Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

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This week on nybooks.com: Diane Johnson on Scientology, Pankaj Mishra on three novels of Asian capitalism, Florence Williams on the next pandemic, Larry McMurtry on Woody Guthrie’s novel. Plus Jonathan Mirsky on the CIA in Tibet, Perry Link on his friend Fang Lizhi, Charles McGrath on John O’Hara, Yasmine El Rashidi on an influential Egyptian novelist long ignored by Western critics, and Charles Simic on the sadism of American health care. We continue our National Poetry Month celebration with the work of Joseph Brodsky.
Exposé Scientology: The Story Diane Johnson Not to be read home alone on a stormy night: Going Clear, Lawrence Wright’s scary book about Scientology and its influence. It’s a true horror story, the most comprehensive among a number of books published on the subject in the past few years.
Viruses How Animals May Cause the Next Big One Florence Williams As David Quammen puts it in his masterful new book Spillover, we are an “outbreak,” a species that has undergone a vast, sudden population increase. “And here’s the thing about outbreaks,” warns Quammen: “They end…. In some cases they end gradually, in other cases they end with a crash.” If this sounds alarming, it’s meant to.
Capitalism and the Novel Asia: ‘The Explosive Transformation’ Pankaj Mishra “Let some people get rich first,” the Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping proclaimed a generation ago, inaugurating a strange new phase in his country’s—and the world’s—history. It now seems clear that nowhere has capitalism’s promise to create wealth been affirmed more forcefully than in post–World War II Asia.
Rediscovery What Woody Wrote Larry McMurtry Woody Guthrie wrote a fair amount, in letters, diaries, in journals, and on random pieces of paper. But it is not as a writer that we revere him, or that so many of his contemporaries and peers beat a path to his door or to his hospital bed. His genius was song, and his novel House of Earth is a bit of an oddity, though certainly a readable one.
					In the April 25 Issue Cathleen Schine, Francine Prose, and Fintan O’Toole on new novels by Nathaniel Rich, Joyce Carol Oates, and Will Self, Sanford Schwartz on the art of the Civil War, Roderick MacFarquhar on China hands, Michael Tomasky on Dodd-Frank, Timothy Garton Ash on free speech in India, Robert Pogue Harrison on Margaret Fuller, Robert O. Paxton on the Vichy legacy, and more.
Tibet The War We Cancelled Jonathan Mirsky For nearly two decades after the 1950 Chinese takeover of Tibet, the CIA ran a covert operation designed to train Tibetan insurgents and gather intelligence about the Chinese, as part of its efforts to contain the spread of communism around the world.
Reminiscence ‘Hi! I’m Fang!’ The Man Who Changed China Perry Link Today in China, even people at the lowest levels of society demand their rights. No one did more to get this movement started than Fang Lizhi, the Chinese astrophysicist, activist, and dissident, who died a year ago. We were friends for many years; here are eight of my favorite memories of him.
Health Care The New American Sadism Charles Simic 60 percent of Americans who file for personal bankruptcy do so because of medical costs. Today, when the acquisition of wealth is admired above any other human endeavor, every medical emergency or catastrophic illness is seen as an opportunity for some to enrich themselves beyond their wildest dreams.
A New Translation Egypt in the Raw Yasmine El Rashidi In 1966, a little-known young Egyptian named Sonallah Ibrahim self-published his experimental first novel, That Smell, a breathtakingly subversive answer to the omnipresence of the state in daily life and the inability of Arabic literature to express and capture that reality.
Class, Cars, Sex, and Drinking The Great American Bender Charles McGrath Originally published in 1934, John O’Hara’s Appointment in Samarra is still the only American novel I know that begins with a scene of a married couple having sex, and on Christmas morning, no less.
The Poetry of Miguel Hernández Don Share, senior editor of Poetry magazine, will read Hernández's poems at the Poets House.		The End of the Avant Garde Celebrating the release of Alexander Vvedensky’s An Invitation for Me to Think at NYU.		Muti Conducts Bach at CSO This promises to be one of the most important concerts of the season, writes Philip Gossett.		Our white short-sleeve T-shirt features the Review’s logo in black on the front and David Levine’s iconic caricature of Shakespeare on the back.
National Poetry Month Joseph Brodsky To celebrate National Poetry Month, we are posting work by poets and critics whose writing in the Review has spanned a period of years or decades. This week we are focusing on Joseph Brodsky.