From the Cradle of Liberty to the Engraving

Keith Preston

1 year ago

Sponsored by the University of California Press

Andrew Raftery
Rescuing the People’s Parchment

Fifty years after its signing, the Declaration of Independence had deteriorated distressingly. A new book traces its subsequent graphic elaborations and the commissioning of the iconic facsimile we know today.

Andrew Arsan
‘The Slow Bleeding Out of a Country’

Israel’s assault on Lebanon threatens to render the very conditions of life impossible and hasten the country’s disintegration.

Michelle Nijhuis
Life in the Ruins

Two new books consider the delusion of the human quest to be free from the constraints of nature

Anna Shectman and
D. A. Miller
Anora’s Honor

The title character in Sean Baker’s new film is sharp-tongued and invulnerable—until a marriage plot catches up with her.

Olivia Paschal
Who Owns the Mountains?

Hurricane Helene has revived urgent questions about the politics of land in Appalachia. In western North Carolina, those questions have everything to do with the booming tourist economy.

Gabriel Winslow-Yost
I, Coppola

Megalopolis, the director’s first film in thirteen years, is a useful reminder of how inimical extreme wealth is to democratic thinking—and to clear thinking in general.

Langdon Hammer
‘The Kingdom of Ends’

Though he began writing near the end of the twentieth century, the poet Reginald Shepherd remained an unapologetic modernist who believed firmly in the autonomy of art.