Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Sunday reading on nybooks.com: Who is Pope Francis? Should the law treat fraudulent corporations like juvenile delinquents? What’s dividing the Republican Party? Plus a look at one of Renzo Piano’s finest buildings, the pleasures of Richard Strauss, and Alexei German’s dark Hard to Be a God.

Who Is the Pope? Eamon Duffy The differences between Francis and his immediate predecessors are wide, deep, and momentous for the church.   ADVERTISEMENT   Justice Deferred Is Justice Denied Jed Rakoff In Too Big to Jail: How Prosecutors Compromise with Corporations, law professor Brandon Garrett presents a detailed and comprehensive examination of deferred corporate prosecutions, and concludes that they have been, on the whole, ineffective.   The Republicans: Divided & Scary Elizabeth Drew The Republican leadership believed that by the 2016 election they had to appear qualified to occupy the presidency. But this goal isn’t so important to a major faction on the far right of their party. Thus the Republicans are riven between pragmatists and purists.   ADVERTISEMENT   Renzo Piano’s Hidden Masterpiece Martin Filler The new Pathé building in Paris is an ingenious demonstration of how to insert a work of avant-garde architecture into a historic setting.   The Pleasures of Richard Strauss Tim Page Strauss the innovator became as true and original a “neo-Classicist” as Stravinsky, with the same passion for re-examining and revivifying antique form and ideals with a modern sensibility.   The Dark Master of Russian Film Gabriel Winslow-Yost Hard to Be a God immerses us for nearly three hours in director Alexei German’s reimagined Middle Ages. I don’t think any film has ever depicted a world so awful with such conviction.