Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

New on nybooks.com: Michael Ignatieff on the refugee policy we need, David Bromwich on Hemingway’s peculiar discipline, and a piece from the archives by Tony Judt on Belgium. PlusMartin Filler on the overlooked designer Peter Muller-Munk. SPONSORED BY REAKTION BOOKS

The Refugees & the New War Michael Ignatieff Strategists will tell you that it is a mistake to fight the battle your enemies want you to fight. ISIS is trying to provoke an apocalyptic confrontation with the Crusader infidels. We should deny them this opportunity.   ADVERTISEMENT   A Hemingway Surprise David Bromwich Of all the moderns, Hemingway was the foremost defender of revision as a proof of serious craft. The more you could throw away, he said, the surer you could be that something of substance was there to begin with.   Is There a Belgium? Tony Judt Caught between federalist decentralization and uncoordinated, incompetent government agencies without resources or respect, Belgium is the first advanced country truly at the mercy of globalization in all its forms.(1999)   ADVERTISEMENT   The Man Who Shaped Tomorrow Martin Filler Until now the general public has known next to nothing about the unjustly neglected designer Peter Muller-Munk. That lapse is finally redressed by “Silver to Steel,” an illuminating exhibition at the Carnegie Museum of Art.   LECTURE Cultural critic and poetry scholar Helen Vendler will deliver this year’s Robert B. Silvers Lecture, “Poets as Editors” (New York Public Library, December 8)   EXHIBITION Colm Tóibín: In Francis Bacon’s late work there is “a restlessness that we also find in Beethoven’s late chamber music” (Gagosian Gallery, through December 12)