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Orgasm and the West: A History of Pleasure from the 16th Century to the Present by Robert Muchembled (Paperback) Does the orgasm have a history? An almost incommunicable individual emotion, yet also a cultural reality, the orgasm is part of our collective experience and also something separate from it. Its history is that of the hidden body, of forbidden desires, of flesh constrained by taboos and morality.

In this major new book, Robert Muchembled uncovers a fascinating history of sexual pleasure and the repression of pleasure that lies at the heart of Western civilization. Contrary to Foucault, he argues that a powerful repression of the carnal appetites was established at the very heart of our civilization around the middle of the sixteenth century, and that it only really lost ground in the 1960s. Producing a fundamental tension between the libido of each individual and collective ideals, it was a process that constantly promoted a powerful labour of sublimation throughout this long period, under the successive cultural covers of religion, philosophy and the laws of the capitalist market. The coercive system laid down in the seventeenth century formed the basis for alternate cycles of liberation and constraint, whose fluctuations were fundamental to the general dynamism of the West because they created the need to compensate for the mental disequilibrium they caused. More

Shroom: A Cultural History of the Magic Mushroom by Andy Letcher (Ecco) Is Santa Claus really a magic mushroom in disguise? Was Alice's Adventures in Wonderland a thinly veiled psychedelic mushroom odyssey? Did mushroom tea kick-start ancient Greek philosophy?

Much stranger than the fictions it has inspired, the world of the magic mushroom is a place where shamans and hippies rub shoulders with psychiatrists, poets and international bankers. The magic mushroom was rediscovered only fifty years ago but has accumulated all sorts of folktales and urban legends along the way. In this timely and definitive study, Andy Letcher strips away the myths to get at the true story of how hallucinogenic mushrooms, once shunned in the West as the most pernicious of poisons, came to be the illicit drug of choice. More 

Asian Religions

Transcendent in America: Hindu-Inspired Meditation Movements as New Religion  by Lola Williamson (New and Alternative Religions: NYU Press) Yoga, karma, meditation, guru—these terms, once obscure, are now a part of the American lexicon. Combining Hinduism with Western concepts and values, a new hybrid form of religion has developed in the United States over the past century. In Transcendent in America, Lola Williamson traces the history of various Hindu-inspired movements in America, and argues that together they constitute a discrete category of religious practice, a distinct and identifiable form of new religion. More

The Sun Rises: A Shaman's Chant, Ritual Exchange and Fertility in the Apatani Valley by Stuart Blackburn (Brill's Tibetan Studies Library: Brill Academic) At the centre of this study is a shaman's chant performed during a three-week long feast in the eastern Himalayas. The book includes a translation of this 12-hour text chanted in Apatani, a Tibeto-Burman language, and a description of the events that surround it, especially ritual exchanges with ceremonial friends, in which fertility is celebrated. The shaman's social role, performance and ritual language are also described. Although complex feasts, like this one among Apatanis, have been described in northeast India and upland Southeast Asia for more than a century, this is the first book to present a full translation of the accompanying chant and to integrate it into the interpretation of the social significance of the total event. More

Brill’s Encyclopedia of Hinduism: Volume One: Regions, Pilgrimage, Deities edited by Knut A. Jacobsen (Handbook of Oriental Studies / Handbuch Der Orientalistik: Brill Academic)

The five-volume Brill’s Encyclopedia of Hinduism is a thematically organized encyclopedia, presenting the latest research on all the main aspects of the Hindu traditions. Its essays are original work written by the world’s foremost scholars on Hinduism. The encyclopedia aims at a balanced and even-handed view of Hinduism, recognizing the divergent perspectives and methods in the academic study of a religion that is both an ancient historical tradition and a flourishing tradition today. Following a pluralistic approach, the encyclopedia embraces the greatest possible diversity, plurality, and heterogeneity. It thus emphasizes that Hinduism encompasses a variety of regional religious traditions, as well as a global world religion.

The the extent we are able to review individual volumes we will review each section by its theme.

Volume I of the Encyclopedia of Hinduism covers two main thematic fields. First it presents the regional traditions of Hinduism with articles on the Indian states and main regions of India and on historical regions outside of India. Here the reader will also find entries on sacred space and pilgrimage traditions, sacred time and festival traditions. The second thematic field concerns the various gods, goddesses and divine powers of Hinduism past and present.  More

The Yoga Sutras: An Essential Guide to the Heart of Yoga Philosophy by Nicolai Bachman ( Sounds True) Open your yoga practice with an in-depth course on the Sutras of Patanjali. We know there's more to the yogic path than asana, or physical postures, but how do we access the deeper wisdom of yoga philosophy? More than 2,000 years ago, the legendary master Patanjali answered this question in 195 pearls of insight known as the Yoga Sutras. Now Sanskrit and Ayurveda teacher Nicolai Bachman offers The Yoga Sutras, a complete course with a fresh new approach to working with Patanjali's seminal text for guidance and inspiration on your own journey toward clarity and happiness.

Why do we react the way we do in certain situations? How can suffering be an opportunity for growth? Why are nonviolence and truth important to a student? Patanjali's sutras offer an illuminating perspective on these questions and more. To help integrate this wisdom into our modern life, Bachman offers a unique approach. Instead of reading each sutra sequentially from beginning to end, he focuses on and discusses 51 key concepts. By exploring these principles with him and learning to chant the sutras in Sanskrit, the essence of yoga philosophy is revealed—helping us open to its heart and soul. The Yoga Sutras invites you to discover a variety of practical tools and heartfelt insights for transforming your practice, including:

• A 336-page color-illustrated workbook with a concise history of yoga and the sutras, in-depth explanation of key themes, translation of all 195 sutras, and a complete glossary of Sanskrit terms for quick reference
• Six sessions full of insights to further your learning about yoga's essential principles
• A guided reading on CD of the complete sutras with pronunciation instructions for following along
• Fifty-one study cards to encourage reflection of each concept and inspire action

When you immerse yourself in Patanjali's sutras, the heart of yoga—and what yoga means for you personally—will unveil itself in new and profound ways. Whether you're a seasoned teacher or a student looking to go deeper with your practice, this essential course offers a treasury of teachings to help realize the"outer joy and inner happiness" of yoga. More

Ritual Alliances of the Putian Plain Volume One: Historical Introduction to the Return of the Gods by Kenneth Dean, Zheng Zhenman (Handbook of Oriental Studies/Handbuch Der Orientalistik, Volume 23, 1: Brill Academic)

Ritual Alliances of the Putian Plain Volume 2: A Survey of Village Temples and Ritual Activities by Kenneth Dean, Zheng Zhenman (Handbook of Oriental Studies/Handbuch Der Orientalistik, Volume 23, 2: Brill Academic) Making ingenious use of a wide variety of sources, and old as well as modern technical resources, Kenneth Dean and Zheng Zhenman here set a new standard for an histoire totale for a coherently well-defined cultural region in China. At the same time, these books deal in-depth with the ongoing negotiation of modernity in Chinese village rituals. This study will no doubt become a major advance in the descriptive and theoretically integrative account of religious practice. All those interested in contemporary China, Chinese religion, ritual and modernity, regional history, Chinese popular culture, Daoism and local cults, and comparative religion and globalization.

Over the past thirty years, local popular religion has been revived and re-invented in the villages of the irrigated alluvial plain of Putian, Fujian, China. Volume 1 provides a historical introduction to the formation of 153 regional ritual alliances made up of 724 villages. Early popular cults, Ming lineages, Qing multi-village alliances, late Qing spirit-medium associations, 20th  century state attacks on local religion, and the role of Overseas Chinese and local communities in rebuilding the temple networks are discussed. Volume 2 surveys the current population, lineages, temples, gods, and annual rituals of these villages. Maps of each ritual alliance, the distribution of major cults and lineages, are included. More

I Ching: The Symbolic Life by Stephen Karcher PhD. (BookSurge) By far the most user friendly intuitive adaptation of this ancient oracle to the functions of divination rather than the museum of past cultures. Karcher has worked with this book some intimately that the poetic liberties  he takes with the Chinese letter will well substantiated by the spirit of the oracle itself.  Of the many editions available this one is easy to use and likely to bring one into the dao of its message.

I Ching or the Classic of Change is the world's oldest and most sophisticated system of wisdom divination, source of much of the east's philosophy and culture. It focuses on the part the individual plays in change and transformation. When we experience ourselves as a victim of the changes in our lives and our world, we feel isolated, frightened and angry. When we become a part of the deep dialogue Change represents, we feel connected to the basic creative energy that shapes the world we live in, living in accord with the Way or Dao. I Ching: The Symbolic Life gives you direct access to this dialogue through the myth and ritual world Change uses to model the course of the Symbolic Life. Developed through many years of scholarship and research and grounded in practical use, it can make Change a part of your daily life. It explains and presents the age-old symbols of I Ching in a step by step way that lets you use the images directly and intuitively. You do not really learn something, you experience something that is capable of working a profound transformation of your thought.

Stephen Karcher, Ph.D., is one of today's most creative and controversial writers I and practitioners in the field of Yijing studies, divination and myth. He is an internationally recognized scholar, translator and initiated diviner, teaching and lecturing on the Yijing and other divination systems in the US, Great Britain, France, Spain, Switzerland and South Africa. As Research Director of the Eranos Foundation in Ascona, Switzerland (1988-1996), he pioneered a depth psychological approach to divination. A prolific author, he has published many books and articles in the field of comparative mythology, divination, depth psychology and religious experience. He "liberates meanings ... that have been missing from our understanding for a couple of thousand years ... revealing a whole new landscape of interpretation that makes previous translations feel cramped by comparison." Stephen lives in Ojai, California. More

One Hundred Thousand Moons: An Advanced Political History of Tibet  by Tsepon Wangchuk Deden Shakabpa and Derek F. Maher (Brill's Tibetan Studies Library: Brill Academic Publishers) DRAWING ON A VAST ARRAY OF HISTORICAL AND biographical sources, this volume elaborates Tibetan political history, arguing that Tibet has long been an independent nation, and that the 195o incursion by the Chinese was an invasion of a sovereign country. The author situates Tibet's relations with a series of Chinese, Manchurian, and Mongolian empires in terms of the preceptor-patron relationship, an essentially religious connection in which Tibetan religious figures offered spiritual instruction to the contemporaneous emperor or other militarily powerful figure in exchange for protection and religious patronage. Simultaneously, this volume serves as an introduction to many aspects of Tibetan culture, society, and especially religion. The book includes a compendium of biographies of the most significant figures in Tibet's past. More

HdO Early Chinese Religion: Shang Through Han (1250 BC-220 AD) edited by John Lagerwey and Marc Kalinowski (Handbook of Oriental Studies, Section Four, China: Brill Academic Publishers) Together, and for the first time in any language, the 24 essays gathered in these volumes provide a composite picture of the history of religion in ancient China from the emergence of writing ca. 125o BC to the collapse of the first major imperial dynasty in 220 AD. It is a multifaceted tale of changing gods and rituals that includes the
emergence of a form of "secular humanism" that doubts the existence of the gods and the efficacy of ritual and of an imperial orthodoxy that founds its legitimacy on a distinction between licit and illicit sacrifices. Written by specialists in a variety of disciplines, the essays cover such subjects as divination and cosmology, exorcism and medicine, ethics and self-cultivation, mythology, taboos, sacrifice, shamanism, burial practices, iconography and political philosophy.
Produced under the aegis of the Centre de recherche sur les civilisations chinos, japonaise et tibétaine (UMR
8155) and the École Pratique des Hautes Etudes (Paris). More

Emperor and Ancestor: State and Lineage in South China by David Faure (Stanford, 2007)] summarizes twenty years of the author's work in historical anthropology and documents his argument that in China, ritual provided the social glue that law provided in the West. The book offers a readable history of the special lineage institutions for which south China has been noted and argues that these institutions fostered the mechanisms that enabled south China to be absorbed into the imperial Chinese state--first, by introducing rituals that were acceptable to the state, and second, by providing mechanisms that made group ownership of property feasible and hence made it possible to pool capital for land reclamation projects important to the state. Just as taxation, defense, and recognition came together with the emergence of powerful lineages in the sixteenth century, their disintegration in the late nineteenth century signaled the beginnings of a new Chinese state. More

Foundations of Confucian Thought: Intellectual Life in the Chunqiu Period, 722-453 B.C.E by Yuri Pines (722-453 BCE) (Honolulu, 2002).  This ambitious work focuses on the world of Chinese thought during the Chunqiu (Springs and Autumns) period (722-451 B.C.E.), the two and a half centuries directly preceding and partly overlapping the time of Confucius, China's single most influential thinker. Ideas developed by Chunqiu statesmen and thinkers formed the intellectual milieu of Confucius and his disciples and contributed directly to the intellectual flowering of the Zhanguo (Warring States) era (453-221 B.C.E.), the formative period of the Chinese intellectual tradition. This study is the first attempt to systematically reconstruct major intellectual trends in pre-Confucian China. More

Text and Ritual in Early China edited by Martin Kern (University of Washington Press) Leading scholars of ancient Chinese history, literature, religion, and archaeology consider the presence and use of texts in religious and political ritual. Through balanced attention to both the received literary tradition and the wide range of recently excavated artefacts, manuscripts, and inscriptions, their combined efforts reveal the rich and multilayered interplay of textual composition and ritual performance. More

Divine Knowledge: Buddhist Mathematics According to Antoine Mostaert's Manual of Mongolian Astrology and Divination by Brian G. Baumann (Brill's Inner Asian Library: Brill Academic Publishers) In an original and compelling examination of traditional mathematics, this comprehensive study of the anonymous; Manual of Mongolian Astrology and Divination (published by A. Mostaert in 1969) takes on the fundamental problem of the post‑enlightenment categorization of knowledge, in particular the inherently problematic realms of religion and science, as well as their subsets, medicine, ritual, and magic. In the process of elucidating the rhetoric and logic shaping this manual the author reveals not only the intertwined intellectual history of Eurasia from Greece to China but also dismantles many of the discourses that have shaped its modern interpretations. More

Enlightened Rainbows: The Life and Works of Shardza Tashi Gyeltsen by Jean-Luc Achard (Brill's Tibetan Studies Library: Brill Academic) Shar rdza Rin po the (hereafter Shardza Rinpoche) is one of the most famous Bon po masters of the late 19th century and early 20th century. He is of course particularly well-known because of his realization of the Rainbow Body ('ja' lus) which he manifested at the end of his life in 1934. But he was not only a fully accomplished practitioner of rDzogs chen and Tantras — which would appear to be much sufficient in itself : he was also a highly talented scholar whose expertise em­braced all the fields of Bon spiritual knowledge. His works have consequently greatly influenced most of the modern masters of Bon, even if some voices appear here and there in a discordant tone. The detailed study of these works clearly demonstrates that their author had an unequalled mastery of Bon teachings and that he has initiated specific traditions that are definitely his own innovations. His spiritual heritage is preciously kept alive in both Eternal Bon and New Bon traditions, in India and in Tibet (and to a lesser extent in some Western countries). More

Iconoclasm and Iconoclash edited by Willem Van Asselt, Paul Van Geest, Daniela Muller, Theo Salemink (Jewish and Christian Perspectives Series: Brill) A first difference introduced and explored in this volume that between (1) iconoclash and (2) iconoclasm. While it is clear that they are integrally and these studies aim at covering both themes, it is useful to distinguish carefully between them. More

The Oxford Handbook of Global Religions by Mark Juergensmeyer (Oxford Handbooks in Religion and Theology: Oxford University Press) is a reference for understanding world religious societies in their contemporary global diversity. Comprising 60 essays, the volume focuses on communities rather than beliefs, symbols, or rites. It is organized into six sections corresponding to the major living religious traditions: the Indic cultural region, the Buddhist/Confucian, the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim regions, and the African cultural region. In each section an introductory essay discusses the social development of that religious tradition historically. The other essays cover the basic social facts, the community’s size, location, organizational and pilgrimage centers, authority figures, patterns of governance, major subgroups and schisms, as well as issues regarding boundary maintenance, political involvement, role in providing cultural identity, and encounters with modernity. Communities in the diaspora and at the periphery are covered, as well as the central geographic regions of the religious traditions. Thus, for example, Islamic communities in Asia and the United States are included along with Islamic societies in the Middle East. The contributors are leading scholars of world religions, many of whom are also members of the communities they study. The essays are written to be informative and accessible to the educated public, and to be respectful of the viewpoints of the communities analyzed. More

An Introductory Dictionary of Theology & Religious Studies edited by Orlando Espin, James B. Nickoloff (Liturgical Press) Students enrolled in undergraduate theology and religious studies courses are frequently confronted with the daunting task of mastering new and unfamiliar terminology. While some textbooks include glossaries to aid the introductory student, many educators assign classroom texts that assume students' prior knowledge of key terms. Having ready access to a wide variety of definitions in a single, compact volume is especially important in our multicultural and religiously plural world. Spanning the gamut from "Aaron" to "Zwingli," this dictionary includes nearly 3,000 entries written by about sixty authors, all of whom are specialists in their various theological and religious disciplines. The editors have designed the dictionary especially to aid the introductory-level student with instant access to definitions of terms likely to be encountered in--but not to substitute for--classroom presentations or reading assignments. Designed as a supplement for student coursework, An Introductory Dictionary of Theology and Religious Studies is also a useful resource for catechesis or religious education, for those pursuing interfaith or interreligious dialogue, and for those whose duties require communication with persons from diverse religious traditions.
This well designed and useful guide to words and terms in religious studies offers a balanced and reasonably thorough introductory definitions to current topics in religious studies. The book is especially good in presenting catholic topics but it also offers germane definitions of other Christian confessions and the major world religions. The entries do not recognize the new religions or esoteric religious history or topics. I would assume a second edition would include metaphysical and occult trends in religious studies. I believe this reference work, which is offered at a modest price, belongs in all public community libraries as well as high school and college libraries where religion is likely part of the curriculum.  More

Atheism

Philosophers without Gods: Meditations on Atheism and the Secular Life edited by Louise M. Antony (Oxford University Press) Atheists are frequently demonized as arrogant intellectuals, antagonistic to religion, devoid of moral sentiments, advocates of an "anything goes" lifestyle. Now, in this revealing volume, nineteen leading philosophers open a window on the inner life of atheism, shattering these common stereotypes as they reveal how they came to turn away from religious belief. These highly engaging personal essays capture the marvelous diversity to be found among atheists, providing a portrait that will surprise most readers. Many of the authors, for example, express great affection for particular religious traditions, even as they explain why they cannot, in good conscience, embrace them. None of the contributors dismiss religious belief as stupid or primitive, and several even express regret that they cannot, or can no longer, believe. Perhaps more important, in these reflective pieces, they offer fresh insight into some of the oldest and most difficult problems facing the human mind and spirit. For instance, if God is dead, is everything permitted? Philosophers without Gods demonstrates convincingly, with arguments that date back to Plato, that morality is independent of the existence of God. Indeed, every writer in this volume adamantly affirms the objectivity of right and wrong. Moreover, they contend that secular life can provide rewards as great and as rich as religious life. A naturalistic understanding of the human condition presents a set of challenges--to pursue our goals without illusions, to act morally without hope of reward--challenges that can impart a lasting value to finite and fragile human lives. Collectively, these essays highlight the richness of atheistic belief--not only as a valid alternative to religion, but as a profoundly fulfilling and moral way of life. More

Atheists: A Groundbreaking Study of America's Nonbelievers by Bruce E. Hunsberger, Bob Altemeyer (Prometheus Books) Hunsberger is one of the few researchers to look deeply into the soul (or should I say mind?) of an atheist, and what his studies show will be both pleasing and disturbing to nonbelievers and believers alike. The authors descriptions and conclusions are clear, brief and to the point. More

The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality by Andre Comte-Sponville (Author), translated by Nancy Huston (Viking) Can we do without religion? Can we have ethics without God? Is there such thing as “atheist spirituality”? In this powerful book, the internationally bestselling author André Comte-Sponville presents a philosophical exploration of atheism—and comes to some startling conclusions. According to Comte-Sponville, we have allowed the concept of spirituality to become intertwined with religion, and thus have lost touch with the nature of a true spiritual existence. In order to change this, however, we need not reject the ancient traditions and values that are part of our heritage; rather, we must rethink our relationship to these values and ask ourselves whether their significance comes from the existence of a higher power or simply the human need to connect to one another and the universe. Comte-Sponville offers rigorous, reasoned arguments that take both Eastern and Western philosophical traditions into account, and through his clear, concise, and often humorous prose, he offers a convincing treatise on a new form of spiritual life. More

The New Encyclopedia of Unbelief edited by Tom Flynn, Foreword by Richard Dawkins (Prometheus Books) Successor to the highly acclaimed Encyclopedia of Unbelief (1985), edited by the late Gordon Stein, The New Encyclopedia of Unbelief is a comprehensive reference work on the history, beliefs, and thinking of America’s fastest growing minority: those who live without religion.

As in the previous edition, this work does more to define a necessary cognitive and social critique of religion that is couched in a naturalistic avowal of culminative, demonstratable scientific enquiry and skepticism toward magical characterizations of transcendental aspirations. Personally I feel this critical stance toward religions should show greater tolerance for the innate conservatism of human longing for certainty and consolation. By taking a concerted secular stance against all religion, the importance of unbelief is marginalized in the very areas where its critique is likely to thrive.  For instance the Society of Evangelical Agnostics, which for 12 short years starting in 1975, united well over 1000 agnostics in a loose fellowship around Huxley's understanding of the meaning of agnosticism, and other such initiatives.

All-new articles by the field’s foremost scholars describe and explain every aspect of atheism, agnosticism, secular humanism, secularism, and religious skepticism. Topics include morality without religion, unbelief in the historicity of Jesus, critiques of intelligent design theory, unbelief and sexual values, and summaries of the state of unbelief around the world. More than 130 respected scholars and activists worldwide served on the editorial advisory board and over 100 authoritative contributors have written in excess of 500 entries.

In addition to covering developments since the publication of the original edition, the New Encyclopedia of Unbelief includes a larger number of biographical entries and much-expanded coverage of the linkages between unbelief and social reform movements of the 19th and 20th centuries, including the labor movement, woman suffrage, anarchism, sex radicalism, and second-wave feminism.

Unfortunately the volume does not cover the arts or major poets and writers many of whom deal extensively with implications of unbelief in their work. The poet Philip Larkin or John Asbury to name a few, even William Blake can be read as a satirist rather than a prophet. Also, Ayn Rand merits an entry (and rightly so), but she was surely not a novelist of the literary caliber of George Eliot. And yet Eliot fails to win an entry of her own (she is mentioned, briefly, in the article on British Literature and Unbelief). Likewise, Emily Dickinson gets only the briefest mention in the "American Literature and Unbelief" article, but receives no in-depth treatment. I'm sorry, but George Eliot and Emily Dickinson deserve far more space in such an encyclopedia than Steve Allen.

In terms of energy and entertainment value, the editor also made what I would regard as some fatal decisions. He decided not to include stand-alone entries concerning still-living non-believers, and he decided not to include internet references or contemporary atheist groups. This constitutes just pure timidity and laziness on his part. The effect of this is to give the volume the feeling of having been written in the 1980s, and not the 21st century. It thus gives off a dusty, historical, and non-contemporary feel. It is stupifying to open up a book purporting itself to be a "new" encyclopedia of unbelief, and being unable to find an entry for, say, "the flying spaghetti monster," or "richard dawkins." And even though there is an article on atheist periodicals, there is nothing on atheists on the internet. And even though you can find articles on literature and non-belief, somehow you can look far and wide for anything on film or contemporary pop culture and unbelief. in other words, this 21st century "new" encyclopedia has missed the dominant art medium of our times (film), the dominant communication vehicle of our times (the internet), and the dominant cultural phenomenon of our times (capitalist pop culture). Non-belief is represented in all these spaces in ways interesting for academic study, and yet they are not included in a purportedly contemporary encyclopedia.

