The Ideal City, attributed to Fra Carnevale, c. 1482. Walters Art Museum, Baltimore.

The Ideal City, attributed to Fra Carnevale, c. 1482. The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore.

The City

Volume III, Number 4 | fall 2010

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Preamble

City Light

By Lewis H. Lapham

When it comes to the medieval cathedral and mosque, the modern skyscraper and the slum, world history is city history.

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Necropolis

By Colin Dickey

The corpse has proved to be a bedeviling problem for the city—how do we live with our dead?

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Map

City Narratives

The tumultuous histories of Algiers, Istanbul, Beijing, and Mexico City.

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1844 | London

Examining the Costs of Production

Friedrich Engels sheds light on the lives of London's poor.More

1849 | San Francisco

Mud and Mules

William Tecumseh Sherman’s adventures in California.More

1776 | Glasgow

Import, Export

Adam Smith explains the commercial origins of political order.More

Charts & Graphs

When in Rome

Statutes still on the books.

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Greek dramatist Sophocles.

British urban planner Ebenezer Howard.

American writer, political activist, urban theorist, and historian Mike Davis.

Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés.

British inventor and mathematician Charles Babbage.

black and white photo of Groucho Marx wearing glasses and smoking a cigar from the side of his mouth

English architect Christopher Wren.

Marco Polo

Cities are the abyss of the human species.

—Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1762

Pliny the Younger & Georg Simmel

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Lapham’sDaily

Roundtable

The Killing of Hypatia

By Soraya Field Fiorio

A fight over all things visible and invisible, featuring practical magic, empire, and terrible men. More

DÉjÀ Vu

Love Is Dead

2018:

Woman announces she is divorcing her pirate ghost husband.

1926:

Man sues wife for adultery with a ghost.

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The World in Time

Alan Rusbridger

Lewis H. Lapham talks with Alan Rusbridger, author of Breaking News: The Remaking of Journalism and Why It Matters Now. More

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