The Birth of Venus, by Sandro Botticelli, c. 1485. Uffizi Gallery, Florence.

Celebrity

Volume IV, Number 1 | winter 2011

Purchase

Preamble

Dancing with the Stars

By Lewis H. Lapham

The vanity of princes is an old story; so is the wish for kings and the gazing into the pool of Narcissus.

More

Photograph of P.T. Barnum., 1855-1865.

Hatching Monsters

By Charles Baxter

Lessons in fame from P.T. Barnum’s autobiography.

More

Famous adventurers, entertainers, geniuses, and outlaws.

Map

Hall of Famers

Famous adventurers, entertainers, geniuses, and outlaws.

View

c. 1450 | France

The Old A-List

François Villon’s ballad of dead ladies.More

1790 | London

Dead Moon

Edmund Burke laments the end of chivalry.More

c. 109 | Rome

Intimations of Immortality

How to live forever. More

Charts & Graphs

Decline and Fall

David Hasselhoff works hard for the money.

View

French writer, critic, and book publisher Edmond de Goncourt.

Portrait of English Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Portrait of Francis Bacon in sixteenth-century armor.

American author of fiction, nonfiction and poetry Charles Baxter.

Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes.

Depiction of Greek philosopher Plato.

Painted portrait of second President of the United States John Adams.

I’m afraid of losing my obscurity. Genuineness only thrives in the dark. Like celery.

—Aldous Huxley, 1925

Missing contributor image silhouette

American actor, screenwriter, and producer Matt Damon.

Arrian & Matt Damon

Purchase

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.

More

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

play
pause

00:00

00:00