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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Painting of a sunlit plaza with people and a bell tower.

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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Painting of people and carriages in the road next to a park.

Urban Scrawl

By Jamie James

The city novel begins with a young person arriving from the provinces—and the world rising up to greet them.

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Map

City Narratives

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

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1889 | Chicago

Job Search

A small-town girl meets big-city life.More

1905 | New York City

Honest Graft

How politicians make money.More

1849 | San Francisco

Mud and Mules

William Tecumseh Sherman’s adventures in California.More

Charts & Graphs

Workforce

From a 1292 inventory of craftsmen in Paris.

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Sculpture bust of Greek historian Herodotus.

Black and white photograph of Mencken looking over his shoulder at the camera

Photograph of Italian writer Italo Calvino.

English diarist and naval administrator Samuel Pepys.

Image of French writer Honoré de Balzac with hand on chest.

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

—Thucydides, 410 BC

Engraving of Roman author and administrator Pliny the Younger.

German sociologist and philosopher Georg Simmel.

Pliny the Younger & Georg Simmel

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Lapham’sDaily

Roundtable

Lapham’s Quarterly Is on Hiatus

By Lapham’s Quarterly

But the American Agora Foundation is already planning for the future. More

The Colosseum, attributed to Robert Eaton, c. 1855.

DÉjÀ Vu

Monumental Mistakes

2023:

Fitness instructor carves his girlfriend’s name into the Colosseum.

c. 1850:

Thompson of Sunderland makes his mark on Pompey’s pillar.

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Terracotta funerary plaque, Greek, Attic, c. 520 BC.

The World in Time

Robert D. Kaplan

Lewis H. Lapham speaks with the author of The Tragic Mind: Fear, Fate, and the Burden of Power. More

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