Lapham’s Quarterly goes into the past to help us make sense of the present. It dives into history, finding the roots of education, science, literary, political, and economic thinking. 

Lapham's Quarterly

From Antikythera to AI — tracking the labyrinthine path of technology’s progress.

“Do periods of rapid technological advance necessarily bring with them accelerating fears of the future?” Simon Winchester explores the questions behind human's relationship with machines. He reflects on the short amount of time we have had to consider the pros and cons of electronic and nuclear technology and the one curious Greek mechanism that predates and puzzles historians to this day.

Sharon Bott

Greeks bearing gifts

Could the everyday wonder of technology save us soon?

It has been said there is a unique moment of magic when a technology, once only a figment of imagination, becomes fully realised. Many of us discovered that vital moment of ingenuity in the forms of vaccines. But, Andrew Blum asks, what else might be possible? In this insight into the life-changing innovations in history, he reflects on what he believes has the biggest potential to drastically change the world's problems.

Chris Brinkley

Fusion & magic

What can we learn from ancient tales of technology?

From Greek mythology to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Adrienne Mayor examines the historical examples of artificial life in ancient texts. In this fascinating reflection, she considers how these tales have set the blueprint for many narratives in modern science fiction, making us wonder what will happen in the next iteration of the limitless genre.

Michael Bott

Prometheus’ toolbox

How the world started to take up smoking.

From Central American ritual to the European rich's past time, Benjamin Breen explores the transformation of tobacco and cannabis into early modern global obsessions. In this comprehensive deep-dive, he discovers that a significant clue about the pathways for the domination of smoking comes from an unexpected detail of history.

Sean Crisden

Our strange addiction

The alternative roots of the origins of modern nation-states.

What would happen if we stopped looking at democracy through the Western gaze that views Athens as its birthplace? Once clear of Ancient Greece's lens, the human past begins to look entirely different: democratic practices were not limited to the West and are hidden in plain sight in some of the pivotal moments of world history. Using reports from the Spanish Conquest, David Graeber and David Wengrow examine the history of the Mexican city-state of Tlaxcala and reveal democracy’s indigenous origins in the Americas.

Simon Mattacks

Hiding in plain sight

Analysing the differences between 'presentisim' and 'eternalism'.

The former contemplates "the notion that everything that exists is only what can and does exist right now," while the latter "the idea that time is not a process but a dimension, and in that dimension all reference points have equal validity, and thus all time, past, present, and future, exists at once, extending (like space) in all directions." Author John Crowley reflects in Lapham's Quarterly on the philosophical belief that it’s possible to live in more than one time, more than one history of the world, without feeling a pressing need to reconcile them.

Ron Butler

Time after time

Can bridging the divide between animals and humans bring about lasting happiness?

From childhood onward, humans have had a "poignant desire to communicate with animals," and gathering a better understanding of this need to speak with other creatures could, in turn, show us the path to a more fulfilling way of living life. Jay Griffiths reflects on these desires in Lapham's Quarterly magazine.

Michael Satow

The loneliest of species

What happens when private grief becomes common experience?

Anne Michaels, from Lapham's Quarterly Magazine, looks into the depersonalization of history and argues for a fight against it.

Imani Jade Powers

Mortal soul, moral soul

H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds feels more relevant and unsettling now than ever.

In the acclaimed novel, an all-conquering civilization had no defence against a humble microbe. Coincidently, Wells' book also offers a glimpse into what a world stopped in its tracks could look like, something that in pandemic times as today's can be all too eerily familiar. In Lapham's Quarterly, Mike Jay contemplates nature's influence in our futuristic depictions of society, through the lense of Wells' fascinating work.

The virus and the Martians

Understanding the volcanic eruption that set an ominous stage for the death throes of the Roman Republic.

Ancient civilisations were staunch believers of omens, with none so well known as the volcanic eruption and extreme cold spells prefacing Julius Caesar's assassination. In Lapham's Quarterly magazine, Kyle Harper explores how modern scientists have turned to nature for less prophetic explanations of the unstable environment of these eras.

In the shadow of Caesar

Commonplace books and the illusions of memory.

