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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Dickens in Lagos

By George Packer

In Nigeria, modernity hasn’t yet begun to solve the problems of people thrown together in the urban cauldron.

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Map

City Narratives

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

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1840 | Venice

Tourist Destination

Hans Christian Andersen pays homage to Venice.More

c. 25 BC | Rome

Blueprint

Building a better forum.More

1905 | New York City

Honest Graft

How politicians make money.More

Charts & Graphs

Lost Cities

Destroyed but not forgotten.

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Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés.

British inventor and mathematician Charles Babbage.

Greek dramatist Sophocles.

History professor Warren Breckman.

Woody Allen in thick black rim glasses

Chinese poet Du Fu.

Photograph of Colin Dickey standing in front of a brick wall.

English diarist and naval administrator Samuel Pepys.

It is men who make a city, not walls or ships.

—Thucydides, 410 BC

Pliny the Younger & Georg Simmel

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Lapham’sDaily

Roundtable

The School Formerly Known as LeConte

By Lauren Markham

A debate in Berkeley about the power of a name. More

Man and Woman Being Chased by Bees (detail), by Honoré Daumier. The New York Public Library, Art and Picture Collection.

DÉjÀ Vu

The Perfect Swarm

2018:

The NYPD beekeeper vacuums up a swarm of bees on a hot dog stand in Times Square.

1906:

Bees take over a Los Angeles street as spectators watch.

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The World in Time

Jim Holt

Lewis H. Lapham talks with Jim Holt, author of When Einstein Walked with Gödel: Excursions to the Edge of Thought. More

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