My advice to the editor of future volumes: don't just listen to, or solicit articles from, academics over fifty. Spice it up. How about an entry by or about that fire-breathing atheist, Camille Paglia? She'd set some old geezers' knickers aflame if you set her loose on an entry titled, "sex and non-belief."

The major religions are covered with some credibility except for the egregious entry on unbelief in Buddhism which totally ignores the radical critique of Nagarjuna that has an antimetaphysical discernment in its long tradition. Eventually trends in the sciences and philosophy needs to be considered within the frames of unbelief; and the entry on unbelief and the neglect of social and behavioral sciences to investigate it as a cultural and social phenomena hopefully may prod many a graduate student research project.

Unbelief is an important social and cultural style of diffidence toward totalizing ideologies and dogmas that attempt encapsulate and dampen the brash realization that we know only a little something about how the world works. Unbelief attempts us to allocate our resources toward social and political, environmental schemes that will maximize our efforts to the greater good of all. As such becoming aware of the necessity of unbelief within all thinking styles is an important prospectus, The New Encyclopedia of Unbelief continues us in that necessary direction.

The distinguished contributors—philosophers, scientists, scholars, and Nobel Prize laureates—include Robert Alley, Joe Barnhart, David Berman, Sir Hermann Bondi, Vern L. Bullough, Noam Chomsky, Daniel Dennett, Paul Edwards, Barbara Ehrenreich, Antony Flew, Annie Laurie Gaylor, Peter Hare, Van Harvey, Susan Jacoby, Paul Kurtz, Richard Leakey, Gerd Lüdemann, Michael Martin, Martin E. Marty, Kai Nielsen, Steven Pinker, Robert M. Price, Richard Rorty, John R. Searle, Peter Singer, Ibn Warraq, Steven Weinberg, George A. Wells, David Tribe, Sherwin Wine, and many others.

With a foreword by evolutionary biologist and best-selling author Richard Dawkins, this unparalleled reference work provides comprehensive knowledge about unbelief in its many varieties and manifestations. More

Religion Past And Present: Encyclopedia of Theology And Religion (Complete 10 volume set)

Religion Past & Present: A-Bhu: Encyclopedia of Theology and Religion by Hans Dieter Betz, Don S. Browning, Bernd Janowski, Eberhard Jungel (Religion Past and Present: Brill Academic Publishers) At this time I’ve only seen the first volume, but this eventually 10 volume set offers a very fundamental  survey of Christian religious thought with a reasonable representation of Jewish and Islamic influences. The volumes do not represent Eastern religious traditions except in a once over lightly fashion. I have included the subject areas because it best describes the strengths of this reference book which is in its theological considerations of major religious themes as institutionally defined primarily by Christian dogmatics, secondarily considered is the Jewish tradition, with some nods to the Islamic especially in its historical modes.  There are articles on the major non-Western religions but for the most part none are representative or integrated into the theological discussions that the reference chronicles. Perhaps some future edition, where comparative theologies have wrangled with the nature of Buddha and the divine, the paramitas and virtues, the nature of prayer, the rise of Pentecostalism and other features of our global religious outlook. For individual volume coverage see More

World Religions, 5th edition by Warren Matthews (Wadsworth Publishing) Presenting both the histories and the prevalent worldviews of the major world religions, Matthews' WORLD RELIGIONS methodically introduces students to the richness and diversity of these traditions. The "Worldview" sections in particular make this textbook the most helpful textbook when it comes to comparative analyses of the religions. In these sections students can see how the different religions understand a common set of ten human concerns that are fundamental to all religions. Furthermore, this text combines insightful, engaging prose with maps, photographs, timelines, excerpts from sacred texts, and other helpful pedagogical aids, to employ a scholarly approach that neither shields students from current research nor encumbers them with it. Students are encouraged, individually and collectively, to pursue their own dialogues with the voices and nuances of these religions. MoMore

Popol Vuh: The Sacred Book of the Maya: The Great Classic of Central American Spirituality, Translated from the Original Maya Text edited, translated by Allen J. Christenson (University of Okalahoma Press) Popol Vuh, the Quiché Mayan book of creation, is not only the most important text in the native languages of the Americas, it is also an extraordinary document of the human imagination. It begins with the deeds of Mayan gods in the darkness of a primeval sea and ends with the radiant splendor of the Mayan lords who founded the Quiché kingdom in the Guatemalan highlands. Originally written in Mayan hieroglyphs, it was transcribed into the Roman alphabet in the sixteenth century. The poetic edition of Dennis Tedlock's unabridged, widely praised translation includes new notes and commentary, newly translated passages, newly deciphered hieroglyphs, and over forty new illustrations. Popol Vuh: The Definitive Edition Of The Mayan Book Of The Dawn Of Life by Dennis Tedlock (Touchstone) still has the poetic panash if not the up–to-the-minute variants based on recent scholarship   The Popol Vuh is the most important example of Maya literature to have survived the Spanish conquest. It is also one of the world's great creation accounts, comparable to the beauty and power of Genesis.  More

Soul, Psyche, Brain: New Directions in the Study of Religion and Brain-Mind Science edited by Kelly Bulkeley (Palgrave) is a collection of essays that address the relationships between neuroscience, religion and human nature. The book highlights some startling new developments in neuroscience that have many people rethinking spirituality, the mind-body connection, and cognition in general. Soul, Psyche, Brain explores questions like: What are the neurological effects of meditation and prayer? How does the mind develop psychological and spiritual self-awareness? And what are the practical implications of brain-mind science for religious faith and moral reasoning? More

Theorizing Rituals: Classical Topics, Theoretical Approaches, Analytical Concepts edited by Jens Kreinath, Joannes Augustinus Maria Snoek, Michael Stausberg (Numen Book Series: Brill Academic Publishers) Volume one of Theorizing Rituals assembles 34 leading scholars from various countries and disciplines working within this field. The authors review main methodological and meta-theoretical problems (part I) followed by some of the classical issues (part II). Further chapters discuss main approaches to theorizing rituals (part III) and explore some key analytical concepts for theorizing rituals (part IV). The volume is provided with extensive indices. More

When Rituals Go Wrong: Mistakes, Failure, and the Dynamics of Ritual by Ute Hüsken (Numen Book: Brill Academic Publishers) The present volume is dedicated entirely to the investigation of the implications and effects of breaking ritual rules, of failed performances and of the extinction of ritual systems.
While rituals are often seen as infallible mechanisms which 'work' irrespective of the individual motivations of the performers, it is clearly visible here that rituals can fail, and that improper performances are a cause for concern. These essays break new ground in their respective fields, and the comparative analysis of rituals that go wrong introduces new perspectives to ritual studies. As the first book-length study on ritual mistakes and failure, this volume begins to fill a significant gap in the existing literature. Contributors include: Claus Ambos, Christiane Brosius, Johanna Buss, Burckhard Dücker, Christoph Emmrich, Brigitta Hauser-Schãublin, Maren Hoffmeister, Ute HUsken, Brigitte Merz, Axel Michaels, Karin Polit, Michael Rudolph, Edward L. Schieffelin, Jan A.M. Snoek, Eftychia Stavrianopoulou, and Jan Weinhold. More

Religion Without Belief: Contemporary Allegory and the Search for Postmodern Faith by Jean Ellen Petrolle (State University of New York Press) In our present cultural moment, when God is supposed to be dead and metaphysical speculation unfashionable, why does postmodern fiction--in a variety of genres--make such frequent use of the ancient rhetorical form of allegory? In Religion Without Belief, Jean Ellen Petrolle argues that contrary to popular understandings of postmodernism as an irreligious and amoral climate, postmodern allegory remains deeply engaged in the quest for religious insight. Examining a range of films and novels, this book shows that postmodern fiction, despite its posturing about the unverifiable nature of truth and reality, routinely offers theological and cosmological speculation. Works considered include virtual-reality films such as The Matrix and The Truman Show, avant-garde films, and Amerindian and feminist novels. More

The Higher Self in Christopher Brennan's Poems: Esotericism, Romanticism, Symbolism by Katherine Barnes (Aries: Brill Academic) Many critics contend that Christopher Brennan is Australia's most important scholar and poet. Because his poetry was often written in a more obscure fashion, he never received the recognition that scholars of world literature believe he deserved. Poems 1913 is considered his most important work, and it is on the basis of that collection that Brennan's writing is considered some of the finest poetry produced before the start of World War I.  More

Judaism

Tuning the Soul: Music As a Spiritual Process in the Teachings of Rabbi Nahman of Bratzlavby Chani Haran Smith  (IJS Studies in Judaica: Brill Academic) is an in-depth study of the function of music in religious experience according to Rabbi Nahman of Bratzlav. It provides new insights on his unique doctrine of the “Good Points”, which represent the core of loving kindness and holiness in the human soul, and the musical context in which they become both a means and a metaphor for spiritual transformation. Drawing on midrashic and kabbalistic sources, the book explores Nahman’s perception of different types of “tzadiqim” (religious leaders), including himself, and the special role music plays in their leadership. It highlights the importance of creativity and renewal in the messianic process that involves both music and loving kindness. All those interested in key aspects of Nahman of Bratzlav’s world view and self-perception, the place and transforming power of music in human life, spirituality and religious leadership. More

Berakhyah Ben Natronai ha-Nakdan, Sefer Ko’ah Ha-Avanim (On the Virtue of the Stones). Hebrew Text and English Translation. With a Lexicological Analysis of the Romance Terminology and Source Study by Gerrit Bos and Julia Zwink (Brill Academic)  The lore of the supposed magic and medical virtue of stones goes back to the Babylonians and peaks out in the lapidary literature of the Middle Ages. The famous work of Marbode of Rennes, which made lapidaries a very popular type of medieval scientific literature, was translated into numerous vernacular languages. The Jewish tradition, missing a particular lapidary literature of its own, absorbed non-Jewish works like that of Marbode. Several Anglo-Norman Marbode translations could be identified as the main source of the present edited Hebrew lapidary Ko’ah Ha-Avanim, written by Berakhyah Ben Natronai ha-Nakdan around 1300. The edition is accompanied by an English translation, a source study, and a linguistic analysis of the Romance, mostly Anglo-Norman, terms featuring within the text in Hebrew spelling. More

Ritual Dynamic Structure by Roy Gane (Gorgias Dissertations, 14: Gorgias Press ) Scientific study of rituals requires an understanding of their natural. As perceived by H. Hubert and M. Mauss (Essai sur la nature et la fontion du sacrifice, 1898), a basic aspect of the nature of sacrificial ritual is its dynamic structure. The present work takes up the neglected quest for a theory of ritual and methodology of analysis that recognize and trace the contours of ritual dynamic structure.

The resulting fresh approach provides a controlled framework for interpreting rituals belonging to various cultures and f9r identifying bases of comparison between them. Two important innovations are:

1. Application of General Systems Theory concepts to study of human rituals as hierarchically, structured human activity systems.
2. Application of F. Staal's "ritual syntax" (developed in the context of Vedic studies) to ancient Near Eastern rituals.

The first part of Ritual Dynamic Structure builds a theory and definition of ritual and a corresponding methodology for analyzing specific rituals in terms of their activities and the meanings attached to those activities. The second part illustrates this methodology and its usefulness for comparative studies by applying it to ceremonies belonging to three ancient Near. Eastern festival days of cult purification: the Israelite Day of Atonement, the fifth day of the Babylonian New Year Festival of Spring, and the fourth day of the Hittite Ninth Year Festival of Telipinu. More

Traditions of Maimonideanism  by Carlos Fraenkel (IJS Studies in Judaica: Brill Academic) The goal of the present volume is to shed light on a number of traditions of Maimonideanism that have hitherto little been explored. Maimonides (1138-1204) was the most important medieval Jewish philosopher and also made lasting contributions to many other fields. The essays in the first part examine aspects of his work in medicine, Jewish law, and liturgy. The essays in the second part look at how Maimonides was read, misread, and creatively reinvented in a wide range of contexts in the East and in the West—from medieval Cairo to Crown Heights in Brooklyn. Written by a group of leading scholars, the essays illustrate the breadth of Maimonides' work, and the fascinating history of its reception from the thirteenth century to the present. More

The Cultures of Maimonideanism  by James T. Robinson(Supplements to the Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy: Brill Academic) In the history of Jewish thought, no individual scholar has exercised more influence than Maimonides (1138-1204)—philosopher and physician, legal scholar and communal leader. This collection of papers, originating at the 2007 EAJS colloquium, places primary emphasis on this influence—not on Maimonides himself, but on the many movements he inspired. Using Maimonideanism as an interpretive lens, the authors of this volume—representing a variety of fields and disciplines—develop new approaches to and fresh perspectives on the peculiar dynamic of Judaism and philosophy. Focusing on social and cultural processes as well as philosophical ideas and arguments, they point toward an original reconceptualization of Jewish thought. More

Jewish World Around the New Testament: Collected Essays I (Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen Zum Neuen Testament) by Richard Bauckham (Mohr Siebeck) This is a collection of twenty-four essays first published by Richard Bauckham between 1976 and 2008, some of which have been updated for this volume. Many aspects of the literature and thought of early Judaism are covered. There are discussions of 'the parting of the ways' between early Judaism and early Christianity and of the relevance of early Jewish literature for the study of the New Testament. Other essays throw light on specific aspects or texts of early Christianity by relating them to their early Jewish context. These include studies of the delay of the parousia, the restoration of Israel in Luke-Acts, and the use of Latin names by Paul and other Jews in the early Christian movement. The essays in this volume result from the author's conviction, throughout his career, that the New Testament texts can only be under-stood adequately through wide-ranging and detailed study of the Judaism of the late Second Temple period. More

The Land of the Body: Studies in Philo's Representation of Egypt by Sarah J. K. Pearce (Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen Zum Neuen Testament: Mohr Siebeck) presents the first extended study of the representation of Egypt in the writings of Philo of Alexandria. Philo is a crucial witness, not only to the experiences of the Jews of Alexandria, but to the world of early Roman Egypt in general.

As historians of Roman Alexandria and Egypt are well aware, we have access to very few voices from inside the country in this era; Philo is the best we have. As a commentator on Jewish Scripture, Philo is also one of the most valuable sources for the interpretation of Egypt in the Pentateuch. He not only writes very extensively on this subject, but he does so in ways that are remarkable for their originality when compared with the surviving literature of ancient Judaism. More

Philo of Alexandria and Post-Aristotelian Philosophy edited by Francesca Alesse (Studies in Philo of Alexandria: Brill) The essays collected in this volume focus on the role played by the philosophy of the Hellenistic, or post-Aristotelian age (from the school of the successors of Aristotle, Theophrastus and other Peripatetics, Epicurus, Sceptical Academy and Stoicism, to neo-Pythagorenism and the schools of Antiochus and Eudorus) in Philo of Alexandria’s works.
Despite many authoritative studies on Philo's vision of Greek philosophy as an exegetical tool in allegorizing the Scripture, there is not such a comprehensive overview in Philo’s treatises that takes in account both the progress achieved in the recent interpretation of Hellenistic philosophy and analysis of ancient doxographical literature.  More

Intertextuality in the Tales of Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav: A Close Reading of Sippurey Ma'asiyot by Marianne Schleicher (Numen Book Series: Brill Academic Publishers) Until 1806, Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav (1772-1810) disseminated his thoughts on redemption through homilies. In 1806, however, Nahman chose the genre of tales as an additional and innovative means of religious discourse. An academic close reading of all of the tales, known as Sippurey Ma'asiyot, has not yet been undertaken. As the first comprehensive scholarly work on the whole selection of tales and contrary to previous scholarship, this book does not reduce the tales to biographical expressions of Nahman's tormented soul and messianic aspirations. Instead, it treats them as religious literature where the concept of "intertextuality" is considered essential to explain how Nahman defines his theology of redemption and invites his listeners and readers to appropriate his religious world-view. More

Wrestling with God: Jewish Theological Responses during and after the Holocaust edited by Steven T. Katz, Shlomo Biderman, Gershon Greenberg (Oxford University Press) (Paperback) this volume presents a wide-ranging, extremely diverse selection of Jewish theological responses to the Holocaust. It is the most complete anthology of its kind, bringing togeth­er for the first time a large sample of ultra-orthodox sources produced during the war and Just after its end, translated from the Hebrew and Yiddish; a substantial selection of essays, originally written in Hebrew, by Israeli thinkers; and a broad sampling of works by Amencan and European philosophers and theologians. These diverse selections represent virtually every significant theological position that has been articulated by a Jewish thinker in response to the Holocaust. More

Isaiah in Context: Studies in Honour of Arie van der Kooij on the Occasion of his Sixty-Fifth Birthday Edited by Michael van der Meer, Percy van Keulen, Willem Th. van Peursen, Bas ter Haar Romeny (Vetus Testamentum, Supplements, 138: Brill Academic Publications) contains a collection of essays on the Book of Isaiah offered as a tribute to Arie van der Kooij on the occasion of his sixty-fifth birthday, which coincides with his retirement as Professor of Old Testament at Leiden University. The twenty-four contributions, written by leading scholars in the field of Old Testament studies, focus on the Book of Isaiah within the context of Hebrew and ancient near-eastern writings, particularly those from the Neo-Assyrian period, as well as on the book's reception history , particularly in its Greek and Syriac translations. Together these studies offer a rich and original contribution to the study of the Book of Isaiah in its Hebrew, Aramaic, Assyrian, Greek, Syriac, and Dutch contexts. All those interested in the study of the Hebrew Bible / Old Testament, particularly the Book of Isaiah, in ancient near-eastern studies, Septuagint and Peshitta studies, as well as classical philologists. More

The Cambridge Companion to American Judaism by Dana Evan Kaplan (Cambridge Companions to Religion: Cambridge University Press) provides readers with a comprehensive introduction to the most important and interesting historical and contemporary facets of Judaism in America. The Cambridge Companion to American Judaism is a comprehensive survey that attempts to cover Judaism as a religion in the United States rather than Jewishness as an ethnicity in this country. The title of this volume thus requires a word of explanation. In popular usage today, Judaism usually implies a broad sociological approach to the subject of Jewish life and culture, while the term Jewish religion suggests a more specific concern with beliefs and practices that are somehow associated with a supernatural reality. Although this collection uses the more general term in its title, its focus is on American Jewish religious phenomena. It is, however, an appropriate title, I believe, because the volume's essays describe a quite inclusive Jewish religious experience in America. This includes aspects that frequently have been neglected or ignored or are understood as outside the purview of religion by a largely Christian America, which sometimes draws different and more impenetrable boundaries between the sacred and the secular. Understanding the subject in such broad terms, one can see that Jewish religion in America means much more than just religious ritual or belief. Contributors also discuss the sociology, psychology, theology, and history of American Judaism. A number of essays concentrate on the culture of American Judaism, including musical, artistic, and literary expressions. Morea>

Rereading the Mishnah: A New Approach to Ancient Jewish Texts by Judith Hauptman (Texts & Studies in Ancient Judaism: Paul Mohr Verlag) An important historical reworking of the development of the tradition.

There are two main arguments to this volume. The first is that not only are individual passages of the Mishnah based on individual, parallel passages of the Tosefta, but even entire chapters of the Mishnah are based on entire chapters of the Tosefta. If one were to line up all the Tosefta paragraphs that give rise to Mishnah paragraphs, they would join together to form a vast net­work. It is, therefore, reasonable to conclude that there existed an ordered collection of tannaitic passages that preceded the Mishnah and served as one of its sources. That collection was the Tosefta. More 

Samuel David Luzzatto, Prolegomena to a Grammar of the Hebrew Language by Aaron D. Rubin (Gorgias Press) is primarily an annotated translation of a little-known Italian work about Hebrew grammar by Luzzatto. First published in 1836, Prolegomeni ad una grammatica ragionata della lingua ebraica, is perhaps the most important grammatical work of the influential Italian scholar, Samuel David Luzzatto (1800-1865). Never reprinted, and never before fully translated, this long inaccessible work has become almost unknown. This book, which was intended to serve as an introduction to a comprehensive grammar of Hebrew, treats the history of Hebrew in a variety of ways. Luzzatto begins with a history of Hebrew scholarship, from Talmudic times through the early nineteenth century, including both Jewish and Christian grammarians. Following this wide-ranging survey, which has yet to be superseded, is a brief history of the Hebrew language itself, from its origins to its later manifestations. The remainder of the book is comprised of chapters on various linguistic phenomena of both Hebrew and Aramaic. Among the subjects treated are the nature of the Hebrew and Aramaic vowels (including Syriac), the development of the pointing tradition, and an important treatment of the accentual system. In each of its various chapters, the book is replete with information and innovative insight that is still valuable to the modern scholar. Moreover, in addition to the translation and copious annotations, the translator has added an appendix containing biographical sketches of the roughly 275 Hebrew scholars mentioned by Luzzatto. The book will be of great use to anyone interested in the Hebrew language and its fascinating history. More

The Song of Songs: A Philological Analysis of the Hebrew Book by P. W. T. Stoop-van Paridon (Ancient Near Eastern Studies: Peeters) Since time immemorial the Song of Songs (SofS) has been a source of amazement and inspiration. The countless translations and interpretations of this book differ strongly from each other. Does the Hebrew text indeed justify this? To answer this question, an unprejudiced philological analysis is necessary that keeps strictly to the text, which does justice to the context, and approaches the book intrinsically as rationally as possible. More

Kabbalah

A Journey into the Zohar: An Introduction to the Book of Radiance by Nathan Wolski (State University of New York Press: SUNY) The crowning work of medieval Kabbalah, the Zohar is unlike any other work in the Jewish canon. Written in Aramaic, the Zohar contains complex mystical exegesis as well as a delightful epic narrative about the Companions--a group of sages who wander through second-century Israel discussing the Torah while encountering children, donkey drivers, and other surprising figures who reveal profound mysteries to them. Nathan Wolski offers original translations of episodes involving this mystical fellowship and goes on to provide a sustained reading of each. With particular emphasis on the literary and performative dimensions of the composition, Wolski takes the reader on a journey through the central themes and motifs of the zoharic world: kabbalistic hermeneutics, the structure of divinity, the nature of the soul, and, above all, the experiential core of the Zohar--the desire to be saturated and intoxicated with the flowing fluids of divinity. A Journey into the Zohar opens the mysterious, wondrous, and at times bewildering universe of one of the masterpieces of world mystical literature to a wider community of scholars, students, and general readers alike. More

A River Flows from Eden: The Language of Mystical Experience in the Zohar by Melila Hellner-Eshed (Stanford University Press) In the Zohar, the jewel in the crown of Jewish mystical literature, the verse "A river flows from Eden to water the garden" (Genesis 2:10) symbolizes the river of divine plenty that unceasingly flows from the depths of divinity into the garden of reality.

