Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

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This week on nybooks.com: From our new issue, art and death, the coming budget battles, the road to genocide in Syria, our fascination with balloons, and inside Guatemala’s chilling police archive. On the blogs, a look at JFK’s last night, the NSA’s threat to free speech, the art of the scam, Streamline Moderne, and Bulgakov on screen. If you need gifts for readers, don’t miss the NYRB Holiday Sale.
Man vs. Corpse Zadie Smith Walking corpses—zombies—follow us everywhere, through novels, television, cinema. Back in the real world, ordinary citizens turn survivalist, ready to scale a mountain of corpses if it means enduring. Either way, death is what happens to everyone else. By contrast, the future in which I am dead is not a future at all. It has no reality. If it did—if I truly believed that being a corpse was not only a possible future but my only guaranteed future—I’d do all kinds of things differently. I’d get rid of my iPhone, for starters. Lead a different sort of life.
Can Obama Reverse the Republican Surge? Michael Tomasky The Republicans are unlikely to hand the Democrats the Christmas gift of embarking on so quixotic and divisive a project as again trying to defund Obamacare. The next fight will be about money. And on this issue, Republicans have been getting their way.
Syria: On the Way to Genocide? Charles Glass The war has reached the stage at which many on both sides no longer regard the others as human, let alone as citizens of a country in which all must coexist. The introduction of chemical weapons was only the most dramatic escalation by combatants who seek nothing short of the annihilation of the other side.
Adventures in a Silver Cloud Graham Robb Far from being a straightforward history of the balloon, Richard Holmes’s Falling Upwards is an uplifting celebration of its aesthetic appeal and its “social and imaginative impact.”				Glimmers of Hope in Guatemala Stephen Kinzer New social forces are emerging. The middle class is growing. Movements advocating for the rights of indigenous peoples are active and growing. New forms of communication and social media have made it impossible for the repressive apparatus to function with the impunity it has enjoyed for generations.
					IN THE NEW ISSUE Articles and reviews by Mary Beard, Cass R. Sunstein, Lincoln Caplan, Rachel Polonsky, Jim Holt, Jonathan Mirsky, Pooja Bhatia, Richard J. Evans, Alexander Stille, Mark Lilla, Christopher Ricks, and more. IN THE CALENDAR Agnès Varda, Stefan Zweig, William Kentridge, The Berlin School, and more.
The Last Night in Camelot Martin Filler Among the more poignant observances surrounding the fiftieth anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s assassination is a small show that reassembles the art in the rooms the first couple occupied on the last night of the president’s life.
The NSA’s Global Threat to Free Speech Kenneth Roth After the revelations about NSA surveillance, many countries have said they may require Internet companies to keep data about their citizens on servers within their own borders. If that becomes standard practice, it will be easier for repressive governments to monitor Internet communications.
Art Thieves and Gurus Charles Simic My father’s friend Maurice swore me to secrecy and told me that he met a Vanderbilt, a black sheep of the illustrious family. This man was back in New York after forty years and broke. He wanted to sell a Van Dyck and a small Rembrandt. In just a matter of days Maurice was going to be a very rich man.
Streamline Dreamer Martin Filler Our retrospective image of 1930s America derives in large part from Norman Bel Geddes, the self-taught polymath who virtually invented the profession of industrial design. Thanks to Geddes and his pioneering New York firm, these were the years of Streamline Moderne, a particularly American variant of Modernism—smoother, softer, and more accessible than the stringent machine aesthetic of Le Corbusier or the late-phase Bauhaus.
Hamming Up Bulgakov Orlando Figes On stage and screen, the author of The Master and Margarita has enjoyed a renaissance in recent years. The latest adaptation of his work is A Young Doctor’s Notebook, starring Daniel Radcliffe and Jon Hamm.