Mr. and Mrs. Andrews, by Thomas Gainsborough, c. 1750. National Gallery, London.

Mr. and Mrs. Andrews, by Thomas Gainsborough, c. 1750. National Gallery, London.

About Money

Volume 1, Number 2 | spring 2008

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Our Robber Barons, by Bernhard Gillam, 1882.

Preamble

Holy Dread

By Lewis H. Lapham

The history of the United States is synonymous with the dream of riches, but the question as to whether money is mortal or immortal has never been resolved.

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A historical recreation of 1920s Berlin in the virtual online world Second Life by Jo Yardley.

Funny Money

By Edward Castronova

Is there really a difference between the “real” world currencies we use everyday and their funny-money alter egos used online in virtual worlds?

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Map

Perpetual Motion

Tracing the drug trade, the slave trade, and the Silk Road.

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1748 | Philadelphia

Benjamin Franklin’s Bottom Line

Money, more or less, is always welcome.More

1922 | Detroit

Henry Ford on the Road to Riches

The formation of the Ford Motor Company.More

1887 | Russia

Running the Numbers

Anton Chekhov’s lottery dreams.More

Charts & Graphs

Celebrity Appearance

How much it costs to have a brush with fame.

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German writer and statesman Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

Black and white photograph of French novelist, playwright, and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.

Portrait of Scottish biographer and diarist James Boswell.

Black and white image of Greek biographer and writer Plutarch.

Statue depicting Roman orator and historian Tacitus.

Black and white image of Roman philosopher and statesman Seneca the Younger.

Photograph of Andrew Carnegie

Whoever expects to walk peacefully in the world must be money’s guest.

—Norman O. Brown, 1959

Photo of stone Aristotle statue face

Painted portrait of English philosopher Jeremy Bentham.

Aristotle & Jeremy Bentham

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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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