Hellner-Eshed's book investigates the flow of this river in the world of the Zoharic heroes, Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai and his disciples, as they embark upon their wondrous spiritual adventures. By focusing on the Zohar's language of mystical experience and its unique features, the author is able to provide remarkable scholarly insight into the mystical dimensions of the Zohar, namely the human quest for an enhanced experience of the living presence of the divine and the Zohar's great call to awaken human consciousness. More

Messianic Mysticism: Moses Hayim Luzzatto and the Padua School  by Isaiah Tishby (Littman Library of Jewish Civilization: Oxford University Press) Kabbalists and Messiahs in Eighteenth-Century Italy: Moses Hayim Luzzatto (1707-46) was undoubtedly one of the most important thinkers and fascinating personalities of eighteenth-century Italian Jewry. The scion of an influential Jewish family in Padua, Luzzatto’s life and literary legacy project a distinctly contradictory set of images. At once a poet, playwright, moralist, kabbalist, self-fashioned leader of a messianic group, radical prophet, and exiled accused heretic, Luzzatto nonetheless came to be celebrated by Orthodox and Hasidic Jews, as well as secular Jews of later generations. His works, especially Mesilat Yesharim and Derekh ha-Shem, have been copiously reprinted in many editions and remain popular to this day. Isaiah Tishby’s contribution to the study of Luzzatto, both in terms of manuscript work as well as critical analysis, is of seminal importance, and the translations of his Hebrew studies of Luzzatto that appear in this volume are an invaluable asset to English readership. More 

Sefer Yesira by A. Peter Hayman (Hardcover, Mohr Siebeck) This the first comprehensive critical edition of a text which was a fundamental influence on Jewish thought in the medieval period and has continued to fascinate scholars and students of Judaism to the present day. It was initially understood to be a philosophical text which had descended by oral tradition from Abraham himself. It purports to tell us how God created the world using the ten sefiroth (the Spirit of the living God, air, water and fire, and the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew Alphabet). With its English translation of the three earliest recensions and its commentary on the variant early texts of the work, this book is essential reading for anyone interested in the growth and emergence of the Jewish mystical movement. There are four appendices setting out what parts of the text are attested in each of the manuscripts and in what order, a hypothetical reconstructed text and the text of the tenth century Vatican scroll of Sefer Yesira with the probable added material underlined. More

Renaissance and Rebirth: Reincarnation in Early Modern Italian Kabbalah by Brian Ogren (Studies in Jewish History and Culture: Brill Academic) Metempsychosis was a prominent element in Renaissance conceptualizations of the human being, the universe, and the place of the human person in the universe. A variety concepts emerged in debates about metempsychosis: human to human reincarnation, human to vegetal, human to animal, and human to angelic transmigration. As a complex and changing doctrine, metempsychosis gives us a well-placed window for viewing the complex and dynamic contours of Jewish thought in late fifteenth century Italy; as such, it enables us to evaluate Jewish thought in relation to non-Jewish Italian developments. This book addresses the problematic question of the roles and achievements of Jews who lived in Italy in the development of Renaissance culture in its Jewish and its Christian dimensions. More

The Origins of Jewish Mysticism by Peter Schafer (Princeton University Press) Release date September 2010

The Origins of Jewish Mysticism von Peter Schäfer (Mohr Siebeck) June 2009 This book provides the reader for the first time with a history of pre-kabbalistic Jewish mysticism. It covers a wide range of quite diverse literatures, from the biblical book of Ezekiel to the ascent apocalypses, the Qumran literature, Philo, Rabbinic literature, and finally the Hekhalot literature, which constitutes the first full-fledged mystical movement in late antiquity (Merkavah mysticism). Instead of imposing on these different literatures a preconceived notion of "mysticism," Peter Schafer offers a close reading of the key texts and asks what they wish to convey about the age-old human desire to get close to and communicate with God.
The author of this book has dedicated much of his scholarly life to the history of Jewish mysticism. The Origins of Jewish Mysticism summarizes his views in an accessible way, directed at specialists as well as at a broader audience. More 

Polemical Encounters: Esoteric Discourse and Its Others by Olav Hammer, Kocku Von Stuckrad (Aries Book Series: Brill Academic) In its historical development from late antiquity to the present, western esotericism has repeatedly been the issue of polemical discourse. This volume engages the polemical structures that underlie both the identities within and the controversy about esoteric currents in European history. From Jewish and Christian kabbalah through heretical discourse and interconfessional polemics in early modernity to the legitimization of esoteric identity in modern culture, the 12 chapters, accompanied by an editors' introduction, provide a cornucopia of relevant cases that are interpreted in a framework of polemical discourse and 'Othering'. This volume sheds new light on the ultimately polemical structure of western esotericism and thus opens new vistas for further research into esoteric discourse. More

Like Angels on Jacob's Ladder: Abraham Abulafia, the Franciscans, and Joachimism by Harvey J. Hames (State University of New York Press: SUNY) explores the career of Abraham Abulafia (ca. 1240-1291), self-proclaimed Messiah and founder of the school of ecstatic Kabbalah. Active in southern Italy and Sicily where Franciscans had adopted the apocalyptic teachings of Joachim of Fiore, Abulafia believed the end of days was approaching and saw himself as chosen by God to reveal the Divine truth. He appropriated Joachite ideas, fusing them with his own revelations, to create an apocalyptic and messianic scenario that he was certain would attract his Jewish contemporaries and hoped would also convince Christians. From his focus on the centrality of the Tetragrammaton (the four letter ineffable Divine name) to the date of the expected redemption in 1290 and the coming together of Jews and Gentiles in the inclusiveness of the new age, Abulafia's engagement with the apocalyptic teachings of some of his Franciscan contemporaries enriched his own worldview. Though his messianic claims were a result of his revelatory experiences and hermeneutical reading of the Torah, they were, to no small extent, dependent on his historical circumstances and acculturation.  More

The Art of Conversion: Christianity and Kabbalah in the Thirteenth Century by Harvey J. Hames (Medieval Mediterranean: Brill Academic) discusses Ramon Llull (ca. 1232-1316), the Christian missionary, philosopher and mystic, his relations with Jewish contemporaries, and how he integrated Jewish mystical teachings (Kabbalah) into his thought system so as to persuade the Jews to convert. Issues dealt with include Llull's attitude towards the Jews, his knowledge of Kabbalah, his theories regarding the Trinity and Incarnation (the Art), and the impact of his ideas on the Jewish community. The book challenges conventional scholarly opinion regarding Christian knowledge of contemporary Jewish thought and questions the assumption that Christians did not know or use Kabbalah before the Renaissance. Further, it suggests that Lull was well aware of ongoing intellectual and religious controversies within the Jewish community, as well as being the first Christian to acknowledge and appreciate Kabbalah as a tool for conversion. For a recent piece of scholarship Hames has done much to revise and clarify interreligious esoteric relationships and influences of Christian monasticism upon the formation of Kabbalah and vice versa. The story is just becoming known and is likely to suggest more surprises in the future.
Ramon Llull lived an interreligious vision, where he took instruction in Sufism and mystical Kabbalah. In his epoch making Book of Lover and Beloved her writes:
“Two lovers met. One of them revealed his beloved and the other understood him.
The question arose as to which of the two was nearer his beloved, and my answer to this the lover had knowledge of the demonstration of the Trinity. More

Intertextuality in the Tales of Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav: A Close Reading of Sippurey Ma'asiyot by Marianne Schleicher (Numen Book Series: Brill Academic Publishers) Until 1806, Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav (1772-1810) disseminated his thoughts on redemption through homilies. In 1806, however, Nahman chose the genre of tales as an additional and innovative means of religious discourse. An academic close reading of all of the tales, known as Sippurey Ma'asiyot, has not yet been undertaken. As the first comprehensive scholarly work on the whole selection of tales and contrary to previous scholarship, this book does not reduce the tales to biographical expressions of Nahman's tormented soul and messianic aspirations. Instead, it treats them as religious literature where the concept of "intertextuality" is considered essential to explain how Nahman defines his theology of redemption and invites his listeners and readers to appropriate his religious world-view.  More

Man and Theogony in the Lurianic Cabala by Daphne Freedman (Gorgias Press) After the establishment of the Zoharic corpus amongst leading rabbis, no major changes took place in Jewish esoterism until the middle of the 16th century, when in Safed (in Upper Galilee, Palestine; present-day Zefat, Israel) a religious centre of extreme importance for Judaism was established, which was mainly inspired by teachers coming from families expelled from Spain. Until the expulsion of the Jews from Spain (1492) and during the two generations that followed it, the Kabbalistic literary output had certainly been abundant, in Spain till the expulsion as well as in Italy and the Middle East; but it was primarily a matter of systematizing or even popularizing the Zohar or of extending the speculation already developed in the 13th century; there were also some attempts at reconciling philosophy and Kabbala. It should be noted that even the traditionalist theologians adopted a careful and rather reserved attitude toward Kabbala.  More

Likutei Amarim Tanya in Hebrew and English by Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi (Kehot Publication Society) Because the Tanya is considered a 'written Torah'  by Chabad Hassidim it requires, in every generation, an 'oral Torah' to accompany it and to serve as an usher and guide. Written by the great Hasidic master Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi in the late eighteenth century, the Tanya is considered to be one of the most extraordinary books of moral teachings ever written.  More

Opening the Tanya: Discovering the Moral and Mystical Teachings of a Classic Work of Kabbalah by Adin Steinsaltz (Jossey-Bass) is a groundbreaking book that offers a definitive introduction, explanation, and commentary upon the Tanya. For more than two hundred years, the Tanya has been studied by those who know of its insight and wisdom with the devotion and the intensity usually associated with the Bible, the Talmud, the Koran, the Upanishads, and the Bhagavad Gita. Now internationally acclaimed author, scholar, and teacher Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz has written an illuminating and inspiring introduction to the Tanya. Opening the Tanya offers an overview of the Tanya’s broad philosophical and spiritual messages as well as point-by-point commentary on the text itself. More

Learning From the Tanya : Volume Two in the Definitive Commentary on the Moral and Mystical Teachings of a Classic Work of Kabbalah by Adin Steinsaltz (Jossey-Bass) offers a key for unlocking the mysteries of one of the most extraordinary books of moral teachings ever written. A seminal document in the study of Kabbalah, the Tanya explores and solves the dilemmas of the human soul by arriving at the root causes of its struggles. Though it is a classic Jewish spiritual text, the Tanya and its commentary take a broad and comprehensive approach that is neither specific to Judaism nor tied to a particular personality type or time or point of view. The internationally celebrated Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, who has dedicated his life to the study, teaching, and writing of books that explain Jewish scripture, religious practice, spirituality, and mysticism to Jews and non-Jews throughout the world, is the author of this explanation and line-by-line commentary on the Tanya. As relevant today as it was two hundred years ago, the Tanya helps us to understand the many thousands of complexities, doubts, and drives within us as a single basic problem—the struggle between our Godly soul and our animal soul. More

Gnosticism

Echoes from the Gnosis: 100th Anniversary Edition of the Spiritual Classics by G.R.S. Mead edited by John Algeo, introduction Robert Gilbert, Commentary by Stephan Hoeller (Quest Books) Long before the mid-twentieth-century discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library, G. R. S. Mead had translated ancient Gnostic texts. Here in one book is the entire collection of his eleven volumes first published between 1906 and 1908, including "The Hymn of Jesus" and "The Wedding Song of Wisdom."
Each Gnostic text has added historical background, source information, literary comment, and spiritual interpretation. Mead, who devoted his life to esoteric studies and was a pioneer in the Gnostic revival, uniquely understood the complex symbolism of his subject. The reader may be surprised to learn that some of these texts were originally not books, but instead initiatory mystery rituals.
Editor John Algeo preserves Mead's own inspired language. To enhance the texts for today's readers, the volume includes new explanatory essays by contemporary Gnostic Stephan Hoeller and a biography by Robert Gilbert, a world authority on Mead. More

The Voudon Gnostic Workbook by Michael Bertiaux ( Expanded Edition) (Weiser Books) A long-awaited new edition of the seminal text on the spiritual system that is a convergence of Gnosticism and Haitian voodoo, The Voudon Gnostic Workbook, is a singular sacred work that is comprehensive in scope--from "how to be a lucky Hoodoo" to how magick and voodoo intersect energetically, to esoteric time travel. Complete with charts and graphs and instructive interdimensional physics, The Voudon Gnostic Workbook is an "object of desire" among students of the occult. Michael Bertiaux is an occult practitioner and instructor in the Chicago area who developed a large following based on his voodoo-infused Gnostic teachings. 
The The Voudon Gnostic Workbook presents the teachings of a Franco-Haitian esoteric and theurgical society known as "La Couleuvre Noire" (The Black Snake), which by reason of their tradition is believed by its members to be a society derived from an adept who died in Leogane, Haiti, in 1774. This tradition also entails teachings derived from African mysticism and spiritism, as these teachings were developed in two hundred years of occult work and casework practice in esotericism and a type of psychology within Haitian culture and the wider Voudon diaspora, which grew out of the occult practices of the members of this order. More

Gnostic Revisions of Genesis Stories And Early Jesus Traditions by Gerard P. Luttikhuizen (Nag Hammadi & Manichaean Studies: Brill Academic) argues that the intellectuals behind early Gnostic revisions of Genesis stories were second-century Christians with an ideological background in Greek-Hellenistic philosophy, who adopted and reinterpreted biblical narrative materials with a view to exposing the inferiority of the creator-God of Genesis and the ignorance of those Christians who continued to worship this God. It also discusses controversies between Gnostic and early orthodox Christians about the person and the mission of Jesus Christ. More

The Gospel Of Mary: Beyond A Gnostic And A Biblical Mary Magdalene by Esther A. De Boer (Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement Series: T. & T. Clark Publishers) Two basic viewpoints are usually distinguished in recent scholarly work on the Biblical and Gnostic Mary Magdalene: (1) Gnostic authors have constructed a Gnostic Mary Magdalene using the biblical portrait of her as a vehicle for Gnostic teaching, and, (2) biblical authors neglected the important role of Mary Magdalene, of which Gnostic authors preserved evidence. In addition, on the one hand the Gnostic Mary Magdalene is valued as a female apostolic leader, as an advocate of women and of egalitarian discipleship, and as a revealer of Gnostic insights. On the other hand, scholars point to the specific dualism, and the subsequently negative female imagery in Gnostic writings, and reject a positive evaluation of the Gnostic Mary Magdalene. More

Alternative Christs by Olav Hammer(Cambridge University Press) The lack of reliable biographical data on Jesus Christ has left his life open to radical interpretations. This book explores the views of Gnostics, Manicheans, and Muslims as well as less well-known traditions and individuals, without taking sides in any theological arguments.
Few, if any, individuals have had such a profound influence on Western culture as Jesus, even though not a single detail of his life or teaching can be confirmed with certainty. This lack of reliable biographical data has left his life open to broad interpretation. Jesus, gnostic and apocryphal sources insist, never truly died on the cross since he was a divine being, whose human frame was an illusion. Muslim sources affirm that Jesus was a prophet of God and will return at the end of time. Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels formulated racial theories in which Jesus was a redeemer for Aryans only, while the Renaissance polymath Guillaume Postel was convinced that Christ had returned as a Venetian woman. This book explores these and other views without taking sides in any theological arguments and presents research on a variety of alternative Christologies. More 

Magic

In the Path of the Moon: Babylonian Celestial Divination and Its Legacyby Francesca Rochberg (Studies in Ancient Magic and Divination: Brill Academic Publishers) Celestial divination, in the form of omens from lunar, planetary, astral, and meteorological phenomena, was central to Mesopotamian cuneiform scholarship and science from the late second millennium BCE into the Hellenistic period. Beyond the boundaries of ancient Mesopotamia, the ideas, texts, and traditions of Babylonian celestial divination are traceable in Hellenistic sciences and philosophies. This collection of essays investigates features of Babylonian celestial divination with special focus on those aspects that influenced later Greco-Roman astronomy, astrology, and theories of signs. A multifaceted collection of philological, historical, and philosophical investigations, In the Path of the Moon offers Assyriologists, classicists, and historians of ancient science a wide-ranging series of studies unified around the theme of Babylonian celestial divination's legacy. More
The Heavenly Writing: Divination, Horoscopy, and Astronomy in Mesopotamian Culture by Francesca Rochberg (Cambridge University Press, 2004).Celestial phenomena in ancient Mesopotamia was observed and interpreted as signs from the gods as well as physical phenomena. Relating the various ways the heavens were contemplated and understood, this study traces the emergence of personal astrology from the tradition of celestial divination and how astronomical methodology developed for horoscopes. Its importance lies in its treatment of Babylonian celestial sciences (celestial divination, horoscopy, and astronomy) as subjects relevant to the history of science and culture. More

Star Myths of the Greeks and Romans: A Sourcebook Containing "The Constellations" of Pseudo-Eratosthenes and the "Poetic Astronomy" of Hyginus translated by Theony Condos (Phanes) THE NIGHTLY APPEARANCE of the stars, their arrangement in the sky, their regular risings and settings through the course of the year, have been a source of endless wonder and speculation. But where did the constellations come from and what are the myths associated with them?
Star Myths of the Greeks and Romans is the most comprehensive work ever published on the forty-eight classical constellations. Included in this handbook are the only surviving works on the constellation myths that have come down to us from antiquity: an epitome of The Constellations of Eratosthenes—never before translated into English—and The Poetic Astronomy of Hyginus. Also provided are accurate and detailed commentaries on each constellation myth, and complete references for those who wish to dig deeper. This book is a comprehensive sourcework for anyone interested in astronomy or mythology—and an ideal resource for the occasional stargazer. More

The Clavis or Key to the Magic of Solomon: From an Original Talismanic Grimoire in Full Color by Ebenezer Sibley and Frederick Hockley by Joseph H Peterson (Ibis) The Clavis or Key to the Magic of Solomon is one of several notebooks from the estate of Ebenezer Sibley, transcribed under the direction of Frederic Hockley (1808-1885). Sibley was a prominent physician and an influential author, who complemented his scientific studies with writings on the “deeper truths” including magic, astrology, alchemy, and hypnotherapy. Both Sibley and Hockley were major inspirations in the occult revival of the past two centuries, influencing A.E. Waite, S.L. Mathers, Aleister Crowley, as well as the Golden Dawn, Rosicrucian, and Masonic movements. This collection reflects Sibley’s teachings on the practical use of celestial influences and harmonies. The Clavis contains clear and systematic instructions for constructing magical tools and pentacles for many practical purposes. It includes eight separate magical texts: The Mysterious Ring, Experiments of the Spirits, Birto, Vassago, Agares, Bealpharos, The Wheel of Wisdom, and the Complete Book of Magic Science. The manuscript reproduced here is the most accurate and complete known, very beautifully and carefully written complete with extraordinary hand-colored seals and colored handwritten text. 282 color pages with a color fold-out and a huge index. More

Christianity

Orthodoxy, Process and Product by L Boeve, M Lamberigts, and T Merrigan (Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium: Peeters) From 2002-2008, three research groups from the departments of systematic theology and church history at the Faculty of Theology, K.U.Leuven, joined forces in an interdisciplinary project, entitled "Orthodoxy: Process and Product". The aim of the project was a "church-historical and systematic-theological study of the determination of truth in church and theology". The present volume contains contributions from all senior members of the project research group. The contributions are the result of a research conference in 2006, in which both the question of the nature of truth as such, and the process of determination of theological truth was approached from many different angles. Thus, questions from philosophy, systematic theology and history of church and theology are discussed, including such themes as the implications of various philosophical theories of truth for theology, the question of religious pluralism and its ramifications for theological truth-claims, theological truth claims in the thought of Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine, John Driedo, and at the Second Vatican Council. In addition, the meta-question of the relationship between the historical and the systematic aspects of theological truth and the way in which the historical and systematic theological disciplines interact play an important role in this volume. More

A Companion to the Catholic Enlightenment in Europe by Ulrich L. Lehner and Michael Printy(Brill's Companion to the Christian Tradition: Brill Academic Publications) The term "Catholic Enlightenment" is no longer considered oxymoronic within the historical profession. Nevertheless, it is a term that is much debated and much misunderstood; this is especially true amongst Anglo-American scholars. Indeed, the scholarship of such historians as Sebastian Merkle and Bernard Plongeron established the concept of a distinctly Catholic eighteenth-century reform for Continental historians well in advance of their English speaking colleagues. Still, Anglo-American historiography is ready to consider a distinctly Catholic and reformist dimension to the Age of Enlightenment.
This volume aims to provide an essential guide to scholarship on the Catholic Enlightenment by providing a country-by-country survey of the major events, figures, texts and subsequent scholarship of the Catholic Enlightenment. Moreover, this volume makes two other important contributions: first, it brings together European, English and American scholars as contributors. Second, and more importantly, essays contained in the volume significantly broaden the scope of the Catholic Enlightenment from the "center" (France, Holy Roman Empire, Italian States) to also include the periphery of Catholic Europe, including Poland, and Malta. More

Reading and the Work of Restoration: History and Scripture in the Theology of Hugh St. Victor by Franlkin T. Harkins (Studies and Texts: PIMS) This book represents the first comprehensive study of the role of historia in the processes of reading and restoration (or salvation) in the theology of Hugh of St Victor. By providing a close reading of Hugh's major works, it affords a window onto the holistic vision of liberal arts education, scriptural exegesis, moral formation, and spirituality that attracted young students to the Parisian School of St Victor in the early twelfth century. Hugh's teaching on memory-training and his view of the liberal arts as roads leading the reader toward God have the aim of preparing students for scriptural reading and its three subdisciplines — historia, allegory, and tropology. This pedagogical program both draws on and diverges from the thought of Augustine. For Hugh, the fallen human being begins to be restored to the image of God through a program of ordered reading in the liberal arts and Sacred Scripture; this restoration continues at the fundamental level of historia even as the student advances through reading's higher disciplines. In responding to and concretizing the moral teaching found in the scriptural text, the reader comes to participate in the ongoing history of salvation. More

Companion to Pastoral Care in the Late Middle Ages: 1200-1500  by Ronald J. Stansbury (Brill's Companion to the Christian Tradition: Brill Academic Publishers) The study of pastoral care in the middle ages has seen a resurgence in recent years. Scholars are now approaching this subject less from their respective ecclesiastical or parochial biases and more out of an effort to understand the significant role pastors (secular and religious) had in the shaping of medieval society at large. This book explores some of the new ways scholars are approaching this topic. Using a variety of sources and disciplinary angles: theology, preaching, catechesis, confessional literature, visitation records, monastic cartularies and the like, these studies show the many and varied ways in which pastoral care came to play such an important role in the day to day lives of medieval people. More

Interaction Between Judaism and Christianity in History, Religion, Art, and Literature edited by Marcel Poorthuis, Joshua Schwartz, Joseph Turner (Jewish and Christian Perspectives Series: Brill) contains a variety of essays that deal with the complex relationships between Judaism and Christianity. From the Jewish side, particularly in Orthodox circles, there is the position maintaining the independence of Judaism from outside influences including Christianity. Traditional Christian theology, on the other hand, held to a supercessionist view in which Judaism was seen merely as a historical preparation for the later revelation of Christianity. Was there no real interaction? When and how did Judaism and Christianity became two distinct religions? When did the 'parting of ways' take place, if indeed there really was such a parting of ways? This present volume takes a bold step forward by assuming that no historical period can be excluded from the interactive process between Judaism and Christianity, conscious or unconscious, as a polemical rejection or as tacit appropriation. More

Augustine and Postmodern Thought: A New Alliance against Modernity? by L Boeve, M Lamberigts, M. Wisse, and M Lamberigts (Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium: Peeters) The North-African Church Father, or at least the thinking patterns or intuitions borrowed from him, are often invoked in discussions on the relation between Christian faith and the contemporary postmodern context. On the one hand, one observes the retrieval of rather premodern approaches in order to remedy the so-called (post-)modern crisis, which is said to result in nihilism, relativism, etc. For what seems to attract some theologians in Augustinian thinking is the (apparent) marriage between Greek (neo-Platonic) philosophy and Christian faith. Such a combination of premodern metaphysics and Christian faith would serve as a necessary presupposition for every legitimate theological epistemology. On the other hand, there are theologians and philosophers who are increasingly trying to reread Augustine from a postmodern stance, stressing the role of particularity, narrativity, historicity, and the decentring of subjectivity, which they see present in Augustine's approach, or from which they deconstruct Augustine's thinking. Central questions discussed during the symposium were: Are the analyses, offered by authors who are re-introducing Augustine with respect to the contemporary context, correct? To what diagnosed problems, and on what basis, do they propose Augustine as a remedy? Are their presentations of other theological and philosophical responses to the present situation correct and which 'Augustine' do they claim to represent? More fundamentally: what would a genuine Augustinian epistemology look like, and what can we gain from it? In what way can it be normative for a theological epistemology in our day? In answering these questions, the symposium focused explicitly on contemporary philosophical and theological evaluations of both modernity and postmodernity, and theological responses to them. More

