is History

By Angela Serratore

An 1874 riot, the politics of teaching history, and a home guide to mesmerism.

July 29, 2015

Words Without Borders

By Matthew Battles

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.

July 24, 2015

The Rest Is History

By Angela Serratore

The Fountain of Youth, a literary Russian adventure, and the sin of ice cream.

July 17, 2015

The Rest Is History

By Angela Serratore

Segregating the sexes through architecture, fast food in ancient Rome, and the twilight of Queen Elizabeth’s corgis.

July 16, 2015

Missionary, Go Home!

By Nathan Schneider

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.”