"The first passages in my commonplace doc are plucked from the few books I’ve brought from home or ones borrowed from the United States Information Service, an institution whose purpose I cannot decipher. Exile limits choices, makes for chance affinities that become stronger than they might otherwise be at home." Ed Park reflects in Lapham's Quarterly magazine.

Pale ink

The last judicial duel in France hinged on whether a woman could be believed — this is her story.

In this remarkable Lapham's Quarterly article from Eric Jager, he tells the story of Marguerite de Carrouges, the person behind the last trial by combat Paris ever saw, drawing interesting parallels between society's response to sexual abuse then and today. After almost 650 years, have they changed much?

Karl Miller

The woman in black

If you have a boat, and piece by piece replace it entirely, is it still the same boat?

This is the paradox of the Ship of Theseus - but would it be the same paradox if we replaced the image of the boat with, a house, or a cart? Writing in Lapham's Quarterly, Melissa Mesku considers.

Andi Arndt

Restoring the Ship of Theseus

Our past on the internet is disappearing before we can make it history.

A lot of the worry today is about our digital data being stored indefinitely whether we want it or not. But what of the data that is disappearing before we can archive it? Writing in Lapham's Quarterly, Tanner Howard reflects on the transience of our digital archives.

Ashley Klanac

Please, my digital archive. It’s very sick

Revisit 19th century Paris, when the city attempted to design out rebellion, but ended up encouraging it.

Paris — where millions of euros were donated following the fire at 'Notre-Dame' — is a city renowned for its architecture. But behind its idyllic boulevards and parks lies a story with a political legacy. Jess McHugh tells the story in Lapham's Quarterly.

'Old Paris is no more'

Depending on your interpretation of happiness, it can save or destroy a society.

The US has built a whole culture around the pursuit of happiness. But David Wootton, writing in Lapham’s Quarterly, considers this a futile, self-defeating enterprise as our interpretation of "happiness" could either save or destroy a society.

Ken Foster

The impossible dream

Jimmy Carter said the “view that women are somehow inferior to men is not restricted to one religion or belief” so where did these ideas stem from? Asks Francine Prose, writing in Lapham’s Quaterly, and why, then, is misogyny so pervasive and enduring in our society?

Betsy Foldes Meiman

The original sin: where misogyny comes from and why it endures

Olivia Rutigliano writing in Lapham’s Quarterly traces the Victorian trend of detective novels - but with women as the detectives.

Rena-Marie Villano

The Lady Is a Detective 

Saudi oil has been attacked but how did this natural resource become an essential commodity?

“Trade has only ever been truly free for those whose economies were large enough and powerful enough,” Laleh Khalili explores in Lapham's Quarterly magazine.

A world built on sand and oil

We know different countries - sometimes cities - adhere to differing time zones but did you know this has often been used as a means of political authoritarianism? Elena Goukassian writing in Lapham’s Quarterly unfolds some of the most precarious time changes throughout history.

Guest Narrator

Time Lords: A History Of Authoritarian Time Changes

The CIA’s first attempt at regime change was in Iran. Bridey Heing writing in Lapham’s Quarterly tells us the story and how the attempt nearly failed.

Operation Ajax: How The CIA’s First Attempt At Regime Change Nearly Failed

Jayne Anne Phillips writing in Lapham’s Quarterly describes the resolution of America’s best-known feud – the Hatfield-McCoy feud – that has entered the American folklore lexicon as a metonym for any bitterly feuding rival parties.

Andy Field

Love’s Labors Lost: the Resolution of America’s Best-Known Feud

Pablo Maurette, writing in Lapham's Quarterly, asks and then explores: are hands what distinguish us from animals and make us human?

Rex Anderson

The Children of Anaxagoras: did hands make us human?

Shelley Puhak writes in Lapham’s Quarterly about the legendary feud between two women who ruled the Frankish empire in the 6th century. 

Alexia Kombou

Killer Queens: When women ran the empire  

Alex Green, writing in Lapham's Quarterly, tells the story of the mental health patients detained as enemy aliens during World War II.

“Enemies” with Disabilities: The internment of mental health patients during WWII

In a world where the achievements of women throughout history are constantly being undermined.

Natalie Daher pays tribute to those who have been erased from the public eye, the women fighting to rescue them from the historical dustbin, and explains how the internet can help this cause.