The Brill Dictionary of Gregory of Nyssa Edited by Lucas Francisco Mateo-Seco & Giulio Maspero, translated by Seth Cherney (Brill Academic) is the fruit of wide-ranging collaboration between experts in Philology, Philosophy, History and Theology. These scholars shared the desire to develop a comprehensive reference work that would help attract more people to the study of the 'Father of Fathers' and assist them in their work. Gregory of Nyssa's thought is at once quintessentially classic and modern, as it speaks directly to the contemporary reader. As interest in Gregory has increased along with the number of works devoted to him, the need for a comprehensive introduction and bibliographical reference work has arisen. In order to meet this need, more than forty scholars from various disciplines and perspectives have contributed to this work. In two hundred articles, the Brill Dictionary of Gregory of Nyssa provides a symphonic vision of the studies on Gregory of Nyssa and his thought. The work is fun to browse and skip around in, one peculiarity is Gregory's surviving works are listed by their standard abbreviations.  More

Hidden and Triumphant: The Underground Struggle to Save Russian Iconography by Irina Yazykova, Paul Greneir, with a foreword by Wendy Salmond (Paraclete Press) recounts the story of an aspect of Russian culture that fought to survive throughout the 20th century the icon. Russian iconography kept faith alive in Soviet Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution. As monasteries and churches were ruined, icons destroyed, thousands of believers killed or sent to Soviet prisons and labor camps, a few courageous iconographers continued to paint holy images secretly, despite the ever-present threat of arrest. Others were forced to leave Russia altogether, and while living abroad, struggled to preserve their Orthodox traditions. Today we are witness to a renaissance of the Russian icon, made possible by the sacrifices of this previous generation of heroes. More

Remythologizing Theology: Divine Action, Passion, and Authorship by Kevin J. Vanhoozer (Cambridge Studies in Christian Doctrine: Cambridge University Press) (Hardcover) The rise of modern science and the proclaimed 'death' of God in the nineteenth century led to a radical questioning of divine action and authorship - Bultmann's celebrated 'demythologizing'. Remythologizing Theology moves in another direction that begins by taking seriously the biblical accounts of God's speaking. It establishes divine communicative action as the formal and material principle of theology, and suggests that interpersonal dialogue, rather than impersonal causality, is the keystone of God's relationship with the world. This original contribution to the theology of divine action and authorship develops a new vision of Christian theism. It also revisits several long-standing controversies such as the relations of God's sovereignty to human freedom, time to eternity, and suffering to love. Groundbreaking and thought-provoking, it brings theology into fruitful dialogue with philosophy, literary theory, and biblical studies. More

Key Events in the Life of the Historical Jesus: A Collaborative Exploration of Contexts & Coherence edited by Darrell L. Bock, Robert L. Webb(Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen Zum Neuen Testament / Scientific Research on the New Testament: Mohr Siebeck) Using a carefully defined approach to historical Jesus studies and historical method, this collection of essays examines twelve key events in the life of Jesus that were part of a decade-long collaborative research project. Each essay examines the case for the event's authenticity and then explores the social and cultural background to the event to provide an under-standing of the event's historical significance. The first six events are related to the public ministry context of Jesus, mostly associated with his Galilean ministry, while latter six events involve his final days in Jerusalem. The final essay closes with suggestions about how these events cohere and what they can tell us about what Jesus did. More 

The Sentences Book 1: The Mystery of the Trinity by Peter Lombard and Giulio Silano (Mediaeval Sources in Translation: PIMS)

The Sentences Book 2: On Creation by Peter Lombard and Giulio Silano (Mediaeval Sources in Translation: PIMS)

The Sentences Book 3: Incarnation of the Word by Peter Lombard and Giulio Silano (Mediaeval Sources in Translation: PIMS)

The Sentences, Book 4: On the Doctrine of Signs by Peter Lombard and Giulio Silano (Mediaeval Sources in Translation: PIMS)

Major and eventually revolutionary translation of a central work in medieval Western theology.

Despite the centrality of Peter Lombard's work in the history of the Western academic tradition, very little is known about his life. The earliest unimpeach­able reference occurs in a letter of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, of around 1138— 1140, introducing him to the abbot of St. Victor in Paris. By 1144, a poet in far-off Bavaria could list him as one of the theological luminaries of the Parisian schools. His major work, the four books of the Sentences, was written in the mid twelfth century, and as early as the 1160s, the text was glossed and commented on in the schools. There is hardly a theologian of note throughout the rest of the Middle Ages who did not write a commentary on it.

Yet in spite of its importance in Western intellectual history and its capa­city to excite many generations of students and teachers, the Sentences has received little attention in more recent times. Indeed, it has been called 'one of the least read of the world's great books.' The form of the work has proved misleading, not least to modern readers. One recurring question is whether Peter could be called an author at all, since he seems to be a mere compiler of the works of the Fathers and other universally accepted ecclesiastical writers. But it would be misleading to describe Peter's efforts as mere anthologizing. Rather, his Sentences can be likened to a modern legal casebook and the patristic citations in it to legal precedents. In other words, they serve as the binding authorities which collectively provide the matter for the normative elaboration of the Christian faith. This laborious activity of collecting sentences from ancient works and framing new ones occurred in the classroom. In short, the effort to identify and point out the coherence of the Christian tradition was inseparable from the work of teaching. Technique, rationality, and dialectic were emphasized, not for their own sake, but to bring the tradition alive and make it relevant to students and the larger communities they would serve.

Peter Lombard's major work, the four books of the Sentences, was written in the mid twelfth century, and as early as the 1160s, the text was glossed and commented on in the schools. There is hardly a theologian of note throughout the rest of the Middle Ages who did not write a commentary on the. Sentences. Yet in spite of its importance in Western intellectual history and its capacity to excite many generations of students and teachers, the Sentences has received little attention in more recent times. Indeed, it has been called 'one of the least read of the world's great books.'

Volume One makes available for the first time in English a full translation of Book 1 of the Sentences. It consists of forty-eight Distinctions, the bulk of which deal with God in his transcendence and with the mystery of the Trinity. The person of God the Father is the topic in Distinction iv, that of God the Son in v—ix, that of God the Holy Spirit in x—xviii. Distinctions xix—xxxiv are deeply concerned with the language that can be used in describing the Trinity and the relations among the divine persons. The remaining distinctions deal with the divine attributes as they become manifest in God's action "toward creatures. An important concern is the preservation of God's sovereign freedom and the avoidance of any confusion regarding the absolute transcendence of God, despite his graceful self-disclosure in creation and revelation.

Volume Two makes available for the first time in English a full translation of the forty-four Distinctions of Book 2. In the first Peter sets out a definition of creation and ponders the reasons which God may have had for engaging in it. Angels, their creation, nature, fall, ranks, and ministries are the subject of Distinctions 2-11. Distinctions 12-15 set out an hexaemeron, or an account of the six days of creation as described in Genesis. The next five Distinctions concentrate on the creation of man and woman and the state of human beings before their sinful fall, including their manner of procreation. Distinctions 21-29, organized around the fall, are de­voted to human psychology, freedom of choice, and grace. In Distinctions 30-33 the focus is on original sin, its transmission by the current mode of procreation, its remission in baptism. And the Book concludes in Distinctions 34-44 with a de­tailed analysis of actual sin and how it occurs by free choice in the diminished condition of human freedom after the fall.

Volume Three makes available for the first time in English a full translation of Book 3 of the Sentences. The first twenty-two of its forty Distinctions deal with the mystery of the Word made flesh: Christ's incarnation, passion, and death, and the consequent restoration of humankind. With the question of whether Christ had the virtues of faith, hope, and charity, a transition is made from Chris­tology to a consideration of the virtues; these belong in this Book principally be­cause the Christian is called to live them in imitation of Christ, who embodies all of them perfectly. The last four Distinctions outline the Decalogue in the context of the two commandments given by Christ regarding the love of God and neighbour. The Book closes by asserting the superiority of the Gospel over the Law of the Old Testament.

Volume Four not seen

Theses volumes each contain an introduction to Peter and to the Sentences and its particular book, a list of the major chapter headings, and a bibliography. More

The Feminine Personification of Wisdom: A Study of Homer's Penelope, Cappadocian Macrina, Boethius' Philosophia and Dante's Beatrice by Wendy Elgersma Helleman (Edwin Mellen Press) examines the attribution of abstract values to women by analyzing four characters spanning literary genres and more that 2000 years. Penelope, Macrina, Philosophia, and Beatrice are connected by their contribution to the theme of wisdom through their use of reason against passion. Feminine personification of reason and wisdom makes its own contribution as antidote to traditional understanding of 'feminine' as 'emotional' or 'irrational'. This book examines allegorical personification of Sophia, or wisdom, in ancient and medieval philosophy and literature, examining four feminine figures who personify wisdom. The first is Penelope of Homeric epic, weaving and unraveling to forestall her suitors; the tale is interpreted allegorically by Cynics and Stoics to discuss the place of logic in philosophy. The second example, Macrina, sister of Gregory of Nyssa, is less obviously allegorical. But Gregory depicts her as an embodiment of wisdom using the theme, 'reason against passion'. Boethius' Philosophia is portrayed as the lady who consoles as she reminds the prisoner of divine reason ruling the world. And finally, Dante's Beatrice, his muse, teacher and guide in achieving the beatific vision. Contemporary recognition of allegory as rhetorical technique supports appreciation of Dante's skill in depicting Beatrice as Lady Wisdom. More

Theophany: The Appearing of God According to the Writings of Johannes Scottus Eriugena by Hilary Anne-Marie Mooney (Beitrage Zur Historischen Theologie, 146: Mohr Siebeck) Hilary Anne-Marie Mooney's study is based on the new critical edition of Eriugena's Periphyseon and analyzes Eriugena as a biblically rooted theologian. The author presents the notion of "theophany", the appearing of God, as the key to understanding Eriugena's system as a whole. The theophanic structure inherent in all Eriugena's accounts of divine revealing possesses an impressive coherence.  She focuses on the creative impulses which he draws from Scripture and she investigates the influence of theological and philosophical thinkers of the first six Christian centuries on Eriugena. The author considers those passages of Eriugena's writings in which the precise term `theophany' is used as well as other passages in which the term does not occur but which are nonetheless imbued with the 'notion' of a theophanic appearing of God. In her study the author maintains that a theophanic structure characterized by four recurring facets may be unearthed in Eriugena's theology of the revealing of God. More

Christ in Postmodern Philosophy: Gianni Vattimo, Rene Girard, and Slavoj Zizek by Frederiek Depoortere (T&T Clark) (Hardcover) offers an investigation into the Christological ideas of three contemporary thinkers: Slavoj Zizek, Gianni Vattimo and Rene Girard.

The present book offers an investigation into the Christological reflections found in the work of three contemporary thinkers, namely Gianni Vattimo, Rene Girard and Slavoj Zizek. It is one of the results of my doctoral research, which began in October 2003 and which intended to compare and evaluate from a theological perspective the work of a number of contemporary continental philosophers who had recently made a so-called 'turn to religion' and to monotheism in particular. The original project text mentioned the names of John D. Caputo, Richard Kearney, Gianni Vattimo, Merold Westphal and Slavoj Zizek. My first exploratory study of these philosophers suggested to me that they can be divided into two groups. The first group consists of Caputo, Kearney and Westphal. In the wake of Heidegger's announcement of the end of onto-theology and inspired by both Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida, they search for a post-metaphysical God, a God who is often indicated as tout autre (wholly other). Zizek, on the other hand, does not belong to this group. First, he clearly has another source of inspiration: not Heidegger, Levinas or Derrida, but Lacan and the great thinkers of German Idealism (Kant, Schelling and Hegel). Moreover, he does not aim at tracing a post-metaphysical God. His 'turn' to Christianity is a result of his concern to 'save' the achievements of modernity from fundamentalism as well as from postmodern relativism and religious obscurantism. Vattimo, finally, is a go-between. His sources (mainly Nietzsche and Heidegger) seem to indicate that he aligns with the first group. Like Caputo, Kearney and Westphal, Vattimo is also searching for the God who comes after metaphysics, but, as we shall see in due course, he explicitly rejects the wholly other God defended by them. With Zizek, furthermore, Vattimo shares the attention for the event of the incarnation and the conviction that the incarnation amounts to the end of God's transcendence. Both thinkers also defend the uniqueness of Christianity vis-a-vis natural religiosity. In this way, they seem to share at least some affinity with the views of Rene Girard, who has also defended the uniqueness of Christianity and claims that the latter broke away from the violent transcendence of the natural religions. In what follows, we will investigate the Christological ideas of these three contemporary thinkers, focusing on the topics of the relation between transcendence and the event of the incarnation on the one hand, and the topic of the uniqueness of Christianity on the other. More

The Cambridge History of Christianity: Volume 4, Christianity in Western Europe, c.1100-c.1500 edited by Miri Rubin and Walter Simons (Cambridge University Press) During the early middle ages, Europe developed complex and varied Christian cultures, and from about 1100 secular rulers, competing factions and inspired individuals continued to engender a diverse and ever-changing mix within Christian society. This volume explores the wide range of institutions, practices and experiences associated with the life of European Christians in the later middle ages. The clergy of this period initiated new approaches to the role of priests, bishops and popes, and developed an ambitious project to instruct the laity. For lay people, the practices of parish religion were central, but many sought additional ways to enrich their lives as Christians. Impulses towards reform and renewal periodically swept across Europe, led by charismatic preachers and supported by secular rulers. This book provides accessible accounts of these complex historical processes and entices the reader towards further enquiry.  More

Book of All Saints by Adrienne von Speyr (Ignatius Press) Adrienne von Speyr, a renowned mystic and spiritual writer from Switzerland, was received into the Catholic Church at the age of 38 by one of the theological giants of the 20th century, Fr. Hans Urs von Balthasar, on the Feast of All Saints, 1940. Balthasar became her spiritual director and confessor until her death in 1967, during which time Adrienne was favored with many gifts of authentic mystical prayer. Balthasar considered one of the central characteristics of Adrienne's prayer to be her transparency to the inspirations she received from God, along with a deep personal communion with the saints.  More

Meister Eckhart: An Asian Perspective by Hee-Sung Keel (Louvain Theological & Pastoral Monographs: Peeters Publishers) Meister Eckhart (1260?-1328) is undoubtedly the most important thinker in the West for drawing the spiritual heritage of Christian mysticism close to the monistic spirit that infuses so much of Asian religious thought. His vision of the unio mystica of God and the soul as a perfect unity goes far beyond the conventional mysticism of love that was dominant before him. Eckhart's "mysticism of unity," a bold and revolutionary affirmation of a perfect divine-human unity realized in the ground of the soul, as well as the mysti­cal atheism it gave rise to, inspired a wealth of profound spiritual insights that continue to challenge the reader of his sermons today. More

The Mass: The Presence of the Sacrifice of the Cross by Charles Cardinal Journet (St. Augustines Press) Charles Journet, the great Swiss theologian and cardinal of the Church, first wrote this work on the Mass over forty years ago; yet his ever-ancient-ever-new insights into the sacrificial nature of the Mass are most needed today, when this aspect of the sacrament is so often misunderstood or neglected.
The Mass is the "unbloody presence of the one unique bloody sacrifice of the Cross." This is the fundamental principle upon which Journet develops his theology of the Mass. Guided by the teachings of the Fathers, St. Thomas Aquinas, and the Magisterium of the Church, and supported by his own rich spiri­tual life, Journet plumbs the depths of this unfathomable Mystery and presents It to the reader with a clarity rarely equaled. More

A Good Life in a World Made Good: Albert Eustace Haydon, 1880-1975 by Creighton Peden (American Liberal Religious Thought: Peter Lang Publishing) Creighton Peden is a scholar of 19th and 20th century, liberal theology who, for this book, was able to draw upon previously unavailable original sources - lectures, notes, and radio broadcasts. When it comes to research, understanding, and appreciation of the topic, Peden is without peer. A Good Life in a World Made Good: Albert Eustace Haydon, 1880-1975, chronicles Haydon’s journey from evangelical Christian to religious humanism - pausing along the way to engage world religions. Always faithful in the pursuit of truth, Haydon was equally interested in the development of human character. No theologian, preacher, or student of American religious thought could fail to benefit from reading this intellectual biography. More

The Spirituality of the Christian East, A Systematic Handbook, Volume One by Tomás Spidlík SJ; translated by Anthony P. Gythiel (Cistercian Publications) Prayer: The Spirituality of the Christian East, Volume 2 by Tomás Spidlík SJ, translated by Anthony P. Gythiel Cistercian Publications) Professor-emeritus of the Pontifical Oriental Institute at Rome, Tomas Spidlík dedicated his scholarly life to studying and teaching the theology and spirituality of the Christian East in the hope of reconciling Eastern and Western Christian traditions. In this encyclopaedic overview of Eastern spiritual teaching he has created a bridge by which Western Christians may pass over centuries of misunderstanding and obliviousness. This second volume on Eastern Christian spirituality amplifies in depth the final two chapters of the earlier The Spirituality of the Christian East: A Systematic Handbook. Like Cassian in writing his Conferences, Cardinal Spidlík does not advocate any particular pattern of prayer, but sets out faithfully to collect and share the teachings of generations of eastern monks and spiritual writers. More

Jean Gerson And the Last Medieval Reformation by Brian Patrick McGuire (Hardcover) (Pennsylvania State University Press) One of the problems of dividing our history into epochs, such as ancient, medieval, Renaissance and Reformation; is that these great divisions of time cast a shadow on transitional people who belong to their place in history without the prescience of future history's flow. Jean Gerson, the major French religious reformer, educator, and theologian who lived between the 14th and 15th century is such a transitional figure.  McGuire's intensive biography and study of Gerson, the first since 1929, provides a rich overview of the life and times of this visionary scholar by giving a summary account of his writings that were very influential on Luther and to a lesser extent, Calvin in the generation after Gerson’s death.  Gerson played an important role in attempts to heal the Great Schism which culminated in the Council of Constance (1414 – 1418) More

A Biographical Dictionary of Christian Theologians edited by Patrick Carey, Joseph Lienhard (Hendrickson) (hardcover) The last 20 centuries of Christian history have witnessed the emergence of numerous theological traditions. This reference provides alphabetically arranged entries for more than 450 Christian theologians. Included are entries for those individuals whose work was primarily in systematic and spiritual theology, or who were church historians chiefly concerned with theological matters. Whenever possible, each entry provides basic biographical information, a brief account of the theologian's education and career, and a summary of the person's most important contributions to theology. The entries end with bibliographies of primary and secondary sources, while the volume concludes with a selected, general bibliography. More

Dictionary of Early Christian Literature (A Herder & Herder book: The Crossroad Publishing Company) The long-awaited successor to the Altaner Patrologie handbooks, the Dictionary presents the life and work of Christian authors up to the eighth century and an assessment of their lasting influence on the Christian tradition. Articles on authors provide a brief description of their lives, a presentation of their works, and an assessment of their influence on the Christian tradition. Other articles deal with types of works and their particular characteristics. Scholars and students will both appreciate the extensive, up-to-date bibliographical information that is supplies. More

Theological Milton: Deity, Discourse And Heresy in the Miltonic Canon by Michael Lieb (Medieval & Renaissance Literary Studies Duquesne University Press) In lively, forceful, and at times witty language, Michael Lieb has written an illuminating study of the figure of God as a literary character in the writings of John Milton. Milton's God has always been a provocative and controversial figure, and Lieb offers a fresh way to look at the relationship between the language of theology and the language of poetry in Milton's works. He draws into the discussion previous authors on the subjectPatrides, Hunter, Kelley, Empson, Danielson, Rumrich and others—resulting in a dynamic debate about Milton's multifarious God. By stressing God's multivalent qualities, Theological Milton offers an innovative perspective on the darker side of the divinity. Lieb allows us to see a Miltonic God of hate as well as a God of love, a God who is a destroyer as well as a creator. Lieb directly confronts the more troubling faces of God in a manner richly informed by Milton's own theology. Against the theoretical framework for the idea of addressing God as a distinctly literary figure, Lieb presents Milton in the historical milieu prior to and contemporaneous with his works. More

Islam

The Banquet: A Reading of the Fifth Sura of the Qur'an by Michel Cuypers (Rhetorica Semitica) Cuyper's work is a ground-breaking contribution to Islamic-Christian studies and is being warmly received by the Islamic academic community. He applies recent methods of rhetorical textual studies to the analysis of the Qur'an, the holy book of Islam, which previously has been seen by many as a fragmented text with little sense of order. He has achieved a systematic and organised reading of the Qur'an text that is in absolute accordance with the Islamic faith, a task that has never before been accomplished. Muslim and Christian theologians around the world recognise his achievement as one of the most important contributions to an understanding of Islam based on Christian scholarship. More

Logic, Rhetoric and Legal Reasoning in the Qur'an: God's Arguments by Rosalind Ward Gwynne (Routledge) [Hardcover] Muslims have always used verses from the Qur'an to support opinions on law, theology, or life in general, but almost no attention has been paid to how the Qur'an presents its own precepts as conclusions proceeding from reasoned arguments. Whether it is a question of God's powers of creation, the rationale for his acts, or how people are to think clearly about their lives and fates, Muslims have so internalized Qur'anic patterns of reasoning that many affirm that the Qur'an appeals first of all to the human powers of intellect.
This book provides a new key to both the Qur'an and Islamic intellectual history. Examining Qur'anic argument by form and not content helps readers to discover the significance of passages often ignored by the scholar who compares texts and the believer who focuses upon commandments, as it allows scholars of Qur'anic exegesis, Islamic theology, philosophy, and law to tie their findings in yet another way to the text that Muslims consider the speech of God. More

Pathways to an Inner Islam: Massignon, Corbin, Guénon, and Schuon by Patrick Laude (State University of New York Press) provides an introduction to the esoteric or spiritual "inner Islam" presented by Western thinkers Louis Massignon, Henry Corbin, René Guénon, and Frithjof Schuon. Particularly interested in Sufism--the mystical tradition of Islam--these four twentieth-century authors who wrote in French played an important role in presenting Islamic spirituality to the West and have also had an influence in parts of the Muslim world, such as Turkey, Iran, and Pakistan. Patrick Laude brings them together to argue that an understanding of their inner Islam challenges reductionist views of Islam as an essentially legalistic tradition and highlights its spiritual qualities. The book discusses their thought on the definitions of spiritual Islam and Sufism, the metaphysical and mystical understanding of the Prophet and the Qur<aµn, the function of femininity in Islamic spirituality, and the inner understanding of jihaµd. In addition, the writers' Christian backgrounds and their participation in the intellectual and spiritual traditions of both Christianity and Islam offer a dynamic perspective on interfaith dialogue. More

Ibn Arabî - Time and Cosmology by Mohamed Haj Yousef (Culture and Civilization in the Middle East: Routledge) is the first comprehensive attempt to explain Ibn Arabî’s distinctive view of time and its role in the process of creating the cosmos and its relation with the Creator. By comparing this original view with modern theories of physics and cosmology, Mohamed Haj Yousef constructs a new cosmological model that may deepen and extend our understanding of the world, while potentially solving some of the drawbacks in the current models such as the historical Zeno's paradoxes of motion and the recent Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox (EPR) that underlines the discrepancies between Quantum Mechanics and Relativity. More

