Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

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This week on nybooks.com: Zadie Smith’s new novel, Naomi Wolf’s mystic feminism, two Nobel laureate economists on our broken politics, a choice for Germany on the euro, white hat and black hat hackers, and the US love affair with guns. Plus crying at the conventions, Christianity in China, the emotive force of art, and Kabul’s haunted palace.
The Euro The Tragedy of the European Union and How to Resolve It George Soros If and when the euro eventually breaks up it will destroy the common market and the EU. Europe will be worse off than it was when the effort to unite it began, because the breakup will leave a legacy of mutual mistrust and hostility. That is such a dismal prospect that it is time to consider alternatives that would have been inconceivable until recently.
Women's studies Pride and Prejudice Zoë Heller The female reader who has never felt herself to be “a radiant part of the universal feminine,” in bed or elsewhere, may feel that Naomi Wolf has mistaken her own highly personal, religiose experience of sexual bliss for a common definition. But it is also possible, of course, that the reader in question has been having inferior orgasms all these years and did not know it.
Economic Policy What Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz Can Tell Us Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson Five years after the onset of the financial crisis that badly damaged the US economy, the nation remains mired in chronic joblessness. Long-term unemployment remains at levels unseen since the Great Depression. We have all lost, and continue to lose, from the prolonged mass idleness of potentially productive workers.
Law and Society Our Romance with Guns David Cole Is there anything to be done about gun violence in America?
					Religion Jesus vs. Mao? Ian Johnson: How did you go from making River Elegy, a critical documentary about Chinese society and politics, to Christianity? Yuan Zhiming: River Elegy’s conclusion was that the solution for China was democracy and human rights. But it was only when I got to the West that I realized that the root of this was Christianity. It was the Bible. It creates something more important than rights given by a constitution or a government.
Fiction Cards of Identity Joyce Carol Oates Zadie Smith’s NW is an unexpectedly ironic companion novel to White Teeth, a darker and more nuanced portrait of a multiracial culture in the throes of a collective nervous breakdown.
Cybercrime Are Hackers Heroes? Sue Halpern Hacking exposes vulnerabilities, supplies innovations, and demonstrates what is possible. Yet it is also used for extortion, public humiliation, business disruption, espionage, and, possibly, war.				2012 Campaign The Crying Game Charles Simic “What are all these people crying about?” I imagine someone unfamiliar with our extraordinary national talent for hypocrisy asking while watching the conventions. It might even cross the mind of such a person that nowhere on this poor old earth of ours have there ever been people so caring of each other’s feelings as today’s Americans.
Film Obama’s Evil Twin J. Hoberman Dinesh D’Souza's documentary 2016 shows what will happen should Occupy Wall Street manage to reelect Obama, freeing him to pursue his true agenda—or rather that of his once-met, long-dead Kenyan father.					Afghanistan Palace of Abandoned Dreams Mariam & Ashraf Ghani For Afghans, the Dar ul-Aman Palace has always symbolized the unfinished project of which it was both the most visible and smallest part.
Art When Art Makes Us Cry Francine Prose Art can touch us in ways that transcend the limitations of language.			Event Brooklyn Book Festival On Sunday, September 23, visit the Review’s booth at the Brooklyn Book Festival			Event Andrew Sarris Memorial Screening On September 19 MoMA plays tribute to the highly influential film critic.