Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Monday 6 April 2015


Sunday reading on nybooks.com: Oliver Sacks on illness, Janet Malcolm on Joseph Mitchell,Marcia Angell on our broken health system, Jeremy Bernstein on Iran’s underground nuclear facility, Diane Ravitch on our unequal schools, and J. Hoberman on the fascinating snapshots of Siegfried Kracauer.

THIS ISSUE SPONSORED BY ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE
 
Oliver Sacks
On Monday, February 16, I could say I felt well, in my usual state of health—at least such health and energy as a fairly active 81-one-year-old can hope to enjoy—and this despite learning, a month earlier, that much of my liver was occupied by metastatic cancer.
 
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Janet Malcolm
The idea that reporters are constantly resisting the temptation to invent is a laughable one. Reporters don’t invent because they don’t know how to. This is why they are journalists rather than novelists or short-story writers.
 
Marcia Angell
Steven Brill shows in all its horror how the way we distribute health care has produced the most expensive, inequitable, and wasteful health system in the world.
 
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Jeremy Bernstein
One of the most interesting parts of the agreement reached between the P5+1 countries and Iran has to do with the facility at Fordow, which is to be wholly converted to peaceful purposes. The important thing about Fordow is its underground location.
 
Diane Ravitch
This is a useful time to remember that the original Elementary and Secondary Education Act, passed in 1965 and still the basis for federal education policy today, had one purpose: to send additional resources to schools enrolling large numbers of poor children.
 
J. Hoberman
“In a photograph, a person’s history is buried as if under a layer of snow,” Siegfried Kracauer wrote. Here, for a frozen moment, a bit of that snow is brushed aside.
 
Hilary Mantel
These “notes on characters” are drawn from the author’s suggestions to actors.
(‘Wolf Hall’ begins tonight on PBS)
 
Robert F. Worth
Safa al Ahmad’s documentary is a rare close-up look at a movement that defies easy explanation.
(See ‘The Fight for Yemen’ on Frontline April 7)