Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Sunday reading on nybooks.com: Is the United States falling behind in science and engineering? Can A Midsummer Night’s Dream be filmed? What can be done about Boko Haram? Is rereading the only way to appreciate a book? Plus recommendations from the calendar in tv, film, opera and theater.   SPONSORED BY COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF THE ARTS

STEM Frenzy Andrew Hacker The fervor over science, technology, engineering, and mathematics goes beyond promoting a quartet of academic subjects. It’s about the kind of nation and people we are to be.   ADVERTISEMENT   The Rule of Boko Haram Joshua Hammer In early May, during the final days of the hot, dry season, I flew to Yola, the capital of Adamawa State in eastern Nigeria and an apparent safe haven from the Boko Haram insurgency.   Shakespeare’s Unfilmable Dream Geoffrey O’Brien Cinematic art direction and special effects, however cunning, cannot substitute for the very different kind of magic that actors can create out of the tension of being live on stage.   ADVERTISEMENT   Reading Is Forgetting Tim Parks No reader ever really takes complete control of a book—it’s an illusion—and perhaps to expend vast quantities of energy seeking to do so is a form of impoverishment.   TELEVISION James Walton: BBC1’s flagship arts program Imagineis dedicating an 80-minute special to Jeff Koons. It concentrates on perhaps the thorniest issue of them all: is his art any good?   FILM Dan Chiasson: Summer is the time to think about childhood, and Satyajit Ray’s newly restored Apu films areamong the richest investigations of growing up ever made   OPERA Geoffrey Wheatcroft: The festival features a new production of Donizetti’sPoliuto, whose story of religious fanaticism and martyrdom has quite enough contemporary resonances   THEATER Michael Gorra: It’s running in London, but this summer it will also be simulcast in the US: the late medieval miracle play Everyman, with Chiwetel Ejifor in the title role