Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

This week on nybooks.com: The defense secretary’s exit, a powerful new production of Marlowe’s Tamburlaine, the beauty of the Gowanus Canal’s toxic waters, Naomi Klein and the warmists, and the disgrace of our criminal justice system.   THIS ISSUE SPONSORED BY THE BRITISH LIBRARY

The Firing of Chuck Hagel Elizabeth Drew The White House is stuck in a policy that has very little chance of working. And Chuck Hagel became the odd man out.   ADVERTISEMENT   A Beautiful Mosaic of Filth Michael Greenberg Steven Hirsch’s photos of the Gowanus Canal are a microscopic record of an ecological disaster.   Tamburlaine’s Seductive Terror Geoffrey O’Brien The career of Marlowe’s world-conquering Tamburlaine progresses like a river in flood, rising steadily and irresistibly and spilling over into actions of spectacular destruction, sparing nothing that stands in opposition.   ADVERTISEMENT   Can Climate Change Cure Capitalism? Elizabeth Kolbert On Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything, and the grim math of climate change   The Disgrace of Our Criminal Justice David Cole Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercydemonstrates the extent to which brutality, unfairness, and racial bias continue to infect criminal law.   An Open Letter to My Sister, Miss Angela Davis James Baldwin What the Americans do not realize is that a war between brothers, in the same cities, on the same soil, is not a racial war but a civilwar. (1970)