Should we be taking the advice given to tired nineteenth-century workers?  

Lily Houston Smith explores the fascinating work of Annie Payson Call, a nerve training specialist who helped overtaxed individuals at the start of the 20th century. She was a celebrity in her time, and her work would go on to influence therapies and practitioners for decades, but in an era where burnout is one of our most used buzzwords, her name has vanished from history books.

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

Work the lazy way

Colour photography enabled us to share vivid experiences in an incomprehensible way.

Colour "is among the most challenging aspects of our experience to describe," and because of that, it has naturally always fascinated us throughout history. Author and Stanford University art history professor, Kim Beil, examines the history of humans as being confounded by the invention.

New look, same great look

Thomas Jefferson was a proponent of open migration. But who qualified as a refugee?

In 1816, Thomas Jefferson wrote that every person has just as much "right to live on the outside of an artificial geographical line as he has to live within it." When looking back at the past, it's common to denounce the actions or statements of historical figures as outdated. However, in Jefferson's case, the effect is the opposite. After all, with many today opposing migration, it's almost shocking that an American founding father would assert the arbitrariness of national borders. 

American immigration has been chiefly a story of restriction and subsequent hostility, as demonstrated by the reception of Chinese migrants in the 19th century. So Jefferson's views were radical in many ways. However, upon examining his thoughts on people with foreign traditions and his very circumscribed ideas of who could qualify as an immigrant to America, Stephanie DeGooyer argues that the context which formed his views was incomparable to today.

The right to leave

What Edith Wharton’s library tells us about her reading habits.

Why did the first female novelist to win the Pulitzer Prize end up mocking the award years later? In this intriguing profile of Edith Wharton, Sheila Liming reflects on why the author was distrusting and disdainful of the accolades afforded to writers and why she didn’t read the bestsellers of her day.

The best seller who hated best sellers

On unsatisfied hunger and M.F.K. Fisher's The Gastronomical Me.

Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher was an American food writer who believed that eating well was just one of the "arts of life" and explored this in her writing. She was known for being 'the poet of the appetites', but her surreptitious writing style has also revealed many intriguing details about her life for the modern reader. Daniel M. Lavery reflects on her secrets of sex, gender, and transgender issues in her work.



Feminine ending/masculine ending

Experiencing history in Assassin's Creed.

The video game franchise has helped shape how we understand what came before the present for generations. But just how historically correct can a twelve-game series that spans thousands of years?

Historian Caroline Wazer explores the difficulties and limits of historical representation in games. In this insight into the mechanics of academic historical research, she explains the political and cultural contexts that make historical fiction so compelling.

"Like Martin's and Alma-Tadema's history paintings, the Assassin's Creed games aren't really about the past. Instead, they're about how the people of the present engage with history, which we should remember is a human field of study that even at its most rigorous has yet to give any individual unfettered access to the reality of the past. They remind us that history — necessarily imperfect and messy, always in the process of being corrected — can be something more sublime than Barthes' "fake discourse" that does nothing but repeat 'this happened' if we only let it."

It's time for some game theory

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.