Martin Luther and Islam: A Study in Sixteenth-Century Polemics and Apologetics by Adam S. Francisco (The History of Christian-Muslim Relations: Brill) The Ottoman assault upon Vienna in 1529 sent shockwaves through­out Germany. Although the Habsburg army had successfully thwarted the attack, according to eyewitness accounts some 30,000 people in sur­rounding towns and villages had either been killed or taken back to Istanbul for sale in the slave market.' What was perhaps more unsettling, at least to those who were perceptive of the ideological motivation behind the siege, was the determination of Sultan Suleyman (1520­1566) and his Muslim Turkish army to 'conquer the infidel lands for Islam.' In response to the threat, and after reading what he considered the best description of Ottoman religion and culture Georgius de Hungaria's Tractatus de moribus, condictionibus et nequicia Turcorum (1481) Martin Luther (1483-1546) wrote, 'Since we now have the Turk and his religion at our very doorstep our people must be warned lest, either moved by the splendour of the Turkish religion and the external appearances of their customs or displeased by the meagre display of our own faith or the deformity of our customs, they deny their Christ and follow Muhammad. Assessing the nature of Ottoman religion and culture, and the threat that it posed to Christians. More

The Age of Beloveds: Love and the Beloved in Early-Modern Ottoman and European Culture and Society by Walter G. Andrews, Mehmet Kalpakli (Duke University Press) (Hardcover) "The Age of Beloveds is a treasure and a masterpiece. With breathtakingly extensive original research, it is beautifully written, in a style both inviting and impressive. It is the fruit of a lifetime's project to add Ottoman literature to the canons of world literature." -Victoria Holbrook, author of The Unreadable Shores of Love: Turkish Modernity and Mystic Romance.
The Age of Beloveds offers a rich introduction to early-modern Ottoman culture through a study of its beautiful lyric love poetry. At the same time, it suggests provocative cross-cultural parallels in the sociology and spirituality of love in Europe—from Istanbul to London—during the long sixteenth century. Walter G. Andrews and Mehmet Kalpakli provide a generous sampling of translations of Ottoman poems, many of which have never appeared in English, along with informative and inspired close readings. The authors explain that the flourishing of Ottoman power and culture during the "Turkish Renaissance" manifested itself, to some degree, as an "age of beloveds," in which young men became the focal points for the desire and attention of powerful officeholders and artists as well as the inspiration for a rich literature of love.
The authors show that the "age of beloveds" was not just an Ottoman, eastern European, or Islamic phenomenon. It extended into western Europe as well, pervading the cultures of Venice, Florence, Rome, and London during the same period. Andrews and Kalpakli contend that in an age dominated by absolute rulers and troubled by war, cultural change, and religious upheaval, the attachments of dependent courtiers and the longings of anxious commoners aroused an intense interest in love and the beloved. The Age of Beloveds reveals new commonalities in the cultural-history of two worlds long seen as radically different.  More

Beauty And Love by Seyh Galip and Victoria Rowe Holbrook (MLA Texts and Translations: Modern Language Association) Companion volume in Turkish: Husn u Ask by Seyh Galip and Victoria Rowe Holbrook (MLA Texts and Translations: Modern Language Association) Holbrook's brilliant translation of the greatest Turkish romance brings Galip's dramatic imagery alive while making ingenious use of Ottoman mete for the first time in English. Her introduction is the finest brief treatment of Islamic mysticism in existence. Her profound knowledge of Sufism clarifies the philosophical vocabulary of the tale, and her modernized spelling of the text breaks with transliteration tradition to to make her work accessible to all readers of Turkish—Orhan Pamuk
Likewise her translation may well aid in the revival of appreciation of Ottoman poetics and the mysticism of love. The girl Beauty and the boy Love are betrothed to each other as children. But Beauty violates the custom of the tribe by falling in love with him, and Love must undergo the trials of a journey to the Land of the Heart to prove himself worthy—a journey to realization of both his and Beauty's true nature. More

God's Terrorists: The Wahhabi Cult And the Hidden Roots of Modern Jihad by Charles Allen (Da Capo Press) An important study of the little-known history of the Wahhabi, a fundamentalist Islamic tribe whose teachings influence today's extreme Islamic terrorists, including the Taliban and Osama bin Laden. More

Al-Hidayah: The Guide: A Classical Manual of Hanafi Law - VOLUME 1 by Burhan al-Din al-Marghinani, translated by Imran Ahsan Khan Nyazee (Amal Press) The Hidayah represents the refined, distilled and authentic version of a legal tradition developed over many centuries. It presents the corpus of Hanafi law in its approved and preferred form and forges an organic link with the other schools of law.  There is no book that can match the power of al-Hidayah as a teaching manual. Education in Islamic law is not complete without this book. More

The Reflective Heart : Discovering Spiritual Intelligence in Ibn 'Arabi's 'Meccan Illuminations' by James Winston Morris (Fons Vitae) For centuries Ibn ‘Arabi has been considered the “Greatest Master” of Islamic spiritual teaching, but Western readers have only recently had access to his greatest writings. This introduction to Ibn ‘Arabi’s Meccan Illuminations highlights the mysticism and realization of Sufi spiritual life, providing an intellectually penetrating look without requiring specialized knowledge. The development of several key themes and modes of reflection in Ibn ‘Arabi’s spiritual teachings are explored as are the gradually unfolding meanings that distinguish this important classical text of Sufi practice. More

Ibn Arabi by William Chittick (Makers of the Muslim World: Oneworld Publications) Bulent Rauf, the inspiration behind the British esoteric school Beshara, was often quoted as saying  Muhyi ad-Din Ibn Arabi is not so much a person as a meaning.  William Chittick who is easily the foremost interpreter of the greatest Sheik in America, and who has written two massive studies of ibn Arabi, seems to come into agreement with Bulent.  Muhyi ad-Din Ibn Arabi is an encyclopedic writer, whose contribution to the mystical meaning of Islam and the Qur'an is as central to Islam as the theology of Thomas Aquinas is foundational for Western Catholicism.  However unlike Thomas Aquinas, Muhyi ad-Din Ibn Arabi has never known such entrenched institutional support.  In fact, about a century after his death, the central tenets of his writings were subtly and effectively vilified and misrepresented by Ibn Taymiyya,  the spiritual godfather of all literalistic and fundamentalist, authoritarian and even terrorist forms of Islam. More

Encyclopedia of the Qur'an - Set Volumes 1-5 plus Index Volume edited by Jane Dammen McAuliffe (Brill Academic) The Qur'ān is the primary religious text for one-sixth of the world’s population. Understood by Muslims to contain God's own words, it has been an object of reverence and of intense study for centuries. The thousands of volumes that Muslim scholars have devoted to qur'ānic interpretation and to the linguistic, rhetorical and narrative analysis of the text are sufficient to create entire libraries of qur'ānic studies.
Drawing upon a rich scholarly heritage, Brill's Encyclopaedia of the Qur'ān (EQ) combines alphabetically-arranged articles about the contents of the Qur'ān. It is an encyclopaedic dictionary of qur'ānic terms, concepts, personalities, place names, cultural history and exegesis extended with essays on the most important themes and subjects within qur'ānic studies. With nearly 1000 entries in 5 volumes, the EQ is the first comprehensive, multi-volume reference work on the Qur'ān to appear in a Western language. More

Buddhism

The Inner Science of Buddhist Practice: Vasubandhu's Summary of the Five Heaps with Commentary by Sthiramati  by Artemus B. Engle (The Tsadra Foundation Series: Snow Lion) is a lucid explanation of the Buddhist concepts of mind and mental factors, especially the skandhas that cohere to create a sense of permanence and a sense of self.. The introduction explains how a better understanding of Buddhist terminology and concepts can enhance spiritual practice, especially that of the teaching system known as the Stages of the Path. This book expertly delineates the system of classical Buddhist psychology. More 

Mipam on Buddha-Nature: The Ground of the Nyingma Tradition by Douglas S. Duckworth (SUNY, State University of New York Press) Mipam ('u mi pham rgya mtsho, 1846-1912) is one of the most prolific thinkers in the history of Tibet and is a key figure in the Nyingma tradition of Buddhism. His works continue to be widely studied in the Tibetan cultural region and beyond. This book provides an in-depth account of Mipam's view, drawing on a wide range of his works and offering several new translations. Douglas S. Duckworth shows how a dialectic of presence and absence permeates Mipam's writings on the Middle Way and Buddha-nature. More

Buddhist Manuscript Cultures: Knowledge, Ritual and Art edited by Stephen C. Berkwitz, Juliane Schober, Claudia Brown (Routledge Critical Studies in Buddhism: Routledge) Buddhist Manuscript Cultures explores how religious and cultural practices in premodern Asia were shaped by literary and artistic traditions as well as by Buddhist material culture. This study of Buddhist texts focuses on the significance of their material forms rather than their doctrinal contents, and examines how and why they were made.
Collectively, the book offers cross-cultural and comparative insights into the transmission of Buddhist knowledge and the use of texts and images as ritual objects in the artistic and aesthetic traditions of Buddhist cultures. Drawing on case studies from India, Gandhara, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Mongolia, China and Nepal, the chapters included investigate the range of interests and values associated with producing and using written texts, and the roles manuscripts and images play in the transmission of Buddhist texts and in fostering devotion among Buddhist communities.  More 

Buddhism Beyond the Monastery: Tantric Practices and their Performers in Tibet and the Himalayas, PIATS 2003 edited by Sarah Jacoby, Antonio Terrone, Charles Ramble  (Brill Academic)  Excerpt: Tibetan religions, including Buddhism and Bon, have been profoundly shaped by the institutional influence of monasticism—the congregation of ordained monks and nuns who support a sole religious tradition according to a cenobitic (communal), eremitic (isolated), or peripatetic (itinerant) lifestyle. Although Tibetan tradition claims that monasticism was established in the ninth century with the ordination of the first monastic community at Bsam yas monastery in southern Tibet, the full emergence and development of large-scale monasticism appeared only in the eleventh century with the emergence of the Sa skya school and the foundation of their monastery in Tsang. Buddhist monasticism is widely popular not only in Tibetan society, but also in the culturally akin societies along the Himalayan belt. More

The Emergence of Buddhist American Literature by John Whalen-Bridge and Gary Storhoff (SUNY Series in Buddhism and American Culture: State University of New Your Press) States as a spiritually dead society, Beat writers and others have shaped how Buddhism has been presented to and perceived by a North American audience. Contributors to this volume explore how Asian influences have been adapted to American desires in literary works and at Buddhist poetics, or how Buddhist practices emerge in literary works. Starting with early aesthetic theories of Ernest Fenollosa, made famous but also distorted by Ezra Pound, the book moves on to the countercultural voices associated with the Beat movement and its friends and heirs such as Ginsberg, Kerouac, Snyder, Giorno, Waldman, and Whalen. The volume also considers the work of contemporary American writers of color influenced by Buddhism, such as Maxine Hong Kingston, Charles Johnson, and Lan Cao. An interview with Kingston is included. More

Buddhist Scriptures as Literature: Sacred Rhetoric and the Uses of Theory by Ralph Flores (SUNY: State University of New Your Press) Buddhist Scriptures as Literature explores the drama, lyricism, and compelling storylines in Buddhist sacred writings, while illustrating how rhetoric and ideology are at work in shaping readers' reactions. Ralph Flores argues that the Buddha's life story itself follows an archetypal quest-romance pattern: regal surroundings are abandoned and the ensuing feats are heroic. The story can be read as an epic, but it also has a comic plot: confusions and trials until the Prince becomes utterly selfless, having found his true element--nirvana. Making use of contemporary literary theory, Flores offers new readings of texts such as the Nikayas, the Dhammapada, the Heart Sutra, Zen koans, Shantideva's Way of the Bodhisattva, and the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Understanding these works as literature deepens our sense of the unfolding of their teachings, of their exuberant histories, and of their relevance for contemporary life. More

Buddhism and Empire: The Political and Religious Culture of Early Tibet by Michael L. Walter (Brill's Tibetan Studies Library: Brill Academic) This book convincingly reassesses the role of political institutions in the introduction of Buddhism under the Tibetan Empire (c. 620-842), showing how relationships formed in the Imperial period underlie many of the unique characteristics of traditional Tibetan Buddhism. Taking original sources as a point of departure, the author persuasively argues that later sources hitherto used for the history of early Tibetan Buddhism in fact project later ideas backward, thus distorting our view of its enculturation.
Following the pattern of Buddhism’s spread elsewhere in Asia, the early Tibetan imperial court realized how useful normative Buddhist concepts were.
This work clearly shows that, while some beliefs and practices per se changed after the Tibetan Empire, the model of socio-political-religious leadership developed in that earlier period survived its demise and still constitutes a significant element in contemporary Tibetan Buddhist religious culture. More

The Library of Tibetan Classics 

Spanning more than a millennium, the literature in The Library of Tibetan Classics will eventually encompass thirty-two volumes covering such diverse fields as philosophy, psychology, spiritual practices, and ethics, as well as poetry, linguistics, plays, history, and classical Tibetan medicine. Each translated volume will include an introductory essay, annotation, and a comprehensive glossary. This unprecedented, thirty-two volume series—conceived in appearance and importance to be much like The Harvard Classics Five-Foot Shelf of Books—will be executed in close consultation with senior Tibetan masters from all major schools of the Tibetan tradition, including His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

The Crystal Mirror of Philosophical Systems: A Tibetan Study of Asian Religious Thought (Library of Tibetan Classics) by Nyima Chokyi Thuken, Roger Jackson, and Geshe Lhundub Sopa (Wisdom) The Crystal Mirror of Philosophical Systems: A Tibetan Study of Asian Religious Thought (Library of Tibetan Classics) byThuken Chökyi Nyima (1737–1802) Translated by Geshe Lhundub Sopa et al. Edited by Roger Jackson  (Wisdom)  The Crystal Mirror of Philosophical Systems (Grub mtha’ shel gyi me long), by Thuken Losang Chökyi Nyima (1737–1802) is probably the widest-ranging account of religious philosophies ever written in premodern Tibet. Thuken was a cosmopolitan Buddhist monk from Amdo, Mongol by heritage, Tibetan in education, and equally comfortable in a central Tibetan monastery or at the imperial court in Beijing. Like most texts on philosophical systems, his Crystal Mirror covers the major schools of India, both non-Buddhist and Buddhist, but then goes on to discuss in detail the entire range of Tibetan traditions as well, with separate chapters on the Nyingma, Kadam, Kagyü, Shijé, Sakya, Jonang, Geluk, and Bön. Not resting there, Thuken goes on to describe the major traditions of China—Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist—as well as those of Mongolia, Khotan, and Shambhala. The Crystal Mirror is unusual, too, in its concern not just to describe and analyze doctrines, but to trace the historical development of the various traditions. In evaluating philosophical systems, Thuken does favor his own Geluk school, but he treats the views of other traditions with considerable sympathy and respect as well—sometimes even defending them against criticisms from his own tradition. All this makes the Crystal Mirror an eloquent, erudite, and informative textbook on the religious history and philosophical systems of an array of Asian cultures—and provides evidence that serious and sympathetic study of the history of religions has not been a monopoly of Western scholarship. More

The Book of Kadam: The Core Texts (Library of Tibetan Classics) by Thupten Jinpa (Wisdom) More

Taking the Result as the Path: Core Teachings of the Sakya Lamdre Tradition (Library of Tibetan Classics) by Cyrus Stearns (Wisdom)

Ornament of Stainless Light: An Exposition of the Kalachakra Tantra (Library of Tibetan Classics) by Khedrup Norsang Gyatso (Wisdom)

Basic Teachings of the Buddha by Buddha and Glenn Wallis (Modern Library Classics: Modern Library) In Basic Teachings of the Buddha, Glenn Wallis selects sixteen essential dialogues drawn from more than five thousand Pali-dialect suttas of the Buddhist canon. The result is a vibrant introductory guide to studying Buddhist thought, applying its principles to everyday life, and gaining a deeper understanding of Buddhist themes in modern literature. Focusing on the most crucial topics for today’s readers, Wallis presents writings that address modern psychological, religious, ethical, and philosophical concerns. This practical, inspiring, and engaging volume provides an overview of the history of Buddhism and an illuminating analysis of the core writings that personalizes the suttas for each reader.

Great Perfection: The Outer and Inner Preliminaries by Dzogchen Rinpoche, with an introduction by Dzogchen Ponlop, translated by Cortland Dahl (Heart Essence Series: Snow Lion) In the Nyingma School of Tibetan Buddhism, the Great Perfection is consid­ered the most profound and direct path to enlightenment. The instructions of this tradition present a spiritual shortcut – a direct approach that cuts through confusion and lays bare the mind's true nature of luminous purity. For centuries, these teachings have been taught and practiced in secret by the great adepts of the Buddhist tradition. More

Contributions to the Cultural History of Early Tibet by Matthew Kapstein, Brandon Dotson (Brill's Tibetan Studies Library: Brill) Early medieval Tibet remains one of the most challenging fields in Tibetan Studies overall, wherein numerous mysteries remain. The six contributions comprising the present collection shed light on major topics in history, literature and religion.

The study of the rise and institutions of the Tibetan empire of the seventh to ninth centuries, and of the continuing development of Tibetan civilization during the obscure period that followed, have aroused growing interest among scholars of Inner Asia in recent decades. The six contributions presented here represent refinements in substance and method characterizing current work in this area. A chapter by Brandon Dotson provides a new perspective on law and divination under the empire, while the post-imperial international relations of the Tsong kha kingdom are analyzed by Bianca Horlemann. In "The History of the Cycle of Birth and Death", Yoshiro Imaeda's investigation of a Dunhuang narrative appears in a revised edition, in English for the first time. The problem of oral transmission in relation to the Tibetan Dunhuang texts is then taken up in the contribution of Sam van Schaik. In the final section, Matthew Kapstein and Carmen Meinert consider aspects of Chinese Buddhism in their relation to religious developments in Tibet. More

The Spread of Buddhism edited by Ann Heirman, Stephan Peter Bumbacher (Handbook of Oriental Studies/Handbuch Der Orientalistik: Brill) In no region of the world Buddhism can be seen as a unified doctrinal system. It rather consists of a multitude of different ideas, practices and behaviours. Geographical, social, political, economic, philosophical, religious, and also linguistic factors all played their role in its development and spread, but this role was different from region to region. Based on up-to-date research, this book aims at unraveling the complex factors that shaped the presence of particular forms of Buddhism in the regions to the north and the east of India. The result is a fascinating view on the mechanisms that allowed or hampered the presence of (certain aspects of) Buddhism in regions such as Central Asia, China, Tibet, Mongolia, or Korea. More

The Philosophical View of the Great Perfection in the Tibetan Bon Religion by Donatella Rossi (Tibetan Buddhist Philosophy: Snow Lion Publications) provides some comparison and historical information concerning Bön Dzogchen vs. Buddhist (Nyingma) Dzogchen (similar to that of the erudite scholar Samten Karmay, offering more conceptual context as well as direct translations of two entire Bön Dzogchen texts: "The Twelve Little Tantras" (which is very reminiscent of Nyingma Dzogchen) and "The View which is like the Lion's Roar" (that seems to have some variations but still much in common with Buddhist Dzogchen). It also contains considerable excerpts from "The Lamp that Clarifies the View." These are lovely works though rather concise and advanced-not for a beginner. The book includes both Tibetan and English texts in one verse per page (with opposite pages in the different languages). Thus most pages take up only about half a full page. Still, it is not light reading, but worth contemplating at length, because of the close readings and critical translations.  More

The Practice of Dzogchen by Longchen Rabjam, Translated by Tulku Thondup (Snow Lion) As one of the most comprehensive works on the Dzogchen tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, this work describes the religious and scriptural context of Dzogchen tradition followed by a basic primer on Dzogchen practice and experience.

This book contains an anthology of the writings of Longchen Rabjam (1308‑1363) on Dzogpa Chenpo (mahasandhi). The translations are preceded by a detailed introduction based strictly on the scriptures and traditional interpretations of the innermost esoteric aspect of Buddhism.

The teachings of Dzogpa Chenpo (or Dzogchen), the Great Perfection, are the innermost esoteric Buddhist training preserved and practiced to this day by the followers of the Nyingma school of Tibet. The main emphasis of Dzogpa Chenpo is to attain and perfect the realization of the true nature of the mind, the Intrinsic Awareness, which is the Buddha Mind or Buddha‑essence. Thereby one attains and perfects the realization of the true nature of all phenomenal existents, all of which are the same in their essence. More

Hinduism & Buddhism

The Teachings of the Odd-Eyed One: A Study and Translation of the Virupaksapancasika, With the Commentary of Vidyacakravartin (S U N Y Series in Hindu Studies) by David Peter Lawrence (State University of New York Press) book offers the first published translation of the contemplative manual Virupaksapancasika written circa the twelfth century CE, and the commentary on it, Vivrti by Vidyacakravartin. These late works from the Pratyabhijna tradition of monistic and tantric Kashmiri Saiva philosophy focus on means to deindividualize and disclose the primordial, divine essential natures of the human ego and body-sense.

David Peter Lawrence situates these writings in their medieval, South Asian religious and intellectual contexts. He goes on to engage Pratyabhijna philosophical psychology in dialogue with Western religious and psychoanalytic conceptions of identity and "narcissism," and also demonstrates the Saiva tradition's strong concern with ethics. The richly annotated translation and glossary illuminate the texts for all readers. More

Sarasvati Riverine Goddess of Knowledge: From the Manuscript-Carrying Vina-player to the Weapon-Wielding by Catherine Ludvik Defender of the Dharma (Brill's Indological Library: Brill) The name Sarasvati evokes images of the beautiful vina-playing goddess of knowledge and recalls an ancient river that is now believed to flow underground, meeting the Ganga and the Yamuna at the sacred confluence of Triveni at Prayaga/Allahabad.' The fair Sarasvati embodies beauty, music, flowing water, but above all knowledge, and, as the presiding deity of knowledge, the goddess has been worshipped on a pan-Indian scale among Hindus, Jains, and Buddhists alike. More

Temple Consecration Rituals in Ancient India: Text and Archaeology by Anna A. Slaczka (Brill's Indological Library: Brill) The principal aim of this book is to study three important construction rituals of the Hindu tradition: the laying of the first stones, the placing of the consecration deposit and the placing of the crowning bricks. These rituals are described in numerous Sanskrit texts on architecture and religion, which date from ca. 7th  to 16th centuries CE.' It is therefore hardly surprising that the present study is based mainly on textual sources. The chief source is the Kasyapasilpa, a South Indian treatise on art and architecture and ritual, written in Sanskrit, usually dated 11th- 12th century CE. Three chapters from the Kasyapasilpa, which deal with the three construction rituals mentioned above, have been critically edited, translated and provided with a commentary. For this purpose, unpublished manuscripts of the Kasyapasilpa were collected in various Southern Indian libraries. In order to place the three chapters of the Kasyapasilpa in a broader context, the descriptions of the construction rituals given by cognate texts, some of them still unpublished, have also been studied. More

Bible

John, Jesus, and History, Volume 1: Critical Appraisals of Critical Views edited by Paul N. Anderson, Felix Just, S.J., and Tom Thatcher (Brill Academic Publications) (paperback) Over the last two centuries, many scholars have considered the Gospel of John off-limits for all quests for the historical Jesus. That stance, however, creates a new set of problems that need to be addressed thoughtfully. The essays in this book, reflecting the ongoing deliberations of an international group of Johannine and Jesus scholars, critically assess two primary assumptions of the prevalent view: the dehistoricization of John and the de-Johannification of Jesus. The approaches taken here are diverse, including cognitive-critical developments of Johannine memory, distinctive characteristics of the Johannine witness, new historicism, Johannine-Synoptic relations, and fresh analyses of Johannine traditional development. In addition to offering state-of-the-art reviews of Johannine studies and Jesus studies, this volume draws together an emerging consensus that sees the Gospel of John as an autonomous tradition with its own perspective, in dialogue with other traditions. Through this challenging of critical and traditional assumptions alike, new approaches to John’s age-old riddles emerge, and the ground is cleared for new and creative ways forward.

