Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Wednesday 29 October 2014


New on nybooks.com: How media panic is making Ebola harder to fight, the long and varied career of funk impresario George Clinton, our complicity in our own surveillance, marriage and manhood, a new view of the Battle of Okinawa, alternative figures in American art, and Shomei Tomatsu’s extraordinary photographs of US military base towns. Plus Anka Muhlstein considers Joseph Roth’s years in exile, and George Soros sounds an alarm for Europe.
 
THIS ISSUE SPONSORED BY UC BERKELEY EXTENSION
 
Helen Epstein
Even as Ebola hysteria rages in the US, the epidemic here in Liberia, which is supposed to be its epicenter, seems to be subsiding.
 
ADVERTISEMENT
 
David Cole
Citizenfour, Laura Poitras’s documentary about Edward Snowden, reflects the tenor of the digital age not just in its subject matter but in its style.
 
James Guida
The career of Parliament-Funkadelic’s George Clinton crosses musical genres without blinking, and his memoir is a fascinating story of how these various styles fit together.
 
ADVERTISEMENT
 
Francine Prose
Does any residue of the Viking spirit still exist in the modern father dutifully pushing a baby stroller through the streets of Stockholm? Ruben Östlund’s Force Majeuresuggests that this question is very much on the minds of Scandinavian men.
 
Jonathan Mirsky
Would the Japanese have surrendered without Hiroshima? The question comes freshly into view in Descent into Hell, a remarkable new book based on Japanese eyewitness testimony from one of the bloodiest land battles of the war.
 
Ian Buruma
Shomei Tomatsu’s extraordinary photographs of US military base towns in Japan and Okinawa
 
J. Hoberman
“What Nerve! Alternative Figures in American Art, 1960 to the Present” presents a bracing counter to one story of postwar American art.
 
Anka Muhlstein
Hitler was named Reich chancellor on January 30, 1933. The very same day, Joseph Roth boarded a train from Berlin to Paris, never again to set foot in Germany.
 
George Soros
The new Ukraine has the political will both to defend Europe against Russian aggression and to engage in radical structural reforms. To preserve and reinforce that will, Ukraine needs to receive adequate assistance from its supporters. Without it, the results will be disappointing and hope will turn into despair.