Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

This week on nybooks.com: In Review's April 24 issue, Jeff Madrick debunks the myth that only the private sector can innovate, Robert Winter reviews Alan Rusbridger’s memoir of learning to play a Chopin ballade, and Oliver Sacks considers the mental life of plants and worms. Plus blog posts by David Bromwich on Lincoln’s ambition, Daniel Wilkinson on the crackdown in Venezuela, and Seth Colter Walls on composer Anthony Braxton. And in a preview from the May 8 issue of the Review, Paul Krugman praises a book that will change the way we talk about wealth and inequality.

Innovation and the Government Jeff Madrick A new book makes a forceful case for the value and competence of government itself, and for its ability to do what the private sector simply cannot.   ADVERTISEMENT   He Dove In and Did It Robert Winter Musical amateurs offer a litany of reasons for their engagement: learning to problem-solve, to collaborate, to listen, to weave together disparate ideas. No one has delved into the process so enticingly as Alan Rusbridger.   What Plants Can Feel Oliver Sacks Plants know what to do, and they “remember.” But without neurons, plants do not learn in the same way that animals do; instead they rely on a vast arsenal of different chemicals and what Darwin termed “devices.”   Subscribe now and save 50% off the cover price   ADVERTISEMENT   Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Ambition David Bromwich “I think nothing equals Macbeth,” wrote Lincoln. He was deeply touched by the portrait of a politician who had committed great wrongs. He was not equally moved by Hamlet, a hero who reproached himself for doing too little.   Censorship in Caracas Daniel Wilkinson Jailing political opponents, controlling the high court, intimidating judges, beating protesters, abusing detainees, tolerating violent pro-government gangs, shutting down TV channels, censoring journalists: the damage the Venezuelan government is doing to the country’s democracy.   Blasting Opera Forward Seth Colter Walls The MacArthur Award-winning saxophonist and composer Anthony Braxton has for years been a leading proponent of merging avant-garde jazz with contemporary art music. The latest work in what he calls his “opera complex” will have its premiere this month in Brooklyn.   Why We’re in a New Gilded Age Paul Krugman Thomas Piketty’s magnificent, sweeping meditation on inequality, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, is a book that will change both the way we think about society and the way we do economics.