Allyson Johnson

How to rescue women from the historical dustbin

Sometimes reading about cities can be as exciting and vivid as visiting the place itself.

Tyler Malone, writing in Lapham's Quarterly, shares how through the power of words, James Joyce took him to Dublin, Alfred Döblin to Berlin, and John Dos Passos to New York City.

City as character: getting lost in the text-cities of Joyce, Döblin, and Dos Passos

In Renaissance Florence, the law was king—that is, until the House of Medici rose to prominence. Erica Banner, writing in Lapham's Quarterly, chronicles the struggle for power and law between the Medicis and the anti-Medici republic, with Niccolo Machiavelli at its forefront. 

The Daimons’ Wisdom: Tyranny in the Florentine Republic 

They are our fellow “great apes”: orangutans, gorillas, and chimpanzees. More than animals, less than humans. Ferris Jabr, writing in Lapham's Quarterly, chronicles our complex and tumultuous relationship with the great apes and our attempts to come to terms with just how alike we are. 

The Person in the Ape

Samuel Johnson is described by the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography as ‘arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history’. But what if he had made it as a lawyer? Richard Cohen, writing in Lapham's Quarterly, considers an alternative reading of the life of a literary great.

The World’s Greatest Outlaw: Samuel Johnson as attorney

The well-informed used to know not to trust everything they read or heard. Lewis Lapham, writing in Lapham’s Quarterly, reminds his readers that, on a level, all news has always been fake news.

Advertisements for reality: news has always been a bit fake

Will we ever be able to see and understand the thoughts of others? Noga Arikha, writing in Lapham’s Quarterly, looks at the history of brain imaging and the fantasy of a truly visible mind.

Thoughts made visible: where does the mind reside?

Many of us will have come across the notion of personality types, be it through the Briggs-Myers test or elsewhere, but establishing these in the early 20th Century was no easy feat. Damion Searls, writing in Lapham’s Quarterly, traces the psychologist Carl Jung’s fight to categorise human minds. 

The difficult task of the future: Carl Jung’s fight to find psychological types

Jane Austen is a comic writer, but we may have forgotten this due to the big screen adaptions of her work. Ted Scheinman, writing in Lapham’s Quarterly, looks to remind us that many of the words of Emma or Pride and Prejudice are there to make us laugh.

Jane Austen’s Trivial Pursuits: Jane Austen is a comic writer, but we may have forgotten this

How power in America has turned the rule of law into a mere myth.

The law is far, the fist is near. How reliable is the law in bringing justice? And when, if ever, is it alright to take matters into our own hands? Ralph Nader writing in Lapham’s Quarterly examines the various zones of lawlessness in the U.S., and how they can be diminished.

Land of the Lawless: American justice is a myth

Zack Herold, writing in Lapham’s Quarterly, traces the tale of a West Virginian island Eden which, in 1805, played host to a military plot, far-flung fortunes and a former US Vice President. This is the story of the Blennerhassetts.

Aaron Landon

Paradise Lost: The tale of a far-flung fortune and how it went up in flames

Cristiano Ronaldo? Serena Williams? LeBron James? Relative paupers compared to their athletic forefathers. Peter T. Struck, writing in Lapham's Quarterly, considers the wealth of the richest sportspeople of all time, the Roman charioteers.

Rhett Samuel Price

Greatest of all time: the wealth of charioteers

Uncle Vincent’s body never rotted, so the locals think that he never found peace. While his soul lingers in purgatory, his mummified body has become a shrine. Elizabeth Harper, writing in Lapham's Quarterly, looks at a very vivid manifestation of religious belief in Southern Italy. 

Emma Powell

Reach out and touch faith: saints who can never be saints

The Yezidi were little known to most of the world until news broke that ISIS was looking to eradicate them. Alex Cuadros looks at the rituals and history of the ancient Middle Eastern religion. 

Songs from Sinjar: The story of the Yezidi

Beneath the glass office buildings and sandwich shops of New York’s Tribeca, lies a huge graveyard filled with the bodies of twenty thousand dead African Slaves. But their final resting place was often disturbed. Bess Lovejoy looks at New York’s grisly and racially-charged history of bodysnatching. 

