Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

We’re pleased to publish an exclusive conversation between President Obama and Marilynne Robinson. You can read the first part below, or listen to it on iTunes. Also new this week:Joost Hiltermann on Iraq, Jan-Werner Müller on Hungary, and Timothy Snyder on Svetlana Alexievich, winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature.

President Obama and Marilynne Robinson: A Conversation The President: How do you think you ended up thinking about democracy, writing, faith the way you do? How did that experience of growing up in a pretty small place in Idaho, which might have led you in an entirely different direction—how did you end up here, Marilynne? What happened? Was it libraries? Robinson: It was libraries, it was—people are so complicated. It’s like every new person is a completely new roll of the dice, right?   Fear Marilynne Robinson I defer to no one in my love for America and for Christianity. I have devoted my life to the study of both of them. I have tried to live up to my association with them. And I take very seriously Jesus’s teachings, his saying that those who live by the sword will also die by the sword.   ADVERTISEMENT   ‘Sorry About Our Prime Minister’ Jan-Werner Müller Until the refugee crisis, European politicians had largely turned a blind eye to Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán’s illiberalism.   Iraq: The Clerics and the Militias Joost Hiltermann ISIS is largely contained in Sunni areas, but a pinpoint attack on Shia shrines could set off sectarian conflagration.   ADVERTISEMENT   Svetlana Alexievich’s Anti-Nostalgia Timothy Snyder Her method is the close interrogation of the past through the collection of individual voices. Her writing reaches those far beyond her own experiences and preoccupations, far beyond her generation, and far beyond the lands of the former Soviet Union.