Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

This week on nybooks.com: The problem with Teach for America, Frederick Wiseman at the Crazy Horse Saloon, corruption in Washington, Samuel Beckett’s letters, and Tony Judt’s last work. Plus Rick Santorum and home schooling, the politics behind the contraception battle, and an interview with one of China’s most outspoken public intellectuals.
Remembrance Tony Judt: A Final Victory Jennifer Homans I was married to Tony Judt. I lived with him and our two children as he faced the terror of ALS. It was a two-year ordeal, from his diagnosis in 2008 to his death in 2010, and during it Tony managed against all human odds to write three books.
Washington Our Corrupt Politics: It’s Not All Money Ezra Klein The key mistake most people make when they look at Washington is seeing it as a cash economy. It’s a gift economy.
Letters Beckett: Storming for Beauty John Banville Samuel Beckett was one of the greatest letter-writers, and could not be dull even when he tried.
Education How, and How Not, to Improve the Schools Diane Ravitch Teach for America is a worthy idea. It is wonderful to encourage young people to commit themselves to public service for two years. The program would be far more admirable if the organization showed some modesty, humility, and realism in its claims for its inexperienced teachers.
					Film In the Temple of Desire Geoffrey O’Brien In Frederick Wiseman’s Crazy Horse, the object of contemplation is the most upscale of Parisian cabarets, the quintessence of nu chic. Since Wiseman’s films are all about looking at the world, it’s appropriate that he should film a world that is all about the business of getting people to look.
Also in our March 22 issue William D. Nordhaus refutes the global warming skeptics, Joyce Carol Oates on Margaret Atwood, Nicholas Lemann on Howard Cosell, Mischa Berlinski’s farewell to Haiti, Charles Rosen on Ernani at the Met, J.H. Elliott on Catherine of Aragon and Mary I, Willibald Sauerländer on Reims Cathedral, Rachel Polonsky on Vladimir Sorokin, and more.
			Schooling Rick Santorum’s Arrested Development Garry Wills Minds grow by questioning things, and adolescence is a great period of questions. An unquestioned faith is not faith but rote recitation. The opposite of such questioning is not deep belief but arrested development. So Santorum has mistaken his enemy. It is not colleges that steal his kids from him, but growth.
			China Learning How to Argue: An Interview with Ran Yunfei Ian Johnson IJ: What did you do in jail? RY: Mostly I read. Books like the Bible are banned because they think it’s against the government. But they allowed me to read all the classical Chinese literature I wanted. What they didn’t realize is that classical Chinese also has some subversive ideas.
			Contraception Coverage The Politics of Safe Sex Elizabeth Drew Some years ago, while I was watching the House Ways and Means Committee decide which industries would benefit from a new energy bill, James Burke, a prototypical red-faced Massachusetts pol with a decided Boston accent, strode past the press table and said, “The trouble with you people is that you think this is on the level.”