Body Snatchers of Old New York

The motives behind the El Paso shootings may seem obvious - but can we trace back the ideas?

“You will not replace us.” “Jew will not replace us.” “Blood and soil.” The fear of a ‘white genocide’ is something that motivates many of the mind-sets on show at far-right rallies. But where does this idea come from? Kevan A. Feshami traces the origins of contemporary white-nationalist thought back to nineteenth-century Germany.

Fear of White genocide

Duke Ellington was one of the 20th century’s most revered pianists and composers, but one of his most ambitious works, written for Queen Elizabeth II, went unreleased during his lifetime. Christopher Carroll looks at the story of The Queen’s Suite. 

Secret music: Duke Ellington's The Queen's Suite

Around 1846, the writer, environmentalist and abolitionist, Henry David Thoreau, was living near Walden Pond. Here he looks on as two ant colonies go to war and reflects on strife and struggle. 

Survival of the fittest: Thoreau as naturalist

“Through these portals pass the most beautiful uniforms in the world.”

It would be unthinkable today, but during the Second World War leading Hollywood stars both fought alongside and partied in style with their countrymen. Anne Helen Petersen looks in Lapham's Quarterly at the history of The Hollywood Canteen where for one night soldiers could live like A-list celebrities. 

Diana Holguin

The Hollywood canteen: where soldiers could be movie stars for one night

Was Vladimir Nabokov a bad Samaritan? Did he ignore the groans of a dying man in order to continue chasing a butterfly? Levi Stahl recounts a potentially revealing anecdote from the illustrious novelist’s life. 

A moral tale: Nabokov's butterflies

He recorded his own voice but could never play it back, and in silence it remained for almost two centuries. Emma Jacobs looks for the man who invented the sound recording before Edison but was never taken seriously—until now.

Edison vs Scott: Who invented the sound recording? 

If a divine entity is always watching you, why should you worry about security cameras? 

Under watchful eyes: God and the surveillance state

Real estate, Jane Austen–style.

Discussing the importance of securing real estate both furnished and romantic.

Jan Cramer

All in the family: excerpt from Pride and Prejudice

What is it like to become Queen? Why not hear from Queen Victoria herself who wrote in her journal on the day of her ascension in in 1837, republished by Lapham’s Quarterly. 

Queen Victoria: Poor Stupid Me

When you tip toe along a tight rope strung between two skyscrapers, it is natural to be scared; what is exceptional is to then rise above it and achieve the unthinkable. The world-renowned high-wire artist Philippe Petit , writing in Lapham's Quarterly, provides a guide-line to coping with fear.

Scott Ciscon

On a tightrope, in search of fear

An investigation of the fear-filled mythology of ancient Greece and why its most memorable monster still turns us to stone today.

How the dreaded Gorgon survives

He was the nation’s best-known showman and ran the hugely popular American museum. Here, he explores deceit and fraud. 

The great American humbug

Being a witch was expensive in the medieval age, in more ways than one.

Laurent Merceron, from Lapham's Quarterly, describes the incredible, fascinating and certainly spooky big business of witch hunts in the 16th and 17th centuries.

David Riley

Gold and silver coined from human blood 

Often the hallucinations lead the sufferer to believe he was crawling with insects or engulfed in flames. Laurent Merceron, writing in Lapham’s Quarterly, explores the origins of LSD in the botanical roots of medieval madness.

The botanical origins of a medieval madness: a brief history of LSD

Compound interest could bankrupt the world.

Perpetual trusts have been a feature of the western world for centuries. But while a thousand-year trust with compound interest could help save for the future, it could also bankrupt the world. In this fascinating essay, Paul Collins highlights also reveals why governments have tried to outlaw perpetual trusts.

Jonathan Booth

Trust issues

Palmyra has graced the world’s news screens for all the wrong reasons. 

Its destruction has been the symbol of barbarity. French Archaeologist and Historian Paul Veyne writing in Lapham’s Quarterly tells us of the ancient city’s rich and remarkable history. 

The Oasis of Palmyra: unearthing the history of the ancient city-state

Drone technology spans a century's worth of science fiction and military research.

