Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Thursday 16 April 2015


New on nybooks.com: Deadlocked Ukraine, Syria’s use of chlorine as a chemical weapon, Joseph Mitchell and the line between fiction and nonfiction, Manet, Monet and Renoir, new questions about the president’s drone policy, and a photographer’s view of Xinjiang.

THIS ISSUE SPONSORED BY UCONN
Tim Judah
As winter turns to spring, soldiers on both sides of the front line are anything but tired of the war. Spirits are high and demoralization and exhaustion have not yet set in. If and when the cease-fire breaks down, there are three main possible outcomes.
 
ADVERTISEMENT
 
Annie Sparrow
Recently, the Syrian government has used chlorine directly against civilians as a chemical weapon. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has thus transformed a principal element of public health into a tool of both disease and terror.
 
Janet Malcolm
Joseph Mitchell’s travels across the line that separates fiction and nonfiction are his singular feat. His impatience with the annoying, boring bits of actuality give his pieces their electric force.
 
Jessica T. Mathews on the nuclear agreement with Iran, Adam Thirlwell on Ulysses,Alexander Stille on Mussolini and the Pope, Christopher Jencks on the War on Poverty, Caleb Crain on Helen Macdonald’s H is for Hawk  Paul Wilson on Václav Havel, Diane Johnson on Rachel Cusk, David Shulman on Netanyahu’s victory, Joseph Lelyveld on David Axelrod, and more.  
 
ADVERTISEMENT
 
Colin B. Bailey
There can be no doubt of Manet’s artistic and affective complicity with Monet in the summer of 1874. Despite his refusal to participate in any of the Impressionists’ exhibitions, it is clear that Manet now intended to come out with the fledgling avant-garde.
 
David Cole
To kill or capture? That is the chilling question that US officials—and even members of Congress—reportedly ask behind closed doors these days, as they consider how best to deal with potential terrorist threats abroad.
 
Ian Johnson
Photographer Carolyn Drake has come to know Xinjiang well, and struggled to break free from clichés about the region. The summation of her work is Wild Pigeon, an ambitious, beautiful, and crushingly sad book.