John, Jesus, and History, Volume 2: Aspects of Historicity in the Fourth Gospel edited by Paul N. Anderson, Felix Just, S.J., and Tom Thatcher (Brill Academic Publications) (Paperback) This groundbreaking volume draws together an international group of leading biblical scholars to consider one of the most controversial religious topics in the modern era: Is the Gospel of John—the most theological and distinctive among the four canonical Gospels—historical or not? If not, why does John alone among the Gospels claim eyewitness connections to Jesus? If so, why is so much of John’s material unique to John? Using various methodologies and addressing key historical issues in John, these essays advance the critical inquiry into Gospel historiography and John’s place within it, leading to an impressive consensus and convergences along the way. More

Like an Everlasting Signet Ring: Generosity in the Book of Sirach by Bradley C. Gregory  (Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature Studies: De Gruyter) This work explores the theological and social dimensions of generosity in the book of Sirach and contextualizes them within the culture and thought of Second Temple Judaism. Ben Sira's understanding of generosity is predicated on the tension between affirming the classic wisdom principle of retributive justice and recognizing its breakdown in the socio-economic circumstances of Seleucid Judea. He forges a new Wisdom-Torah ethic of mercy in which giving generously is an integral part of living ""the good life"".While loans and surety are essential practices, almsgiving is the preeminent act of generosity. The fundamental theological logic at work consists in viewing the poor as proxies for God and is based on the economic structure of Proverbs 19:17. Giving to the poor is, in reality, a deposit in a heavenly treasury and will pay future dividends. By situating Ben Sira's view of almsgiving within the wider framework of retributive justice and its breakdown, new light is shed on the practical tensions regarding the extent of almsgiving and its relationship to the support of the Jerusalem priesthood. The various dynamics of Ben Sira's thought on generosity are situated within the broader Hellenistic world and in their foundational role for later Jewish and Christian thought. More

A Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint by T. Muraoka (Peeters) This complete lexicon supercedes its two earlier editions (1993; 2002). - The entire Septuagint, including the apocrypha, is covered. - For the books of Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, and Judges the so-called Antiochene edition is fully covered in addition to the data as found in the standard edition by Rahlfs. - Also fully covered are the two versions of Tobit, Esther, and Daniel. - Based on the critically established Gottingen edition where it is available. If not, Rahlfs's edition is used. - For close to 60% of a total of 9,550 headwords all the passages occurring in the LXX are either quoted or mentioned. - A fully fledged lexicon, not a glossary merely listing translation equivalents in English. - Senses defined. - Important lexicographical data such as synonyms, antonyms, idiomatic expressions, distinction between literal and figurative, combinations with prepositions, noun cases, syntagmatic information such as what kind of direct or indirect objects a given verb takes, what kind of nouns a given adjective is used with, and much more information abundantly presented and illustrated with quotes, mostly translated. - High-frequency lexemes such as prepositions and conjunctions fully analysed. - Data on contemporary Koine and Jewish Greek including the New Testament taken into account. - Morphological information provided: various tenses of verbs, genitive forms of nouns etc. - Substantive references to the current scientific literature. An indispensable tool for students of the Septuagint, the New Testament, Hellenistic Judaism, and the Greek language. More

Septuagint and Reception by Johann Cook (Supplements to Vetus Testamentum: Brill Academic) A new association for the study of the Septuagint was formed in South Africa recently. The present collection is a compilation of papers delivered at the first conference of this association, as well as other contributions. The volume addresses issues touching on the Septuagint in the broad sense of the word. This includes the Old Greek text (Daniel, Proverbs, Psalms and Lamentations) as well as the reception of the LXX (NT, Augustine and Jerome, etc.). A few contributions that may be regarded as miscellanea are nevertheless related to matters Septuagintal (Aristeas, Peshitta, Eunochos). All those interested in the Septuagint, its reception history and later reception, the ancient versions (Peshitta), hermeneutics, as well as philologists and theologians. More

Sacred Tropes: Tanakh, New Testament, and Qur'an As Literature and Culture  by Roberta Sterman Sabbath (Biblical Interpretation Series: Brill Academic) Contemporary sacred text scholarship has been stimulated by a number of intersecting trends: a surging interest in religion, sacred texts, and inspirational issues; burgeoning developments in and applications of literary theories; intensifying academic focus on diverse cultures whether for education or scholarship. Although much has been written individually about Tanakh, New Testament, and Qur'an, no collection combines an examination of all three. Sacred Tropes interweaves Tanakh, New Testament, and Qur'an essays. Contributors collectively and also often individually use mixed literary approaches instead of the older single theory strategy. Appropriate for classroom or research, the essays utilize a variety of literary theoretical lenses including environmental, cultural studies, gender, psychoanalytic, ideological, economic, historicism, law, and rhetorical criticisms through which to examine these sacred works. More

William Robertson Smith: His Life, His Work & His Times  by Bernhard Maier (Forschungen Zum Alten Testament: Mohr Siebeck) Bernhard Maier presents a new biography of William Robertson Smith (1846-1894), a champion of Old Testament criticism who is also regarded as a pioneer in social anthropology, the sociology of religions and the comparative study of religions.

William Robertson Smith (1846-1894) was successively the embattled champion of the emergent "higher criticism" as applied to the Old Testament, chief editor of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and Professor of Arabic at Cambridge University. Today he is acknowledged to have been a pioneering figure in both social anthropology and the study of comparative religion, deeply influencing the thinking of J. G. Frazer, Emile Durkheim and Sigmund Freud. The first full-length biography of Robertson Smith to be published for almost a hundred years, this text makes use of hitherto unknown material preserved by the Smith family and draws upon the extensive range of correspondence between Smith and such scholars as Albrecht Ritschl, Paul de Lagarde, Julius Wellhausen, Abraham Kuenen and Theodor Nöldeke. Adopting an interdisciplinary and international approach, the biography locates and defines the place of this remarkable polymath within the context of Free Church Calvinism, the Scottish Enlightenment and 19th century German Protestant theology. More

• An up-to-date assessment of the technologies and strategies established to defend against this kind of attack, Advances in Biological and Chemical Terrorism Countermeasures—
• Focuses on modeling, simulation, and visualization; environmental protection; personal protection and therapeutics; and the mechanistic and toxic effects of weapons
• Discusses the relationship between risk and vulnerability to establish a measure of threat
• Examines the manner of threat agent dispersal through the environment
• Explores the development of sensors and the use of phage display for detection and therapeutic intervention
• Provides an overview of recognized threats and their toxic effects
• Calls on leading researchers to present their own findings as well as their expert opinions and recommendations
• Supplements the material with a 16-page color insert

Heavily referenced, this science-based work is an excellent tool to assist military and homeland security personnel and first responders to improve their ability to develop and implement countermeasures to the potential biological and chemical threat agents that continue to emerge. More

Biologically Inspired Artificial Intelligence for Computer Games by Darryl Charles, Colin Fyfe, Daniel Livingstone, Stephen Mcglinchey (IGI Publishing) Computer games are often played by a human player against an artificial intelligence software entity. In order to truly respond in a human-like manner, the artificial intelligence in games must be adaptive, or respond as a human player would as he/she learns to play a game. Biologically Inspired Artificial Intelligence for Computer Games reviews several strands of modern artificial intelligence, including supervised and unsupervised artificial neural networks; evolutionary algorithms; artificial immune systems, swarms, and shows using case studies for each to display how they may be applied to computer games. This book spans the divide which currently exists between the academic research community working with advanced artificial intelligence techniques and the games programming community which must create and release new, robust, and interesting games on strict deadlines, thereby creating an invaluable collection supporting both technological research and the gaming industry. More

Quests: Design, Theory, and History in Games and Narratives by Jeffrey Howard (A K Peters Ltd) This book is intended for a broad range of audiences, all of whom can take something useful from each of its sections.

• As a bridge-building text, it belongs in the toolkits of both humanities scholars and independent designers.
• New media researchers can benefit from the analysis and modi­fication of the theories of quest narratives.

Humanities scholars and professors, such as literature teachers wanting to bring computer-assisted instruction into their class­room in an innovative way, can benefit from the book's combination of literature, games, and practical classroom exercises. Such professors might consider using this book in a class on the relationship between narratives and games, where it would work well as a practical and accessible textbook. This book includes many tutorials and exercises for use with the Aurora Toolset, which can be purchased with the role-playing game Neverwinter Nights for fifteen dollars or less. More

Paracelsus (Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, 1493-1541): Essential Theoretical Writings edited, introduced, translated by Andrew Weeks (Aries Book Series: Brill) The daunting writings of Paracelsus—the second largest 16th-century body of writings in German after Luther's—contributed to medicine, natural science, alchemy, philosophy, theology, and esoteric tradition. This volume provides a critical edition of essential writings from the authoritative 1589 Huser Paracelsus alongside new English translations and commentary on the sources and context of the full corpus. The Essential Theoretical Writings incorporate topics ranging from metaphyics, cosmology, faith, religious conflict, magic, gender, and education, to the processes of nature, disease and medication, female and male sufferings, and cures of body and soul. Properly contextualized, these treatises yield rich extracts of Renaissance and Reformation culture, soundings of 16th-century life, and keys to an influential but poorly understood early modern intellectual tradition. This work will supersede all other translations into English and lays an admirable foundation for future balanced and depth studies of Paracelsus.
Andrew Weeks is Professor of German at Illinois State University, with a doctorate in Comparative Literature from the University of Illinois, has published intellectual biographies of Jacob Boehme, Paracelsus, Valentin Weigel, a history of German mysticism, and translations of Weigel's writings. He is well qualified to help in the reform of this pivotal figure standing between tradition and the innovations of science.  More

Technology

Lost Technologies of Ancient Egypt: Advanced Engineering in the Temples of the Pharaohs by Christopher Dunn (Bear & Co.)

From the pyramids in the north to the temples in the south, ancient artisans left their marks all over Egypt, unique marks that reveal craftsmanship we would be hard pressed to duplicate today. Drawing together the results of more than 30 years of research and nine field study journeys to Egypt, Christopher Dunn in Lost Technologies of Ancient Egypt presents a stone-by-stone analysis of key Egyptian monuments, including the statue of Ramses II at Luxor and the fallen crowns that lay at its feet. His modern-day engineering expertise provides a unique view into the sophisticated technology used to create these famous monuments in prehistoric times.  More

Nuclear Law: The Law Appling to Nuclear Installations And Radioactive Substances In Its Historic Context 2nd edition by Stephen Tromans (Hart Publishing) This book is a practical guide to the international, EC and UK law applying to the various uses of nuclear energy and radioactive substances. The first edition was produced in 1997, and given the renaissance of interest in nuclear power in the UK and worldwide, this new, updated and much expanded edition is timely. It covers the law relating to the permitting and operation of nuclear power stations, the decommissioning and clean-up of former nuclear facilities, radiological protection, the management of radioactive waste and spent fuel, liability and insurance, and the security and transport of radioactive materials. Readers will find a clear framework explaining the development and application of nuclear law, and how domestic law is based on and influenced by international and European requirements and by its historical context. In the commercial context, the chapters dealing specifically with new build and with decommissioning will be vital reading. More

Green Energy: Sustainable Electricity Supply with Low Environmental Impact by Eric Jeffs (CRC)  defines the future of the world’s electricity supply system, exploring the key issues associated with global warming, and which energy systems are best suited to reducing it.

Electricity generation is a concentrated industry with a few sources of emissions, which can be controlled or legislated against. This book explains that a green sustainable electricity system is one whose construction, installation, and operation minimally affect the environment and produce power reliability at an affordable price. It addresses the question of how to build such an electricity supply system to meet the demands of a growing population without accelerating global warming or damaging the environment.

The green argument for conservation and renewable energies is a contradiction in terms. Although they produce no emissions, because renewable systems are composed of a large number of small units, a considerable amount of energy is required to produce, erect, and maintain them. This book is a response to that conundrum, answering key questions, such as:

• How can renewables be exploited to contribute the greatest energy input?
• Should coal be used for clean fuel and chemical production rather than for power generation?
• How quickly can we start to build the Green Energy system?

The author has more than forty years of experience as an international journalist reporting on power-generating technologies and on energy policies around the world. Detailing the developmental history, and current state, of the global nuclear industry, he discusses the dire, immediate need for large quantities of clean, emission-free electric power, for both domestic and industrial uses. This book details how current technologies—particularly nuclear, combined cycle, and hydro—can be applied to satisfy safely the growing energy demands in the future. More

Compass Chronicles by Kornelia Takacs (Schiffer Publishing) After the invention of the magnetic compass and its first use in Italy for travel in the 16th century, a ship's course could be constantly monitored, leading to exploration and world trade. This intriguing guide explores a wide range of fascinating pocket compass types. Examples shown date from the late 1700s to the 1940s, with a focus on the mid-1800s and early 1900s. Hundreds of compasses are discussed with 507 colorful illustrations and detailed descriptions. The history of their development is explored, special uses for the U.S. Engineering Department and civilian groups are presented, and patented improvements are featured. Cases for compasses include wood, leather, and brass in distinct styles around the world. The variety of craftsmanship quality, style, and value can help to identify origin and make collecting enjoyable and rewarding. More

Total Recall: How the E-Memory Revolution Will Change Everything ~ Gordon Bell, Jim Gemmell (Dutton) What if you could remember everything? Soon, if you choose, you will be able to conveniently and affordably record your whole life in minute detail. You would have Total Recall. Authors Gordon Bell and Jim Gemmell draw on experience from their MyLifeBits project at Microsoft Research to explain the benefits to come from an earth-shaking and inevitable increase in electronic memories. In 1998 they began using Bell, a luminary in the computer world, as a test case, attempting to digitally record as much of his life as possible. Photos, letters, and memorabilia were scanned. Everything he did on his computer was captured. He wore an automatic camera, an arm-strap that logged his bio-metrics, and began recording telephone calls. This experiment, and the system created to support it, put them at the center of a movement studying the creation and enjoyment of e-memories. More

Smart Clothes and Wearable Technology by J. Mccann and D. Bryson(Woodhead Publishing in Textiles)  Smart clothes and wearable technology is a unique and essential reference source for researchers, designers and engineers developing textiles and clothing products in this cross-disciplinary area. It will also be beneficial for those in the healthcare industry and academics researching textiles, fashion and design.

A comprehensive review of the technologies and materials available for the design and production of smart clothing, this book goes beyond the basics to provide a comprehensive overview of the wearer’s requirements. After assessing the design and materials available for smart clothing and wearable technology, the book covers the design process from fiber selection through to product developments in digital print technology. It then examines the general requirements, types of technologies available, and manufacturing methods. The coverage includes developments in fabric joining and graphic communications.  More

Software Applications: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications, 6 volumes contains an impressive collection of over 30o authoritative contributions from top influential experts in the field of software applications. This six-volume compilation includes articles by over 40o prominent international scholars in topic areas such as autonomic computing, operating system architectures, and open source software technologies and applications. Software Applications: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications presents libraries with an excellent addition to their academic collection. More 

Agent Technologies and Web Engineering: Applications and Systems edited by Ghazi Alkhatib (Editor), David Rine (Advances in Information Technology and Web Engineering Book: Information Science Reference)

Perpetual Access: US $295.00
Print + Perpetual Access: $390.00

In recent years, the emerging field of agent technologies has become mainstream in Web engineering. With constant field devel0pments and updates, a reference source is needed that reflects the increased scope of agent technology application domains and development practices and tools.

Agent Technologies and Web Engineering: Applications and Systems presents the latest tools and applications addressing critical issues involved with information technology and Web engineering research. Covering topics such as next-generation networks, XML query processing, and Semantic Web services, this book provides cutting-edge research for practitioners and academicians involved in agent technology and Web engineering fields.

This essential publication is for all academic and research libraries, as well as all those interested in the latest research and issues in information technology and web engineering. Researchers, educators, project managers, software developers, and students will also benefit from this state-of-the-art reference. More

Handbook of Algorithms for Physical Design Automation edited by Charles J. Alpert , Dinesh P. Mehta, Sachin S. Sapatnekar(Auerbach Publications, CRC Press) The physical design flow of any project depends upon the size of the design, the technology, the number of designers, the clock frequency, and the time to do the design. As technology advances and design-styles change, physical design flows are constantly reinvented as traditional phases are removed and new ones are added to accommodate changes in technology. More

Connecting People with Technology: Issues in Professional Communication Edited by George F. Hayhoe and Helen M. Grady (Baywood) explores five important areas where technology affects society, and suggests ways in which human communication can facilitate the use of that technology.  Usability has become a foundational discipline in technical and professional communication that grows out of our rhetorical roots, which emphasize purpose and audience. As our appreciation of audience has grown beyond engineers and scientists to lay users of technology, our appreciation of the diversity of those audiences in terms of age, geography, and other factors has similarly expanded.  More

Mathematics

Elementary Statistics in Social Research (11th Edition) by Jack A. Levin (Author), James Alan Fox (Author), David R. Forde (MySocKit Series: Allyn and Bacon) The Eleventh Edition of Elementary Statistics in Social Research provides an introduction to statistics for students in sociology and related fields, including political science, criminal justice, and social work. This book is not intended to be a comprehensive reference for statistical methods. On the contrary, our first and foremost objective has always been to provide an accessible introduction for a broad range of students, particularly those who may not have a strong background in mathematics. More

Handbook of Granular Computing by Witold Pedrycz, Andrzej Skowron, and Vladik Kreinovich (Wiley) Although the notion is a relatively recent one, the notions and principles of Granular Computing (GrC) have appeared in a different guise in many related fields including granularity in Artificial Intelligence, interval computing, cluster analysis, quotient space theory and many others. Recent years have witnessed a renewed and expanding interest in the topic as it begins to play a key role in bioinformatics, e-commerce, machine learning, security, data mining and wireless mobile computing when it comes to the issues of effectiveness, robustness and uncertainty.  More

Bayesian Methods: A Social and Behavioral Sciences Approach, Second Edition by Jeff Gill (Statistics in the Social and Behavioral Sciences: Chapman and Hall/CRC) The first edition helped pave the way for Bayesian approaches to become more prominent in social science methodology. While the focus remains on practical modeling and basic theory as well as on intuitive explanations and derivations without skipping steps, this second edition incorporates the latest methodology and recent changes in software offerings. More

Artificial Intelligence with Uncertainty by Deyi Li, Yi Du (Chapman & Hall/CRC) The information deluge currently assaulting us in the 21st century is having profound impact on our lifestyles and how we work. We must constantly separate trustworthy and required information from the massive amount of data we encounter each day. Through mathematical theories, models, and experiment. computations, Artificial Intelligence with Uncertainty explores the uncertainties of knowledge and intelligence that occur during the cognitive processes of human beings. The authors focus on the importance of natural language—the carrier of knowledge and intelligence—for artificial intelligence (Al) study. More

Monte Carlo Methods For Applied Scientists by Ivan T. Dimov (World Scientific Publishing Company) Stochastic optimization refers to the minimization (or maximization) of a function in the presence of randomness in the optimization process. The randomness may be present as either noise in measurements or Monte Carlo randomness in the search procedure, or both. The study of random geometric structures. Stochastic geometry leads to modelling and analysis tools such as Monte Carlo methods.
Common methods of stochastic optimization include direct search methods (such as the Nelder-Mead method), stochastic approximation, stochastic programming, and miscellaneous methods such as simulated annealing and genetic algorithms.  

The Monte Carlo method is inherently parallel and the extensive and rapid development in parallel computers, computational clusters and grids has resulted in renewed and increasing interest in this method. At the same time there has been an expansion in the application areas and the method is now widely used in many important areas of science including nuclear and semiconductor physics, statistical mechanics and heat and mass transfer. More

Physics

Quantum Invariants of Knots and 3-Manifolds by Vladimir G. Turaev (De Gruyter Studies in Mathematics: De Gruyter) Due to the strong appeal and wide use of this monograph, it is now available in its second revised edition. The monograph gives a systematic treatment of 3-dimensional topological quantum field theories (TQFTs) based on the work of the author with N. Reshetikhin and O. Viro. This subject was inspired by the discovery of the Jones polynomial of knots and the Witten-Chern-Simons field theory. On the algebraic side, the study of 3-dimensional TQFTs has been influenced by the theory of braided categories and the theory of quantum groups.

The book is divided into three parts. Part I presents a construction of 3-dimensional TQFTs and 2-dimensional modular functors from so-called modular categories. This gives a vast class of knot invariants and 3-manifold invariants as well as a class of linear representations of the mapping class groups of surfaces. In Part II the technique of 6j-symbols is used to define state sum invariants of 3-manifolds. Their relation to the TQFTs constructed in Part I is established via the theory of shadows. Part III provides constructions of modular categories, based on quantum groups and skein modules of tangles in the 3-space.

This fundamental contribution to topological quantum field theory is accessible to graduate students in mathematics and physics with knowledge of basic algebra and topology. It is an indispensable source for everyone who wishes to enter the forefront of this fascinating area at the borderline of mathematics and physics. More

An Introduction to Materials Science by Wenceslao Gonzalez-Vinas, Hector L. Mancini (Princeton University Press) Textbook that shows how the emergence of materials science is leading the way in technical innovation. Useful for anyone wanting to get a sense of the field. Materials science has undergone a revolutionary transformation in the past two decades. It is an interdisciplinary field that has grown out of chemistry, physics, biology, and engineering departments. In this book, González-Viñas and Mancini provide an introduction to the field, one that emphasizes a qualitative understanding of the subject, rather than an intensely mathematical one. More

Understanding Solids: The Science of Materials by Richard J. D. Tilley (John Wiley & Sons) (Paperback) is a modern introduction to the structures and properties of solids. Taking an integrated approach, designed to appeal to both science and engineering students, the book develops an understanding of the origin of both physical and chemical properties of solids from a foundation of chemical bonding, which leads naturally to an appreciation of the ways in which atoms can aggregate and so generate solid structures.  More

Chemistry

Perry's Chemical Engineers' Handbook, Eighth Edition edited by don Green, Robert Perry, M. Susan Lewis (Chemical Engineers Handbook: McGraw Hill) First published in 1934, Perry's Chemical Engineers' Handbook has equipped generations of engineers and chemists with an expert source of chemical engineering information and data. Now updated to reflect the latest technology and processes of the new millennium, the Eighth Edition of this classic guide provides unsurpassed coverage of every aspect of chemical engineering-from fundamental principles to chemical processes and equipment to new computer applications. More

CRC Handbook Of Thermodynamic Data Of Polymer Solutions At Elevated Pressures by Christian Wohlfarth (CRC Press) This handbook provides the only complete collection of high-pressure thermodynamic data pertaining to polymer solutions at elevated pressures to date — all critical data for understanding the physical nature of these mixtures and applicable to a number of industrial and laboratory processes in polymer science, physical chemistry, chemical engineering, and biotechnology. More

Elementorganic Monomers: Technology, Properties, Applications by L. M. Khananashvili, O. V. Mukbaniani, G. E. Zaikov (New Concepts in Polymer Science: Brill Academic Publishers) The chemical industry in our country and abroad is rapidly developing. It is only natural that the young industry of elementorganic monomers, oligomers and polymers should develop at the same rate. The numerous valuable and sometimes unique properties of these substances account for their wide application in various industries, households, medicine and cutting-edge technologies. That is why contemporary industry produces more than 500 types of silicone monomers, oligomers and polymers, to say nothing of other elementorganic compounds. The synthesis of these elementorganic compounds is based on many different reactions. More

Handbook of Physical-Chemical Properties and Environmental Fate for Organic Chemicals, Second Edition edited by Donald Mackay (CRC) The Handbook of Physical-Chemical Properties and Environmental Fate for Organic Chemicals, Second Edition is a massive 4 volume essential reference for university libraries, regulatory agencies, consultants, and industry professionals, particularly those concerned with chemical synthesis, emissions, fate, persistence, long-range transport, bioaccumulation, exposure, and biological effects of chemicals in the environment. The handbook contains physical-chemical property data on over 1200 chemicals of environmental concern. It offers approximately 30 percent new and updated information from previous edition. An enhancement to this new edition is the inclusion of measured temperature-dependent data for selected physical-chemical properties. Transport and transformation processes are key for determining how humans and other organisms are exposed to chemicals. These processes are largely controlled by the chemicals' physical-chemical properties. This new edition of the Handbook of Physical-Chemical Properties and Environmental Fate for Organic Chemicals is a comprehensive series in four volumes that serves as a reference source for environmentally relevant physical-chemical property data of numerous groups of chemical substances. More

Ecology

Water: A Way of Life:  Sustainable Water Management in a Cultural Context by A.J.M. (Lida) Schelwald-van Der Kley, Linda Reijerkerk (CRC Press) How to make water management projects more successful and sustainable? How is it that large infrastructural water works often encounter opposition? Is it perhaps, among other things, the lack of attention for the cultural context? These and other intriguing questions are dealt with in this book. The authors, having 20 years of experience on water and sanitation in an international context, have investigated the relationship between water and culture world-wide in order to find new keys to successful and sustainable water management.