"Despite the futuristic concept of robotic air warfare, drone technology goes back a hundred years. The technological groundwork was first established by genius inventor Nikola Tesla, who introduced radio-control technology at Madison Square Garden in 1898. Tesla immediately realized his invention's military potential, noting that the technology would allow man to build devastating remote weapons that would be a deterrent so inhuman and destructive that, in his imagination, they would 'lead to permanent peace between the nations.'" Rudolph Herzog delves in Lapham's Quarterly into the history of drones.

Rise of the drones

The French philosopher outsmarts the lottery.

We all know Voltaire as the Enlightenment philosopher and writer. But author and professor of French at Oxford, Roger Pearson, shares in Lapham’s Quarterly magazine how Voltaire outsmarted the lottery and earned himself a fortune that would allow him to pursue his life as a writer later and become one of the heroes of the Enlightenment.

Voltaire's luck

Spiting Orwell, inspiring Graham Greene and being awarded an OBE — who really was Hans-Peter Smolka?

"It took a decade — and the mining of the KGB files after the Soviet collapse in the early 1990s — for the lurid story of his treachery to emerge..." His godson, Peter Foges, tells in Lapham's Quarterly the fascinating tale of war-time publishing, radicalism and espionage.

My spy: the story of H.P. Smolka, Soviet spy and inspiration for 'The Third Man'

It was 1816 and Lord Byron and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley were writing in the dark about the dark. Byron wrote jealously of those who lived in the light of volcanoes, unaware of the disaster that had triggered the unusual climate. Writing in Lapham’s Quarterly, Nina Martyris, tells of the Year Without a Summer.  ​

Lord Byron’s Darkest Summer

Do you need to have an intermediary between the heavens and earth? Does God need a representative amongst men? Could that one person ever unite a religion with hundreds of millions of very different followers? Hugh Kennedy, writing in Lapham’s Quarterly brings us the frought history of caliphs throughout the history of Islam.

Why Have a Caliph?

Despite detailing infanticide, abuse and sexual depravity, 1836’s The Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk became the most-read book in the country.

Molly Ward

The Nun’s Story

Scientists from Newton to Einstein and Stephen Hawking have tried hard to understand time. In his meditation on time in Lapham’s Quarterly, Jim Holt explores the evolution of our understanding of time and wonders whether time has a future. Yes, he says, but how much of a future depends on what the ultimate fate of the cosmos turns out to be.

The Grand Illusion: Does time have a future?

In 1666, Margaret Cavendish gave the world a science-fiction fantasy novel the likes of which they'd never seen before. Here is an extract.

Seeing is believing: 17th century sci-fi

Eating other people is not the first thing that comes to mind when you fall ill. 

Though cannibalism is a shocking and taboo concept to most people, it has a rich and curious medical history, especially in Europe. Bess Lovejoy, writing in Lapham’s Quarterly, traces some of the more surprising ways that people have tried to treat their ailments. ​

A brief history of medical cannibalism

Do all words have clear origins? Frank Bures writing in Lapham’s Quaterly speaks to one man who has made it his life’s work to investigate the histories of words whose origins are said to be unknown.

Origin Unknown: quest for the history of lost words

In the year 1770, the last of the Habsburgs and one time Holy Roman Empress, Maria Theresa, wrote to her daughter Marie Antoinette about her new status as a married woman.

Advice to the Once and Future Queen

Professor of Philosophy at the University of Missouri in Kansas City, Clancy Martin writes in Lapham’s Quarterly to provide us with a fascinating insight into the con-filled world of jewellery exchange. As he tells us of his own experience on the shop floor of a jewellery exchange shop, he asks the question why a wealthy diamond merchant in a three-thousand-dollar suit would want to cheat someone out of a hundred bucks’ worth of gold?

We buy broken gold: If you steal, do not steal too much at a time.

Princess Der Ling was the daughter of a mixed-heritage Chinese nobleman who was the lady-in-waiting to the Manchu Empress Dowager Cixi. She was not a true princess—the title was conferred by Cixi, who had been effectively deposed in 1898—and was valid only at the palace, which Der Ling left in 1905. We listen to her account of how the Empress prepared for an American visitor.

