Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

This week on nybooks.com: How to fix the budget, two views of Emily Dickinson, a writer’s ability to change, Janet Malcolm’s collages, Turkey’s political crisis, and the opening for an agreement over Iran’s nuclear program. THIS ISSUE SPONSORED BY UNIVERSITY OF CONNECTICUT

Our Dangerous Budget and What to Do About It Jeffrey D. Sachs Despite all of Obama’s heartening speeches about investing for the future, America is on a path of gutting critical public investments in education, job training, science, technology, and infrastructure.   ADVERTISEMENT   Dickinson: Raw or Cooked? Christopher Benfey Was Emily Dickinson a radical poet of the avant-garde? Or was she a poet of restraint? It is a conflict reaching back to what has come to be called “The War Between the Houses,” when Dickinson’s manuscripts were divided into two main collections.   Janet Malcolm’s Cut-Up Books Gideon Lewis-Kraus Both Malcolm’s writing and her collages are preoccupied with what happens on the margins of knowing, or in its wake. She has great confidence in what she’s come to know, yet she is well aware of the limits of what we might feel assured in saying.   ADVERTISEMENT   Changing Our Stories Tim Parks Can people change their lives? Can novelists change the kind of stories they write? The two questions are not unrelated.   Iran: A Good Deal Now in Danger Jessica T. Mathews For the first time, Iran and the United States have broken through more than a decade of impasse over Iran’s nuclear program. Yet the US Congress, acting reflexively against Iran, and under intense pressure from Israel, seems ready to shatter the agreement.   Turkey: The Fakir vs. the Pharaoh Christopher de Bellaigue The political crisis now gripping Turkey pits two groups against each other that are entrenched in administrative and commercial areas of Turkish life: Erdoğan and his government on the one hand, and exiled leader Fethullah Gulen and his movement on the other.