Anahid Nersessian
The Republic of Translation

Two new translations of poetry travel from ancient Sardinia to modern Paris.

Jeffrey Toobin
Keeping Speech Robust and Free

The case of New York Times v. Sullivan set a vital standard in libel law. Could the clash between Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems dismantle it—and at what cost?

Kerri Arsenault
Vacationland

Morgan Talty’s stories about a Penobscot family are set where Maine’s millions of tourists don’t tend to go: in places damaged by toxic pollutants or opioids, bankrupted by government inaction, devoured by poverty, haunted by our country’s colonial past.

More to read at nybooks.com

David Cole
The Supreme Court Picks Its Battles

June ended with far-reaching upsets for civil rights, but a closer look at the Supreme Court’s decisions across the 2022–2023 term suggests the justices are not immune to public scrutiny.

Molly Crabapple
The Land Remains

Palestinians in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem live under an ever-worsening regime of state repression and settler violence.

Free from the Archives

“I have spent large chunks of my life in repertory movie theaters,” wrote Phillip Lopate on November 6, 2017, in an appreciation of the “wildly idealistic missionaries” who bring “the gospel of cinema” to filmgoers in New York City and beyond. Taking as his guide Ben Davis’s study and photographic guide Repertory Movie Theaters of New York City, Lopate looks at the repertory movement through the lens of economics and film culture. Davis, Lopate wrote, performs “an extremely useful service in recapturing this piece of the endangered past and arguing for its importance as a living archive that preserved the history of movies as an art form.”

Phillip Lopate
The Heroic Age of New York Movie Theaters

“Overall, these pioneers come across as a bunch of wildly idealistic missionaries, lovers of film much more interested in spreading the gospel of cinema than in making money. They took chances, they played hunches, they went against the grain of commercial conformity, they artfully constructed balanced double bills, they connived to get their hands on the best possible prints. And eventually, most of them went under.”