Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

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This week on nybooks.com: What explains the incredible staying power of Dante’s Divine Comedy? Are acts of terror aimed at the US motivated more by tribal values or extremist ideologies? Can we reduce the epidemic levels of rape in prison? How should we understand the lives of European Jews in the 1930s and 1940s? Will the Roberts Court overrule precedents on campaign finance, religion, equal protection, abortion, and the treaty power? How can film depict the unseen horrors of the Khmer Rouge? Can we dream in poetry? Plus new movies, dance, lectures, and more in our events calendar.
Terror: The Hidden Source Malise Ruthven A new book argues that rather than exploiting the denizens of remote tribal regions, al-Qaeda and its affiliates are actively engaging the responses of tribal peoples whose cultures are facing destruction from the forces of modern society--including national governments--currently led by the United States.
The Shame of Our Prisons: New Evidence David Kaiser and Lovisa Stannow Juvenile detention facilities are supposed to offer opportunities for education, therapy, and rehabilitation that adult prisons and jails typically lack. In reality, though, many juvenile facilities have been more likely to traumatize the youth they confine than to help them; more likely to convert them into hardened career criminals than to steer them away from crime.
Dante: The Most Vivid Version Robert Pogue Harrison In its architectural weight and grandeur The Divine Comedy appears to modern readers as a great Gothic cathedral made of solid verse. Yet strange as it may seem, this monumental poem has one overriding, all-consuming vocation, namely to probe, understand, and represent the nature of motion in its spiritual and cosmic manifestations.
‘In the Cage, Trying to Get Out’ Timothy Snyder Herschel Grynszpan shot the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath in Paris on November 7, 1938. The Nazis claimed that the young man was an agent of the international Jewish conspiracy. In fact, he was a confused and angry teenager who, like thousands of European Jews, was unwanted both in Poland, where he was a citizen, and in Germany, which he knew as home.
					ALSO IN THE OCTOBER 24 ISSUE John Banville on Kafka Michael Gorra on Jhumpa Lahiri Susan Dunn on Ben Franklin’s sister Samuel Freeman on Simpler Michael Greenberg on mayors Jennifer Homans on young Balanchine Joshua Hammer in Timbuktu Perry Link on Liao Yiwu and Han Han Tasmin Shaw on Nietzsche Peter Galassi on Garry Winogrand Michael Hofmann on Karl Kraus --and more.
Planning for next year? Our 2014 pocket planner and David Levine calendar are now available.
Cambodia’s Unseen Horrors Richard Bernstein Like other secretive and totalitarian regimes of the 20th century, Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge left behind hardly any visual record of its murderous rule. The images that do not exist form the “missing picture” of Rithy Panh’s newest documentary, which won a top prize at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year and is being screened at the New York Film Festival.
The Roberts Court: What Kind of Conservatives? David Cole Eight years into Chief Justice John Roberts’s tenure, it still remains unclear just what kind of conservatives the Court’s majority justices are. The cases the Supreme Court will review in the new term are likely to go some way toward answering this question.
Nighthawks Christopher Benfey There are countless poems about dreams and even some, like Poe’s, about dreams within dreams. Rarer are those poems, or other literary inventions, in which the actual words arise in the dream, to be recorded by the writer upon waking.
Much Ado About Nothing In Joss Whedon's splendid new film, the house in which the events unfold is the central figure, writes Stephen Greenblatt.		Dead Birds J. Hobermancalls this portrait of tribal life in New Guinea “a landmark ethnographic film, as well as a startling allegory of human nature.”		The Robert B. Silvers Lecture In “Watching Television,” Lorrie Moore will examine the connections and disconnections from stage to page to screen.		MORE EVENTS A tribute to Stig Dagerman, the deep classical roots of the Renaissance, Jamaica Kincaid reads fromSimone Schwarz-Bart’s The Bridge of Beyond, Fritz Stern andElisabeth Siftondiscuss No Ordinary Men: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Hans von Dohnanyi, Resisters Against Hitler, BAM celebrates the work of Karen Black,Christopher Wheeldon’s ballet of Cinderella, and muchmore.