Back by popular demand, it’s the Lapham’s Quarterly podcast! In the first episode, Lewis Lapham is in conversation with Nancy Isenberg, author of White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America.
The show is available from iTunes, Stitcher, SoundCloud, Google Play, and via RSS.
Discovery, the Spring 2017 issue of Lapham’s Quarterly, is online and on newsstands now!
The Fall 2016 issue of Lapham’s Quarterly, FLESH, is on sale now! Read Lewis Lapham’s introduction here.
Our Spring 2016 issue is Disaster, and you can read Lewis Lapham’s introduction to it here.
"I knew she was oversize, but she now appeared a fair match for Falstaff. I knew she was called an “old maid,” and I felt no doubt of the truth of at least half of the appellation, but now, when I beheld her, I could not for my life avoid thinking of my mother; and this, not from withered features—for her skin was too full of fat to permit of its contracting into wrinkles—but from her want of teeth, weather-beaten appearance in general, and from a kind of notion that ran in my head that nothing could have commenced at the size of infancy and reached her present bulk in less than thirty five or forty years."
Are you afraid of clowns? We are.
Split Personalities, an essay by Andrew McConnell Stott from the new issue of Lapham's Quarterly, might make you feel better about them (we're more sympathetic but still a little suspicious)!
Read it here.
"A stock operator has to fight a lot expensive enemies within himself."
Obit of the Day: Most Popular Posts of 2013
For the third consecutive year, I’m happy to present the most popular posts from Obit of the Day for 2013. As usual this endeavor was made easier with the help of Best of Tumblr, a nice little tool. So without further ado here the top ten posts of 2013, in no particular order:
Hans Massaquoi - Author of Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany
Nadhezda Popova - Member of the Soviet Union’s “Night Witch” air regiment
Barbara Park - Author of the Junie B. Jones children’s book series
"Pepper" Paire Davis - Catching great in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League
Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist - Last surviving member of the plot to assassinate Hitler
Cal Whipple - Photographer who took the first picture of dead American soldiers to be published during WWII
Paul Adams - Member of the Tuskegee Airman and school principal in Nebraska
Sophie Kunys - The stolen base queen of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League
Parveen Rehman - Pakistani social activist who was assassinated
Senji Yamaguchi (bottom) - Survivor of the Nagasaki atomic bomb explosion and nuclear disarmament activist
For more awe-inspiring lives from this and previous years, checkout my topic pages (www.obitoftheday.com) or the Obit of the Day Archive.
You can also catch the highlights:
Thanks to all my followers and readers for helping to make Obit of the Day the most popular* obituary site on tumblr.
* Could probably use “only” but I’m sticking with it.
Dear Sir,
My husband is in the habit of buying a quart of whiskey every other day from a Chinese bootlegger named Chin Waugh living at 317 Sixteenth near Alder Street.
We need this money for household expenses. Will you please have his place raided? He keeps a supply planted in the garden and a smaller quantity under the back steps for quick delivery. If you make the raid at nine thirty any morning you will be sure to get the goods, and Chin also, as he leaves the house at ten o’clock and may clean up before he goes.
Thanking you in advance.
I remain Yours truly,
Mrs. Hillyer
"In the editorial about President Abraham Lincoln’s speech delivered Nov. 19, 1863, in Gettysburg, the Patriot & Union failed to recognize its momentous importance, timeless eloquence, and lasting significance. The Patriot-News regrets the error."
The reviews for Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg address weren't so hot. 150 years later, the Harrisburg Patriot & Union wants to set the record straight.
(we approve)
2013: The contract prohibits making out, skimpy dresses, and simulated sex. Annapolis Principal Susan Chittim says the need to clean up the dance floor came before Cyrus’ romp. “This, unfortunately, has become the norm. Some of this crazy dancing that makes others feel uncomfortable,” Chittim said. “Some kids feel left out because of the dancing that occurs.”
1871: In the Parisian cancan the immediate act of procreation is symbolically consummated. After the most loathsome kicks and bounds with which the Parisian celebrates the symbolic sacrifice to Venus, he steps back from the dance, conducts his partner to her seat with wellnigh old-French gallantry, and refreshes her with barley-water, just as though it were the most respectable of balls.
This is a good one--John Hodgman, everyone's favorite deranged millionaire, graced our podcast with his presence!
He's reading spooky stories and haunting tales from the Death issue--we promise the one about premature burial will chill your bones (in the best possible way).
"As I looked around the room, it seemed obvious that death wasn’t about the dead. It was about the old man who by then had seen it all, and the parents whose lives would never be the same. It was about the little girl with the warm soda in her hand taking it all in, the scene and emotions already forming a memory that will be woven and unwoven for the rest of her life."
A medical student confronts death--and the left behind.
Quite frankly, these all sound pretty terrible to us.
A little Halloween morsel from next week’s deathly podcast with John Hodgman. The terrifying, tantalizing, mortifying account of being buried alive!
Just in time for Halloween, it’s William Burroughs hatchet pumpkin time.
William Burroughs really knew how to carve a pumpkin. We're afraid.
