Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

This month on nybooks.com: Tim Flannery on the Great Barrier Reef, Alberto Manguel on A History of Reading, Dominique Nabokov on Garry Winogrand’s photographs, Annie Sparrowon polio’s return in Syria and Iraq, Tim Parks on reading “upward,” Edward Mendelson on young Hemingway’s letters, Ian Johnson on ethnic unrest in China, Gabriel Winslow-Yost on Jacques Tardi’s bleak war comics, Charles Simic’s news hell, Robert Chandler on early and late Malevich, David Shulman on hatred and hope for Palestine, and David Cole on NSA surveillance. The Review is currently on its summer schedule. If you have received the August 14, 2014 issue, your subscription is up to date. The next issue will be dated September 25, 2014.

A Natural Wonder in Peril Tim Flannery One of the most magnificent ecosystems of our planet, the Great Barrier Reef, is in danger.   ADVERTISEMENT   Who Was Ernest Hemingway? Edward Mendelson His deepest wish was to become one with someone or something else, to live without the burden of a self.   Kazimir Malevich: Beyond the Black Square Robert Chandler There has never been a better year to look at the work of this pioneer of abstract art.   ADVERTISEMENT   Can Congress Rein In the Spies? David Cole Two recent reports show the damaging effects of out-of-control surveillance, even to those with “nothing to hide.”   Grim Fragments of the Great War Gabriel Winslow-Yost Jacques Tardi’s It Was the War of the Trenches is one of the most passionately bleak works in the history of comics.   Portable Hell Charles Simic The world is going to hell in a hurry. At my age, I ought to be used to it, but I’m not.   Syria: The Other Threat Annie Sparrow The threat of epidemics spreading from Syria to surrounding countries has grown with frightening speed. And now polio has spilled across the border to Iraq.   Conversations with the Dead Alberto Manguel Reading is, or can be, the open-ended means by which we come to know a little more about the world and about ourselves.   Reading Upward Tim Parks Do people really pass from Fifty Shades of Grey to Alice Munro? Do they discover Stieg Larsson and move on to Orhan Pamuk?   Garry Winogrand’s America An interview with Dominique Nabokov “His style is, in a way, the most difficult style, because the world he depicts is often so quotidian that you yourself wouldn’t stop to look at it.”   Beyond the Dalai Lama An interview with Wang Lixiong and Woeser Ian Johnson talks with the two writers about China’s policy toward ethnic minorities, and the continuing violence in Tibet and Xinjiang.   Palestine: The Hatred and the Hope David Shulman In the midst of the Gaza war, two striking, perhaps surprising developments—one ominous, the other somewhat hopeful—are taking place far from the battlefield.