Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

New on nybooks.com: Will we lose the climate change endgame? What made the Romans laugh? Why hasn’t the economy recovered from the financial crisis? Plus the myth of “Beltway” opinion, the Obama administration’s secret memo authorizing drone killing, and a soccer fan’s nightmare.

The Climate Endgame Bill McKibben The natural world is making it clear that the clock ticks down faster than we feared.   ADVERTISEMENT   Roman Jokers Gregory Hays Mary Beard’s Laughter in Ancient Rome: On Joking, Tickling, and Cracking Up   Timothy Geithner’s ‘Stress Test’ Paul Krugman Something went very wrong with the United States economy in 2008. But what?   ADVERTISEMENT   The Beltway Myth Elizabeth Drew As a concept of how information moves between Washington and the rest of the country, “the Beltway” is epistemological nonsense.   Drones: Now They Tell Us David Cole Now that we can see the memo, the question is why the administration fought to keep it secret.    The 90-Minute Anxiety Dream Simon Critchley In soccer, it’s not the disappointment that kills you; it is the ever-renewed sense of hope.   Summer Events Procrastination in Oxford, Alain Resnais films at Harvard, the “indifferent sublime” of John Tottenham in Los Angeles, Derek Jarman’s queer pagan punk in Toronto, Pontormo and Rosso in Florence, and more.