This book is based on extensive research and is intended to form a cultural road towards new sustainable water management practices. Water: A Way of Life takes the reader on a water journey through time and across the world's continents. Along the way it explains the past and present ways in which different cultures around the world, both traditional and modern, view and manage water in response to the distinct environment they inhabit. As beliefs and values are at the heart of any culture, it also highlights the views of the main world religions on water and its use. A better understanding of cultural water beliefs and practices may lead to new concepts for future sustainable water management — from flood management to water supply, sanitation and irrigation management. More

The Functional Assessment of Wetland Ecosystems: Towards Evaluation of Ecosystem Services, includes CD edited by Edward Maltby, U Digby, C Baker (CRC Press)  Wetlands perform functions that deliver benefits to society, often referred to as ecosystem services. These ecosystem services include water supply, flood regulation, water purification, climate regulation, biodiversity, agriculture (e.g. grazing land), and amenity. A functional approach to wetland assessment enables a holistic view to be taken of the wide range of services that wetlands can provide. The functional assessment procedures (FAPs) in this volume translate best available scientific knowledge into reasonable predictions of how component parts of wetlands function in different landscape contexts. They can be used to indicate the potential and priorities for management options in areas such as flood control, pollution reduction and biodiversity conservation.
Functional assessment enables the user to predict the functioning of a wetland area without the need for comprehensive and expensive empirical research. The FAPs therefore provide a methodology that can be used by both experts and non-experts to assess wetland functioning relatively rapidly. The volume includes an electronic version of the FAPs on CD which automates aspects of the assessment once the initial recording stage is completed. It is anticipated that the FAPs will be used by a range of individuals or organisations concerned with wetland management who wish to gain a better understanding of the processes, functions, services or benefits and potential of the wetlands for which they have responsibility. More 

United States West Coast: An Environmental History by Adam Sowards, series editor: Mark Stoll (Nature and Human Societies: ABC-CLIO) From Native people's skilled use of fire and plants to the California Gold Rush to ongoing efforts to provide Southern California with sufficient water, the North American West Coast has long been a region where humankind has nurtured, battled, and exploited the environment. This groundbreaking volume explores the interplay of ecology, economy, and culture throughout the history of this rich and abundant region, examining the ways its residents and their institutions both influence and are affected by the ecological systems in which they live. More

Social Science

Action and Agency in Dialogue: Passion, Incarnation and Ventriloquism by Franois Cooren, with a foreword by and Bruno Latour (Dialogue Studies Series, Volume 6: John Benjamins Publishing Co.) In the end, when you begin to become more familiar with agencies instead of the dummies that are made to speak (formerly known as the human speaking subjects), a totally different speech act theory is emerging. Although Cooren's book has not developed it completely, it is certainly in the offing when, in the last chapter, he compares the agencies able to make us organize ourselves with those able to produce political will or even with those able to make us feel amorous passions. In order to move from the egocentric to the agency-centric view, you just have to replace, in the notion of speech-act, the human actor by what has made this human actor act. No doubt that if we manage not to loose the empirical techniques of inquiry, a much more realistic picture of interactions will be drawn. Cooren's book is an important step in just this direction. More 

Semiotics at the Circus by Paul Bouissac (Semiotics, Communication and Cognition: De Gruyter, Mouton) What do circus performances communicate? They are rich in extreme skills and clever staging. They trigger strong emotions. They make beautiful sense. This book, which is grounded in the personal circus experience of the author, uses semiotics, pragmatics, and cultural studies to explain why we are irresistibly drawn to the circus. It shows how semiotics can be applied to understand and enhance our enjoyment. More

Human Behavior in the Social Environment: A Macro, National, and International Perspective by Rudolph Alexander, Jr. (Sage Publications)
Taking a macro or broad perspective, Human Behavior in the Social Environment (HBSE) covers human behaviors within the social environment that is, how organizations, institutions, and communities impact individuals and families. Providing students with in-depth coverage of families, groups, and communities, the text encourages students to understand the nature of key macro institutions impact on human behaviors and vice versa. The primary chapters include a section on knowledge and theories followed by the impact on economic and social forces upon these topics. Students develop a knowledge of different macro HBSE theories including community, human conduct, inequality, and group theories. More 

Caching the Carbon: The Politics and Policy of Carbon Capture and Storage edited by James Meadowcroft, Oluf Langhelle (Edward Elgar) Over the past decade, carbon capture and storage (CCS) has come to the fore as a way to manage carbon dioxide emissions contributing to climate change. This book examines its introduction into the political scene, different interpretations of its significance as an emerging technology and the policy challenges facing government and international institutions with respect to its development, deployment and regulation. More

The Power of Positive Deviance: How Unlikely Innovators Solve the World's Toughest Problems by Richard Pascale, Jerry Sternin, and Monique Sternin (Harvard Business Press) Think of the toughest problems in your organization or community. What if they'd already been solved and you didn't even know it?

In The Power of Positive Deviance, the authors present a counterintuitive new approach to problem-solving. Their advice? Leverage positive deviants--the few individuals in a group who find unique ways to look at, and overcome, seemingly insoluble difficulties. By seeing solutions where others don't, positive deviants spread and sustain needed change.

With vivid, firsthand stories of how positive deviance has alleviated some of the world's toughest problems (malnutrition in Vietnam, staph infections in hospitals), the authors illuminate its core practices, including:

• Mobilizing communities to discover "invisible" solutions in their midst
• Using innovative designs to "act" your way into a new way of thinking instead of thinking your way into a new way of acting
• Confounding the organizational "immune response" seeking to sustain the status quo
• Inspiring and insightful, The Power of Positive Deviance unveils a potent new way to tackle the thorniest challenges in your own company and community. More

Beyond Writing Culture: Current Intersections of Epistemologies and Practices of Representation edited by Olaf Zenker, Karsten Kumoll (Integration and Conflict Studies: Berghahn Books ) `This is a book that will attract a great deal of attention among anthropologists and social scientists in general. It is a great advance on earlier critiques of Writing Culture (1986) that have emerged at intervals, a large number of them cited by the contributors. Its strength lies particularly in its transdisciplinary perspectives and the clarity of both critique and new representations. The prologue is a tour de force. — Joan Vincent, Professor Emerita, Barnard College/Columbia University

Two decades after the publication of Clifford and Marcus' volume Writing Culture (University of California Press), this collection provides a fresh and diverse reassessment of the debates that this pioneering volume unleashed. At the same time, Beyond Writing Culture moves the debate on by embracing the more fundamental challenge as to how to conceptualize the intricate relationship between epistemology and representational practices rather than maintaining the original narrow focus on textual analysis. It thus offers a thought-provoking tapestry of new ideas relevant for scholars not only concerned with `the ethnographic Other', but with representation in general.

Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography : A School of American Research, Advanced Seminar edited by James Clifford , George E. Marcus (University of California Press) a group of experienced ethnographers, a literary critic, and a historian of anthropology, all known for advanced analytic work on ethnographic writing, place ethnography at the center of a new intersection of social history, interpretive anthropology, travel writing, discourse theory, and textual criticism. The authors analyze classic examples of cultural description, from Goethe and Catlin to Malinowski, Evans-Pritchard, and Le Roy Ladurie, showing the persistence of allegorial patterns and rhetorical tropes. They assess recent experimental trends and explore the functions of orality, ethnicity, and power in ethnographic composition. Writing Culture argues that ethnography is in the midst of a political and epistemological crisis: Western writers no longer portray non-Western peoples with unchallenged authority; the process of cultural representation is now inescapably contingent, historical, and contestable. The essays in this volume help us imagine a fully dialectical ethnography acting powerfully in the postmodern world system. They challenge all writers in the humanities and social sciences to rethink the poetics and politics of cultural invention. More

Chomskyan (R)evolutions by Douglas A. Kibbee (John Benjamins Publishing Company) It is not unusual for contemporary linguists to claim that "Modern Linguistics began in 1957" (with the publication of Noam Chomsky's Syntactic Structures). Some of the essays in Chomskyan (R)evolutions examine the sources, the nature and the extent of the theoretical changes Chomsky introduced in the 1950s. Other contributions explore the key concepts and disciplinary alliances have evolved considerably over the past sixty years, such as the meanings given "Universal Grammar", the relationship of Chomskyan linguistics to other disciplines (Cognitive Science, Psychology, Evolutionary Biology), and the interactions between mainstream Chomskyan linguistics and other linguistic theories active in the late l8th century: Functionalism, Generative Semantics and Relational Grammar. The broad understanding of the recent history of linguistics points the way towards new directions and methods that linguistics can pursue in the future. More

Social Psychology, 7th ed. by John D. DeLamater and Daniel J. Myers (Wadsworth Publishing) This social psychology text, written by well-known sociologists, covers such topics as socialization, self, attitudes, communication, social influence, interpersonal attraction and relationships, behavior in small groups, life course, and personality and social structure. As readers move through the book, they will explore answers to a wide variety of questions, such as: What decides who someone will fall in love with? Where do aggressive, violent, and criminal behaviors come from? Why are some people more charitable than others? Why do some people obey authority and conform while others always have to buck the trend? Why are some people lazier when they work in groups? What is the source of people's stereotypes and prejudices? What causes conflict between groups? And finally, what makes us who we are? More

The Gendered Unconscious: Can Gender Discourses Subvert Psychoanalysis? by Louise Gyler (Routledge) Feminist interventions in psychoanalysis have often attempted either to subvert or re-frame the masculinist and phallocentric biases of Freud's psychoanalysis. This book investigates the nature of these interventions by comparing the status and treatment of women in two different psychoanalytic models: the Kleinian and the feminist models. It argues that, in fact, these interventions have historically tended to reinforce such biases by collapsing the distinction between the gendered minds of individuals and theories of gender.
This investigation is framed by two steps. First, in assessing the position of women and the feminine in psychoanalysis, The Gendered Unconscious explores not only the ways they are represented in theory, but also how these representations function in practice. Secondly, this book uses a framework of a comparative dialogue to highlight the assumptions and values that underpin the theory and clinical practice in the two psychoanalytic models. This comparative critique concludes with the counter-intuitive claim that contemporary Kleinian theory may, in practice, hold more radical possibilities for the interests of women than the practices derived from contemporary psychoanalytic gender theory. More

Terminology in Everyday Life by Marcel Thelen and Frieda Steurs (Terminology and Lexicography Research and Practice: John Benjamins Publishing Company) contains a selection of fresh and interesting articles by prominent scholars and practitioners in the field of terminology based on papers presented at an international terminology congress on the impact of terminology on everyday life. The volume brings together theory and practice of terminology and deals with such issues as the growing influence of European English on terminology, terminology on demand, setting up a national terminological infrastructure, the relevance of frames and contextual information for terminology, and standardization through automated term extraction and editing tools. The book wants to demonstrate that terminology is of everyday importance and is of interest to everyone interested in the theory and practice of terminology, from terminologists to computer specialists to lecturers and students. More

Living in Poverty: Developmental Poetics of Cultural Realities by Ana Cecília S Bastos and Elaine P Rabinovich (Advances in Cultural Psychology) covers the results of investigation of social realities and their public representation in Brazilian poor communities, with a particular emphasis on the use of cultural tools to survive and create psychological and social novelty under conditions of severe poverty. A relevant part of it brings together the multi-faceted evidence of a decade of research concentrated in two particular low-income areas in the city of Salvador da Bahia, Brazil. Other studies conducted in other Brazilian areas and in Cali, Colombia are included.
In contrast to most representations of poverty in the social sciences which create a "calamity story" of the lives of poor people, the coverage in this book is meant to balance the focus on harsh realities with the cultural-psychological resiliency of individuals and families under poverty. More

Metonymy and Metaphor in Grammar edited by Klaus-Uwe Panther, Linda Thornburg, Antonio Barcelona (Human Cognitive Processing: John Benjamins Publishing Company) Figurative language has been regarded traditionally as situated outside the realm of grammar. However, with the advent of Cognitive Linguistics, metonymy and metaphor are now recognized as being not only ornamental rhetorical tropes but fundamental figures of thought that shape, to a considerable extent, the conceptual structure of languages.

The present volume goes even beyond this insight to propose that grammar itself is metonymical in nature (Langacker) and that conceptual metonymy and metaphor leave their imprints on lexicogrammatical structure. This thesis is developed and substantiated for a wide array of languages and lexicogrammatical phenomena, such as word class meaning and word formation, case and aspect, proper names and noun phrases, predicate and clause constructions, and other metonymically and metaphorically motivated grammatical meanings and forms. The volume should be of interest to scholars and students in cognitive and functional linguistics, in particular, conceptual metonymy and metaphor theory, cognitive typology, and pragmatics. More

Localizing the Moral Sense: Neuroscience and the Search for the Cerebral Seat of Morality, 1800-1930 by Jan Verplaetse (Springer) Due to the current revolution in brain research the search for the "moral brain" became a serious endeavour. Nowadays, neural circuits that are indispensable for moral and social behaviour are discovered and the brains of psychopaths and criminals - the classical anti-heroes of morality - are scanned with curiosity, even enthusiasm.
How revolutionary this current research might be, the quest for a localisable ethical centre or moral organ is far from new The moral brain was a recurrent theme in the works of neuroscientists during the 19th and 20th century. From the phrenology era to the encephalitis pandemic in the 1920s a wide range of European and American scientists (neurologists, psychiatrists, anthropologists and criminologists) speculated about and discussed the location of a moral sense in the human cortex. More

Concepts of the Self 2nd edition by Anthony Elliott (Key Concepts:  Polity Press) The chapters that follow are designed to introduce students to concepts and theories of the self within the social sciences. The book aims to examine critically the ideas, concepts and theories of the self that are used in social analysis while also discussing key areas in which such approaches have produced elucidation of the experience of self-identity, selfhood and personal identity. More

Max Weber by Joachim Radkau (Polity) Max Weber (1864-1920) is recognized throughout the world as the most important classic thinker in the social sciences — there is simply no one else who has been more influential. The affinity between capitalism and Protestantism, the religious origins of the Western world, the force of charisma in religion as well as in politics, the all-embracing process of rationalization and the bureaucratic price of progress, the role of legitimacy and of violence as offsprings of leadership, the 'disenchantment' of the modern world together with the never-ending power of religion, the antagonistic relation between intellectualism and eroticism: all these are key concepts which attest to the enduring fascination of Weber's thinking.
When Joachim Radkau's biography appeared in Germany in 2005 it caused a sensation. Based on an abundance of previously unknown sources and richly embedded in the German history of the time, this is the first fully comprehensive biography of Max Weber ever to appear. Radkau brings out, in a way that no one has ever done before, the intimate interrelations between Weber's thought and his life experience. He presents detailed revelations about the great enigmas of Weber's life: his suffering and erotic experiences, his fears and his desires, his creative power and his methods of work, as well as his religious experience and his relation to nature and to death. By understanding the great drama of his life, we discover a new Max Weber, until now unknown in many respects, and, at the same time, we gain a new appreciation of his work.
This book will become the standard work on the life of Max Weber. It will be indispensable to students and scholars throughout the social sciences and will appeal to a wide readership interested in knowing more about the life of one of the most brilliant thinkers of the twentieth century. More 

Tacit Knowledge in Organizational Learning by Peter Busch (IGI Publishing) Understanding the complexity of tactic knowledge has become increasingly important to the enhancement of organizational flow. This book aims to advocate the need for human factor consideration from a (tactic) knowledge capital point of view.  More

Foucault, Psychology and the Analytics of Power by Derek Hook (Critical Theory and Practice in Psychology and the Human Sciences: Palgrave Macmillan) As neglected as the topic of Foucault and psychology has been - especially so, given the content of Foucault's earliest published work,' and in view of his training and practice in the realm of clinical psychology  - it is not completely novel. Nikolas Rose's (1991, 1996a) seminal studies of the Psy-complex and British psychology usefully extends Foucault's critique of psychology – aspects of which Hook revisits in the following chapter — although these studies cannot be described as didactic, or as offering easy access to a variety of Foucauldian frames of analysis. May's (1993) Between Genealogy and Epistemology does, admittedly, discuss the relation between aspects of Foucault's thought and psychology; once again, however, this treatment does not lend itself to practical application. His predominant focus, moreover, is on Foucault's earlier archaeological writings; it is the later genealogical work between the mid and late 1970s that I, by contrast, believe holds the most potential both for the critique of psychology and for analytical innovation. On the other hand, a book like Kendall and Wickham's (1998) Using Foucault's Methods, which does hope to introduce a series of Foucauldian frameworks for analysis in a user-friendly way, lacks the theoretical depth and historical complexity that grounds Foucault's work, and that lends it much of its characteristic urgency. My position, in contrast to such an approach, is that Foucault's methods cannot be simply detached from the political and philosophical concerns that Foucault had with interrogating the human science disciplines themselves. The aim of this book is thus to introduce both of these methodological and politico-historical preoccupations together, to put Foucault's genealogical writings to work as a means of critically re-conceptualizing aspects of psychological knowledge and practice, first and, correspondingly, as a means of grounding a set of radical research methods, second. More

Encyclopedia of Communities of Practice in Information And Knowledge Management edited by Steve Clarke, Elayne Coakes (Idea Group Publishing) is the leading reference source for dynamic and innovative research in the field of communities of practice (CoPs) in information and knowledge management. With knowledge management work on the increase, this single volume encyclopedia provides a comprehensive, critical, and descriptive examination of all facets of CoPs, and includes 550 terms and definitions as well as 1,950 references to additional research. More than 120 researchers from over 20 countries provide in-depth coverage of conceptual and practical issues as well as topics regarding learning, leadership, ethics, social, intellectual, rewards, and language challenges.  More

Washing the Brain - Metaphor and Hidden Ideology by Andrew Goatly (Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture: John Benjamins Publishing) What is meant by the notoriously vague term 'ideology'? Defining this could take a whole book, so Goatly provisionally adopts van Dijk's definition and description in Ideol­ogy: "the basis of the social representations shared by members of a group. This means that ideologies allow people, as group members, to organise the multitude of social beliefs about what is the case, good or bad, right or wrong, for them and to act accordingly.” One major determinant of these social representations will be "the material and symbolic interests of the group ... power over other groups (or resistance against the domination by other groups) may have a central role and hence function as a major condition and purpose for the development of ideologies". This emphasis on power is central to my use of the term, and, for brevity's sake one might adopt Thompson's definition "meaning in the service of power". More

Policing & Criminology

Computer-Aided Forensic Facial Comparison by Martin Paul Evison and Richard W. Vorder Bruegge (CRC) Countless facial images are generated everyday through digital and cell phone cameras, surveillance video systems, webcams, and traditional film and broadcast video. As a result, law enforcement and intelligence agencies have numerous opportunities to acquire and analyze images that depict persons of interest. Computer-Aided Forensic Facial Comparison is a comprehensive exploration of the scientific, technical, and statistical challenges facing researchers investigating courtroom identification from facial images.

