Wednesday, June 02, 2021 Composition (No. 1) Gray-Red, by Piet Mondrian, 1935. Art Institute of Chicago, gift of Mrs. Gilbert W. Chapman. Lapham’s Quarterly is running a series on the history of best sellers, exploring the circumstances that might inspire thousands to gravitate toward the same book and revisiting well-loved works from the past that, due to a variety of circumstances, vanished from the conversation after they peaked on the charts. To read more about the project and explore the other entries in the series, click here. At the beginning of the twentieth century the Viennese enjoyed reading about brothels almost as much as they enjoyed visiting them. The German novelist Margarete Böhme’s 1905 best seller