Lapham's Quarterly: Volume II Book

Limited-edition collection of Lapham's Quarterly, Volume II. This handsome boxed set includes four exquisitely illustrated 224-page issues-"Eros," "Crimes & Punishment," "Travel," and "Medicine"- with an autographed letter from Editor Lewis Lapham. They are enclosed in a burgundy slipcase featuring our signature Janus coin.
Four times a year, the editors of Lapham's Quarterly explore a topic currently in the headlines, carefully selecting hundreds of pieces of literature and art that span four millennia and that bring timeless perspective to each topic. In each issue, you will find both historical and contemporary writings on the topic, as well as a preamble written by Lewis Lapham. In "Eros," a chorus of voices, new and old, helps us to understand the ways of love. The issue includes the work of Vladimir Nabokov, Charles Mingus, Sappho, Philip Roth, Ovid, David Foster Wallace, and Emily Dickinson, as well as contemporary writers such as William H. Gass and Francine Prose. "Crimes & Punishments" offers perspective on crimes ranging from adultery to petty thievery to rape and political assassinations. Among the authors are Joan Didion, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Franz Kafka, Victor Hugo, Plato, Martin Luther King Jr., and Elizabeth Hardwick, as well as contemporary writers Michael Dirda and Christopher Hitchens. With the "Travel" issue, you explore the streets of Rome with Goethe, trek the United States with Tobias Wolff, and enter the heart of darkness with Joseph Conrad. With contemporary essays by Billy Collins and Pico Iyer, the Quarterly becomes an adventure across oceans and time. With "Medicine," the Quarterly focuses on people, not policy, and records mankind's never-endingstruggle to overcome everything from cancer to the common cold. Oliver Sacks, Louis Pasteur, Sigmund Freud, Susan Sontag, Molière, Barbara Ehrenreich, Hippocrates and Ken Kesey are among those providing the back story, while John Crowley and Noga Arikha offer perspectives on death and the evolution of medicine.

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If we sat around lamenting about all the book or magazine ideas we wished we'd thought of, this one would be tops. We should pick huge topics; topics that intimidate us with all their possibilities-we would've said had we thought of this-and then we'll compile all the best writing on these topics going back to ancient times. Then we'll add some amazing contemporary writers and make it all one huge narrative spanning the breadth of human existence. And we'll do this every three months.