Niccolò Mauruzi da Tolentino at the Battle of San Romano , by Paolo Uccello, c. 1435–1460. National Gallery, London.

Niccolò Mauruzi da Tolentino at the Battle of San Romano, by Paolo Uccello, c. 1435–1460. National Gallery, London.

States of War

Volume 1, Number 1 | winter 2008

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Preamble

The Gulf of Time

By Lewis H. Lapham

An introduction to Lapham’s Quarterly.

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The Course of Empire: Destruction, by Thomas Cole, 1836.

Storm Warning

By Caleb Carr

Are there meaningful parallels between America today and late imperial Rome, and will they suffer a similar fate?

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Map

Fringe Benefits

Inventions, countries, and styles that came out of war.

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1953 | Washington

“Humanity Hanging from a Cross of Iron”

Dwight D. Eisenhower explains the exchange rate for war.More

1917 | Washington, DC

A World Made Safe

Woodrow Wilson champions democracy. More

2007 | Washington

Speaking Truth to Power

Jessica Lynch sets the record straight.More

Charts & Graphs

Rations

Available and rationed items during World War II.

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Black and white photograph of William Golding wearing an ascot.

British historian Edward Gibbon.

Statue depicting Roman orator and historian Tacitus.

Black and white photograph of Ryszard Kapuściński holding a book.

Photograph of President Abraham Lincoln sitting in a chair.

War to the castles; peace to the cottages.

—Nicolas Chamfort, 1790

Ashoka & Murayama Tomiichi

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Lapham’sDaily

Roundtable

Killer Queens

By Shelley Puhak

When women ran the empire—and their history was preserved by men. More

DÉjÀ Vu

He Just Doesn’t Like the Word “No”

2018:

A twelve-year-old steals his parents’ credit card and gets on a plane to Bali.

1723:

Seventeen-year-old Ben Franklin runs away on a boat and ends up in Philadelphia.

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The World in Time

Steve Fraser

Lewis H. Lapham talks with Steve Fraser, author of Class Matters: The Strange Career of an American Delusion. More

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