Design for a House for a Cosmopolite, by Antoine-Laurent-Thomas Vaudoyer, 1783. Private Collection / Archives Charmet / Bridgeman Images.

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Volume X, Number 1 | winter 2017

Preamble

Castles in Air

By Lewis H. Lapham

The American democracy and dream are the building of castles in air. Whither goeth the one so goeth the other, these days up in smoke and the spout.

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Map

Home Loans

A history of seven homes—now for rent on Airbnb.

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Miscellany

Derived from the French bouder (to pout or sulk), the word boudoir once meant “a place to pout in.” “I have a boudoir, but it has one fault,” the Earl of Chesterfield wrote to a female companion in 1748. “It is so cheerful and so pleasant that there will be no such thing as pouting in it when I am alone.” Its “fault,” he added, could be remedied “by introducing those clumsy, tiresome, and disagreeable people whom I am obliged to admit now and then.” 

It’s your business when your neighbor’s wall is in flames.

—Horace, 19 BC