Extreme Makeover: Empress Dowager Cixi prepares for an American visitor

Nikita Khruschev had written his memoirs, and especially after losing power, they were considered by the Russians to be too sensitive to ever be published. Ross Ufberg writes in Lapham’s Quarterly about how how those memoirs were smuggled out of the USSR.

The Jones Project: Smuggling Nikita Khrushchev’s memoirs out of the USSR

At the same time as the first humans were orbiting the moon, an amazing race was under way on Earth – the world’s first solo, non-stop, round-the-world yacht race. Maggie Shipstead writing in Lapham’s Quarterly offers us an account of that fascinating race and the four sailors who set out to win it. 

Around alone: The challenge of the world’s first solo, non-stop, round-the-world yacht race

 James Joyce catalogues the many voices in the playground, big and small.  ​

James Joyce's report card

Maxim Gorky and Leo Tolstoy shared a troubled, but deep friendship. Aaron Lake Smith writing in Lapham’s Quarterly offers us a glimpse into their relationship, while also making us wonder why Gorky’s life is now forgotten and his works seem to be only infrequently available in the English language.

The Genius and the labourer: the troubled friendship of Leo Tolstoy and Maxim Gorky

Sylvester Stein, a white South African, spent time at the helm of a magazine which existed at the forefront of the cultural battle against apartheid. 

“A Good Story, if I Can Remember It” Memories of anti-apartheid journalism

Brent Cunningham writing in Lapham’s Quarterly provides us a fascinating insight into the tradition of the last meal that is offered to a condemned prisoner before his execution. And while doing so, he provides us with a little nugget of information about the Japanese system of execution.

Last Meals: why mark the end of a life with the stuff that fuels it?

A sensuous reading of a romantic encounter from Edith Wharton's 'Beatrice Palmato' (1919).

Penny Andrews

The bread of Angels

Andrea Pitzer writes in Lapham’s Quarterly about the life of Austrian painter Paul Cohen-Portheim, the author of the seminal book “Time Stood Still”, and provides us a glimpse into the now forgotten World War I internment camps.

Enemy Aliens: The forgotten history of World War I internment camps

“What a heavy burden is a name that has become too famous”, wrote Voltaire in 1723. And what happens when someone becomes famous at a very young age? Paul Collins writing in Lapham’s Quarterly, takes us through the (known) life of Barbara Newell Follett, the child prodigy who transfixed the literary world – and then vanished.

Vanishing Act: a prodigy who transfixed the literary world—and then vanished

What is spontaneous human combustion? Does the consumption alcohol cause human bodies to burst into flames? Colin Dickey writing in Lapham’s Quarterly throws light on the debate that raged a couple of centuries ago.

A fire in the belly: Can people spontaneously combust?

Frederick Douglass escaped from slavery to become one of his eras leading authors and orators. In 1846, he spoke in London at a public meeting hosted by the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. This is Frederick Douglass’ ‘Answering to the Charge of Infidelity’ republished in Lapham’s Quarterly. ​

Frederick Douglass: Answering to the Charge of Infidelity

Hear what H G Wells had to say about the sensation of time travel. 

Time travel, a peculiar sensation

In an excerpt from his 16th Century work of political philosophy, Utopia, Thomas More bemoans the unfair spread of wealth in so-called republics.

Utopia: A Galaxy Far, Far Away

The unknown story of "Poison Squads", people who agreed to dine dangerously, for science.

Deborah Blum writing in Lapham’s Quarterly offers us an insight into the dangers of food before the regulation of the food industry and how there was very little preventing us from eating poison.

Death in the pot: Before regulation of the food industry, we may well have been eating poison

There really is no place like home. So wrote G.K. Chesterton in celebration of man’s true kingdom.

No place like home: G.K. Chesterton on man’s true kingdom

In 1879, Mark Twain announced his candidacy for the US presidency, and published his satirical sketch “Campaign Promises”. As extracted in and noted by Lapham’s Quarterly, this sketch was published a year before the election of 1880, in which Republican James A. Garfield beat Democrat Winfield Scott Hancock with 214 of the 369 electoral college votes but only by a 0.9% margin of the popular vote—the smallest in American history till then. In 1906 he observed in “What Is Man?” that “fleas can be taught nearly anything that a Congressman can.”