Supported by considerable background material, research data, and prototypic statistical and applications software, this volume brings together contributions from anthropologists, computer scientists, forensic scientists, and statisticians. Topics discussed include:

• Face database collection in 3D
• Error and distinguishing power associated with craniofacial landmarks
• Statistical analysis of face shape variation
• Comparison of instrumentation
• Court admissibility issues
• Missing data
• Computer applications development

Based on the quantification and analysis of more than 3000 facial images, this seminal work lays the foundation for future forensic facial comparison, computer applications development, and research in face shape variation and analysis. Using experimental and real case data, it demonstrates the influence of illumination, image resolution, perspective, and pose angle on landmark visibility. Two DVDs are included which contain the raw 3D landmark datasets for 3000 faces, additional datasets used in 2D analysis, and computer programs and spreadsheets used in analysis and in the development of prototypic applications software. More

Juvenile Delinquency: The Core 4th ed. by Larry J. Siegel, Brandon C. Welsh (Wadsworth Publishing) The study of juvenile delinquency is a dynamic, ever-changing field of scientific inquiry in which the theories, concepts, and processes are constantly evolving. We have, as such, updated this text to reflect the changes that have taken place in the study of delinquent behavior during the past few years. This new edition includes a review of recent legal cases, research studies, and policy initiatives. It aims to provide a groundwork for the study of juvenile delinquency by analyzing and describing the nature and extent of delinquency, the suspected causes of delinquent behavior, and the environmental influences on youthful misbehavior. It also covers what most experts believe are the critical issues in juvenile delinquency and analyzes crucial policy issues, including the use of pretrial detention, waiver to adult court, and restorative justice programs. And because we recognize that many students are career oriented, we have included a new feature called Professional Spotlight, which aims at giving students a glimpse of what professionals are now doing to help troubled youth.
Commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC) has become a global social problem. CSEC involves youth (aged 17 years old and younger) who engage in the performance of sexual acts in return for a fee, food, drugs, shelter, clothing, gifts, or other goods. The sexual conduct may include any direct sexual contact, such as prostitution, or live or filmed performances (e.g., stripping, pornography) involving sexual acts or for the sexual gratification of others. The United States Department of Justice estimates that as many as 100,000 children are currently involved in prostitution, child pornography, and trafficking, but the true number may be in the millions. More

Bad Men Do what Good Men Dream: A Forensic Psychiatrist Illuminates the Darker Side of Human Behavior by Robert I. Simon (American Psychiatric Publishing) Dr. Simon has upgraded his classic volume on "The Dark Side of Human Behavior" with new chapters, new insights and a clear understanding of the thin line holding good men from acting on inner impulses. His illustrations and case examples shed new light on the work he has done in forensic psychiatry. This book, as most of Dr. Simon's book, is a must read for the serious student of human behavior. More

Forensic Science: An Introduction to Scientific and Investigative Techniques, Third Edition by Stuart H. James, Jon J. Nordby Ph.D (CRC ) reaches beyond the scope of other introductory texts to provide a powerful reference for professionals and students alike. The new edition of this perennial bestseller covers a range of fundamental topics essential to modern forensic investigation and includes the technical detail needed to understand the breadth of the science. Featuring contributions from top experts in the field discussing their own cases, this volume delves into all aspects of investigation, both out in the field and in the lab, providing vocabulary, investigation protocols, and laboratory procedures, while also explaining the roles of forensic scientists and pathologists. It covers firearm examination, forensic DNA, footwear and tire track evidence, and bloodstain patterns, as well as vehicular accident reconstruction, forensic engineering, and cybercrime. More than 400 photographs, most in color, provide significant insight while still being appropriate for students. More

The Emerging Practice of the International Criminal Court editied by Carsten Stahn, Goran Sluiter  (Legal Aspects of International Organization: Brill Academic) The International Criminal Court is at a crossroads. In 1998, the Court was still a fiction. A decade later, it has become operational and faces its first challenges as a judicial institution. This volume examines this transition. It analyses the first jurisprudence and policies of the Court. It provides a systematic survey of the emerging law and practice in four main areas: the relationship of the Court to domestic jurisdictions, prosecutorial policy and practice, the treatment of the Court's applicable law and the shaping of its procedure. It revisits major themes, such as jurisdiction, complementarity, cooperation, prosecutorial discretion, modes of liability, pre-trial, trial and appeals procedure and the treatment of victims and witnesses, as well as their criticisms. It also explores some of challenges and potential avenues for future reform. More

Forensic Human Identification: An Introduction edited by Tim Thompson, Sue Black (CRC Press) In philosophy, "identity" is whatever makes an entity definable and recognizable, in terms of possessing a set of qualities or characteristics that distinguish it from entities of a different type. "Identification," therefore, is the act of establishing that identity. In the 17th century, John Locke proposed his tabula rasa (blank slate) philosophy, which concluded that the newborn child is without identity and that it is entirely defined by society and circumstances after birth. While this may have some basis for discussion in the worlds of metaphysics, psychology, and social anthropology it has restricted relevance in the worlds of disaster-victim identification, biometrics, and forensic science. It is, however, true to say that, although many of our parameters of biological identity may be acquired after birth (tattoos, trauma, disease, dental intervention, etc.), many are biologically inherent and established in the period between conception and birth (DNA profile, sex, fingerprints, blood group, etc.). More

Murdering Myths: The Story Behind the Death Penalty by Judith W. Kay (Polemics: Rowman and Littlefield) (Paperback) goes beyond the hype and statistics to examine Americans' deep-seated beliefs about crime and punishment. She argues that Americans share a counter-productive idea of justice--that punishment corrects bad behavior, suffering pays for wrong deeds, and victims' desire for revenge is natural and inevitable. Drawing on interviews with both victims and inmates, Kay shows how this belief harms perpetrators, victims, and society and calls for a new narrative that recognizes the humanity in all of us. More

Criminal Responsibility by Victor Tadros (Oxford Monographs on Criminal Law and Justice: Oxford University Press) considers the proper nature and scope of criminal responsibility in the light of its institutional and political role. Tadros begins by providing a general account of criminal responsibility which is based on the relationship between the action that the defendant has performed and his or her character. He then moves on to reconsider some of the central doctrines of criminal responsibility in the light of that account. More

Perspectives on Violence and Violent Death Edited by Robert G. Stevenson and Gerry R. Cox (Baywood) examines violence. It looks at the nature and types of violence, the causes of violence, and the emotional wake left by violent episodes. In the twentieth century, the world experienced two world wars and countless other wars. Many millions died violent deaths from murder, death squads, purges, riots, revolutions, ethnic cleansing, rape, robbery, domestic violence, suicide, gang violence, terrorist acts, genocide, and in many other ways. As we entered the twenty-first century, we experienced 9/11, the Red Lake School deaths, suicide bombers, and more mass death brought about by the actions of governments, revolutionaries, terrorists, and still more wars. The need to better understand violence, both lethal and non-lethal, to become aware of the many forms of violence, and to learn how to survive in the aftermath of violent death are the focus of Perspectives on Violence and Violent Death. More

Defining Crimes: Essays on the Special Part of the Criminal Law edited by R.A. Duff, Stuart Green (Oxford Monographs on Criminal Law and Justice: Oxford University Press) This collection of original essays, by some of the best known contemporary criminal law theorists, tackles a range of issues about the criminal law's 'special part'—the part of the criminal law that defines specific offences. One of its aims is to show the importance, for theory as well as for practice, of focusing on the special part as well as on the general part, which usually receives much more theoretical attention. More

Law

The Criminal Justice Student Writer's Manual, 5th Edition by William A. Johnson, Jr., Richard P. Rettig, Gregory M. Scott, and Stephen M. Garrison (Pearson Prentice Hall) is designed to help students learn how to research and write in criminal justice and improve their writing skills. The five authors, all of whom are faculty at the University of Central Oklahoma except Richard Retting who is at Easter Oregon University, take a comprehensive approach. The book discusses the writing process, the mechanics of writing, the importance of research and how to cite sources. Now expanded to six parts, this edition includes a new chapter on writing probation and parole reports. Combining both guidelines and samples, it prepares students to write a variety of criminal justice papers, from condensed presentations to complex reports. This edition includes a new writing assignment and covers record keeping, violation reports and pre-sentence investigation reports. More

International Law Between Universalism and Fragmentation: Festschrift in Honour of Gerhard Hafner edited by Isabelle Buffard, James Crawford, Alain Pellet, Stephan Wittich (Brill Academic Publishers) This Festschrift is published on the occasion of Gerhard Hafner's 65th birthday and his retirement as a professor at the University of Vienna. It assembles a great number of renowned friends and colleagues in international law honouring Gerhard Hafner's outstanding career as scholar, diplomat, legal adviser and arbitrator. The diversity of areas selected for this Festschrift reflects the generalist approach of Gerhard Hafner towards international law. Among the topics on which his contribution was particularly influential are the fragmentation of international law, the law of State immunity and international criminal law, which feature prominently in the Festschrift. Other areas covered are the theory of international law (including sources), basic principles of international law, codification of international law, subjects of international law, international dispute settlement, the law of the sea and international environmental law, human rights and humanitarian law and the law of the European Union.  More

The Genocide Convention: The Travaux Preparatoires (The Travaux Preparatoires of Multilateral Treaties) by Hirad Abtahi and Phillipa Webb (Brill Academic Publishers) This work gathers together for the first time in a single publication the records of the multitude of meetings which, in the context of the newly established United Nations, led to the adoption of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide on 9 December 1948. This work will enable academics and practitioners easy access to the Genocide Convention's travaux preparatoires - an endeavour that has until now proven extremely difficult. This work will be of paramount importance for the international adjudication of the crime of genocide insofar as recourse to the 'general rule of interpretation' and the 'supplementary means of interpretation' under the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties is concerned.
Hirad Abtahi, diplome d'etudes approfondies in international law, is the first Legal Adviser to the International Criminal Court's Presidency. He was formerly legal officer in the Milosevi trial, at the UN International Criminal Tribunal. He has lectured and published in English, French and Persian. Philippa Webb, BA(Hons)/LLB (UNSW), LLM (Yale), is Special Assistant to President Rosalyn Higgins and Legal Officer of the International Court of Justice. She was formerly Associate Legal Adviser to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court.  More

Personal Freedom Through Human Rights Law?:  Autonomy, Identity and Integrity Under the European Convention on Human Rights by Jill Marshall (International Studies in Human Rights: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers / Brill Academic)  "Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights" provides a right to respect for one's private life. The European Court of Human Rights has interpreted this provision broadly to include a right to personal autonomy, identity and integrity. The book examines these concepts by interconnecting case law from the Court with the philosophical debates, including those in feminism, in four parts: personal freedom and human rights law; privacy and personal autonomy; personal identity; and bodily and moral integrity. The author notes, through her analysis of the Court's case law, that different versions of freedom are evident in the jurisprudence, including one which may restrict human freedom rather than enhance it through human rights law. This book will be invaluable to scholars of the Court, human rights and issues of the self.  More

Marshall also wrote Humanity, Freedom And Feminism (Applied Legal Philosophy: Ashgate): While some feminists seek to use ideas of the 'universal human subject' to include women, others argue that such ideas are intrinsically masculine and exclude the feminine. This book analyzes and critiques 'second wave' feminists who discuss how philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle, Descartes, Hobbes and Kant regard human beings and their capacities. The author suggests adopting an inclusive universal concept of the human being, drawn from ideas of positive liberty from the liberal tradition, Hegelian ideas of the formation of the free human being in society, and care ethics. The book links this theoretical perspective to international human rights and humanitarian law, drawing together areas of theory usually presented separately. These include the liberal theory of the individual (particularly individual freedom, feminist critiques and theories of subjectivity), globalization and global identity issues and the theory of human rights law, with the focus resting on human subjectivity and ethics. While the focus is on Anglo-American jurisprudence, this is combined with continental philosophy, international human rights issues and a Yugoslav war crimes case study. 
Marshall also wrote Gender and the Law: Contemporary Issues and Trends (Routledge Cavendish) Providing an essential reference point for undergraduates and postgraduates studying gender and the law, this book covers areas such as feminist jurisprudence, family law and motherhood, criminal law and international humanitarian and human rights law. Current themes including personal autonomy, liberal neutrality, identity politics and essentialism are explored.
But rather than being a purely descriptive black letter textbook the book provides scholarly analysis by references to themes, trends and theoretical perspectives in contemporary legal developments. The key strengths and weaknesses involved in highlighting gender in the law are investigated, with each chapter showing whether gender impacts on the relevant area of law, and how it does so. Primary and secondary source materials are interpreted from different perspectives to clarify trends and forecast future developments. Through this analysis the book helps the reader to critically evaluate for themselves the issues, and to obtain a more critical view of the relevant areas of law. 

Business

Creating Ecological Value: An Evolutionary Approach to Business Strategies and the Natural Environment by Frank Boons (Edward Elgar) Firms adopt a wide variety of ecological strategies, ranging from the development of innovative products with reduced environmental impact to lobbying against governmental attempts to set standards for the way in which firms deal with the natural environment. This book explores this variety and is the first to provide a coherent evolutionary approach to the ecological strategies of firms.

Drawing on insights from organization and management sciences and innovation studies, the author outlines an evolutionary framework enabling a deeper understanding of how firms shape ecological strategies and interact to create inertia or change at the level of systems of production and consumption. This framework is applied to the coffee and automobile production and consumption systems, yielding insight into the complex dynamics through which such systems evolve in dealing with ecological impact. The book advances theoretical insight into business strategies and the natural environment and illuminates the dynamics of production and consumption systems.

Scholars, students and practitioners from organization and management sciences, innovation studies and industrial ecology interested in the relationship between business and the natural environment will find this book invaluable. More

Intellectual Property & Competitive Strategies in 21st Century Second Edition by Shahid Alikhan and R. A. Mashelkar (Wolters Kluwer) It is scarcely five years since the first edition of this book, a milestone in the strategy-oriented approach to intellectual property at the global level, appeared and was quickly and widely welcomed as virtually an intellectual property agenda for the 21st century.' This second edition includes a judicious update of the original data and analysis in light of the significant movement forward that has taken place over the past few years in many of the critical areas that shape competitive strategies in the use of IP rights. The authors have lost none of their conviction of the necessity to enhance awareness of the techno-economic effects of intellectual property rights protection on enterprise competitiveness and national growth and development. More 

Electronic Business: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications edited by In Lee, Western Illinois University, USA (Information Science Reference) Perpetual Access:  Print + Perpetual Access: Over the course of a few short years, electronic business has advanced from a buzzword to a thriving new channel for the delivery of goods and services and the mediation of financial transactions, shaping the destiny of numerous contemporary enterprises and significantly affecting entire economies worldwide. The rapid pace of advancement and change driven by e-commerce technologies, and the larger fiscal, economic, and sociological implications, have created a need for authoritative research to enhance the grasp of the academic, commercial, and consumer sectors on the full range of opportunities, issues, and challenges.

Electronic Business: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications enhances libraries worldwide through top research compilations from international authors in the field of e-business. This indispensable, 4-volume set contains crucial articles in topic areas such as e-commerce technologies, online marketing, social networking, and virtual business communities. Electronic Business: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications provides libraries with unsurpassed explorations, theories, and applications of e-business as a necessary addition to any library collection. More

Feminism

Theorizing Feminisms: A Reader by Elizabeth Hackett, Sally Haslanger (Oxford University Press) "What is sexist oppression?" "What should be done about it?" Organized around these questions, Theorizing Feminisms: A Reader provides an overview of theoretical feminist writing about the quest for gender justice. Incorporating both classic and cutting-edge material, the reader takes into account the full diversity of women, highlighting the effects of race, ethnicity, nationality, class, sexuality, and religion on women's experience. More

Listening to the Silences: Women And War edited by Helen Durham, Tracey Gurd (International Humanitarian Law: Brill Academic) Challenging the perception that women are exclusively the victims, the caregivers or the passive supporters of men in times of armed conflict, Listening to the Silences: Women and War exposes the reader to a diversity of women’s voices. These voices, both personal and academic, demonstrate that women are increasingly taking on less ‘traditional’ roles during war, and that these roles are multifaceted, complicated and sometimes contradictory. More

Archaeology

Handbook Of Archaeological Methods edited by Herbert D. G. Maschner, Christopher Chippindale (Altamira Press) comprises 37 articles by leading archaeologists on the key methods used by archaeologists in the field, in analysis, in theory building, and in managing cultural resources. The book is destined to become the key reference work for archaeologists and their advanced students on contemporary archaeological methods. More

Archaeology In Practice: A Student Guide To Archaeological Analyses by Jane Balme, Alistair Paterson (Blackwell Publishing Professional) (Paperback) This volume is intended for archaeology students who are learning how to analyze archaeological materials. For many years, we have been involved in teaching university courses in field and laboratory techniques in archaeology. Over a cup of coffee during one of these courses, we were bemoaning the fact that, although there are many books on field methods (especially excavation techniques), much less is available on archaeological analysis techniques beyond the introductory first-year archaeology level. What we wanted was a series of essays that showed students how different kinds of archaeological materials are used to answer research questions. In our experience, students are more likely to understand this link when they learn from archaeologists who are talking about their own research problems and how they solved them. It brings a sense of immediacy to the work that makes it much more fun for them to read. Thus, to remedy the problem of the lack of such materials for students to read, we decided to assemble a collection of essays by experts on archaeological analysis. More

Philosophy of Science

Thomas Bradwardine, Insolubilia edition, translation and introduction by Stephen Read, series editor Philip W. Rosemann (Dallas Medieval Texts and Translations Series, 10: Peeters) Read's introduction, edition, and translation familiarize us with the roots of the medieval discussion of the insolubles in Aristotle's works, and with the more immediate context of Bradwardine's treatment, in particular his refutation of the views of contemporaries such as Walter Burley. The appendices include material that post-dates Bradwardine, yet shows clear signs of its dependence on the prince of the natural philosophers, as Ralph Strode called him half a century later. On the other hand, Professor Read's introduction brings Bradwardine's solution of the problem of insolubles into direct dialogue with modern logic, represented by the theories of figures such as Alfred Tarski, Saul Kripke, and Frederic Fitch. What is fascinating here is that the univocity of logical language, its quasi-mathematical precision, appears to render such a dialogue relatively uncomplicated. In cases where thinkers from different periods do not adopt such logical language, it is much more difficult to offer mutual translations of their systems of thought, which remain more closely tied to metaphors, literary genres, and other non-philosophical factors. Philipp W. Rosemann. More

Athanasius Kirchers Theatre of the World: The Life and Work of the Last Man to Search for Universal Knowledge by Joscelyn Godwin (Inner Traditions) Linguist, archaeologist, and exceptional scholar, Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680) was the last true Renaissance man.  By profession a Jesuit priest, he made himself an authority on almost every subject under the sun.  To Kircher the entire world was a glorious manifestation of God, and his exploration was both a scientific quest and a religious experience.  His works on Egyptology (he is credited with being the first Egyptologist), music, optics, magnetism, geology, and comparative religion were the definitive tests of their time--and yet they represent only a part of his vast range of knowledge.  A Christian Hermeticist in the mold of Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola, his work also examined alchemy, the Kabbalah, and the Egyptian Mystery tradition exemplified by Hermes Trismegistus.  Kircher was the first to map ocean currents; the first to offer a comprehensive theory of vulcanism; the first to compile an encyclopedia on China, a dictionary of Coptic, a book dedicated solely to acoustics; the first to construct a machine for coding messages and another for composing music.  His museum in Rome was among the most famous "cabinets of curiosities," visited by everybody in the intellectual world. More

Nietzsche on Time and History edited by Manuel Dries (Walter de Gruyter) This set of essays investigates the correlation between Nietzsche's philosophy of time and his philosophy of history. Nietzsche's attempt to rethink time affects the task of recording history. History can no longer be a discipline that merely registers the constellations of entities and objects that remain identical over time. While philosophy requires the corrective of history, the latter will have to be improved through a new conception of time.  More

Time for Aristotle by Ursula Coope (Oxford Aristotle Studies: Oxford University Press) What is the relation between time and change? Does time depend on the mind? Is the present always the same or is it always different? Aristotle tackles these questions in the Physics. In the first book in English exclusively devoted to this discussion, Ursula Coope argues that Aristotle sees time as a universal order within which all changes are related to each other. This interpretation enables her to explain two striking Aristotelian claims: that the now is like a moving thing, and that time depends for its existence on the mind. More

Contemporary Debates in the Philosophy of Science by Christopher Hitchcock (Contemporary Debates in Philosophy: Blackwell) Teachers: Has this ever happened to you? You arc teaching a philosophy class that covers a number of different topics. You want to spend a week or so on, let's say, sci­entific realism. Naturally, you want to provide the students with some accessible read­ings on the subject. Moreover, you want to choose readings from both realists and anti-realists, partly so that the students will see both sides of the issue, and partly to give the students a glimpse of philosophers engaging in debate with one another. What you end up with, however, are readings that end up talking past one another: no two authors agree on what scientific realism is, so the realists are defending views that the anti-realists are not attacking. The students come away confused, and without any sense of the constructive value of debate. More

After Collapse: The Regeneration of Complex Societies edited by Glenn M. Schwartz, John J. Nichols (University of Arizona Press) From the Euphrates Valley to the southern Peruvian Andes, early complex societies have risen and fallen, but in some cases they have also been reborn. Prior archaeological investigation of these societies has focused primarily on emergence and collapse. After Collapse: The Regeneration of Complex Societies is the first book-length work to examine the question of how and why early complex urban societies have reappeared after periods of decentralization and collapse. More

Life Science

The Animals Reader: The Essential Classic and Contemporary Writings edited by Linda Kalof, and Amy Fitzgerald (Berg) The study of animals - and the relationship between humans and other animals - is now one of the most fiercely debated topics in contemporary science and culture.
Animals have a long history in human society, providing food, labour, sport and companionship as well as becoming objects for exhibit. More contemporary uses extend to animals as therapy and in scientific testing. As natural habitats continue to be destroyed, the rights of animals to co-exist on the planet - and their symbolic power as a connection between humans and the natural world - are ever more hotly contested.
The Animals Reader brings together the key classic and contemporary writings from Philosophy, Ethics, Sociology, Cultural Studies, Anthropology, Environmental Studies, History, Law and Science. As the first book of its kind, The Animals Reader provides a framework for understanding the current state of the multidisciplinary field of animal studies.This anthology will be invaluable for students across the Humanities and Social Sciences as well as for general readers. More 

Thinking about Life: The history and philosophy of biology and other sciences by Paul S. Agutter, Denys N. Wheatley (Springer) This is a “popular science” book, designed as a sequel to our About Life: Concepts in Modern Biology by Paul S. Agutter and Denys N. Wheatley(Springer), which uses modern biological knowledge to tackle the question: "What distinguishes living organisms from the non-living world?" In the first few chapters, the authors draw on recent advances in cell and molecular biology to develop an account of the "living state" that applies to all organisms, but only to organisms. Subsequent chapters use this account to explore questions about evolution, the origin of life and the possibility of extraterrestrial life. Towards the end of the book the authors consider human evolution, intelligence and the extent to which our species can be regarded as biologically unique. About Life: Concepts in Modern Biology is written as far as possible in non-technical language; all scientific terms are explained straightforwardly when they are introduced. It is aimed at the general, non-specialist reader, but the novel approach that it takes to general issues in biology will also interest students of the life sciences. Indeed, no specialist knowledge is required. Thinking about Life: The history and philosophy of biology and other sciences briefly surveys the nature of science and its emergence in post-Renaissance Europe, and investigates the similarities and differences between biology and other sciences. Major topics in the philosophy of biology (e.g. evolutionary theory, vitalism/mechanism, reductionism/holism, spontaneous generation) are considered in a little more detail. More

Handbook of Nutrition and Food, Second Edition edited by Carolyn D. Berdanier, Johanna Dwyer, Elaine B. Feldman (CRC) Covering an incredible range of information from basic biochemistry, to population studies, to nutrition intervention, and medical concerns, Handbook of Nutrition and Food, Second Edition is an indispensable reference for any professional library. Significantly revised and updated, this second edition of the bestselling original welcomes contributions from several new authors, including Elaine B. Feldman and Johanna Dwyer, all notable leaders in nutritional science. Retaining the high level of scientific research, accessible language, and attention to detail of the original, this new edition reflects the changes and developments of the past six years in nutrition research by adding 12 new chapters and tripling the number of referential web addresses. More

Food Processing Handbook by James G. Brennan (Wiley-VCH) focusing on the technology involved, this handbook describes the principles as well as the equipment used and the changes – physical, chemical, microbiological and organoleptic – that occur during food preservation. In doing so the text covers in detail such techniques as post-harvest handling, thermal processing, evaporation and dehydration, freezing, irradiation, high pressure processing, emerging technologies, baking, extrusion, frying and packaging. In addition current concerns about the safety of processed foods and control of food processes are addressed, as are the impact of processing on the environment and separation and conversion operations widely used in the food industry.
Scientists and engineers involved in food manufacture, research and development in both industry and academia will benefit greatly from the contents as will students studying food related topics at undergradu­ate and postgraduate levels. More

Cheese Problems Solved edited by P. McSweeny (CRC) Cheese is a unique food product which requires a significant amount of scientific knowledge to be produced successfully. However, due to the many complex and inter-related changes which occur during cheese manufacture and ripening, it is still not possible to guarantee the production of premium quality cheese. Written by an international team of renowned contributors, Cheese problems solved provides responses to around 200 of the most frequently asked questions about cheese and the cheesemaking process, in a unique and practical question-and-answer format. Opening chapters concentrate on queries regarding the preparation of cheesemilk, the conversion of milk to curd, the ripening process, pathogens, cheese analysis and the nutritional aspects of cheese, among other issues. The latter part of the book discusses particular types of cheeses including Cheddar, Grana-type cheeses, Mozzarella, Blue, Swiss and Dutch cheeses, to name but a few. More

Meaningful Scents Around the World: Olfactory, Chemical, Biological, and Cultural Considerations by Roman Kaiser (Wiley-VCH) In recent years, our knowledge of the anatomy and physiology of olfaction has grown enormously, accompanied by a growing appreciation of scent. This is reflected in the fact that the 2004 Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded for discoveries of 'Odorant Receptors and the Organization of the Olfactory System'. This book naturally supports such developments, and takes the reader on a fascinating fragrant journey around the world to some of the exciting places the author has visited during his 30 years of olfactory research. Following an introductory section to the world of natural scents, including their biological meaning and history, the fragrance and flavor chemist, Roman Kaiser, who is renowned for his 'headspace' analytical technique, revisits some memorable scents. In doing so, he leads us to such exotic places as Lower Amazonia, Papua New Guinea, India, and many rain-forest biotopes in his quest for new molecules and new scent concepts, showing us along the way how a scent like tatami can be linked to culture. The third and final section describes the analysis of the compositions of the presented scents. More

Plant by Janet Martinelli (DK) From cultivating plants that are on the international endangered list or already extinct in the wild, to avoiding invasive species, gardeners can play a vital role in conservation. A groundbreaking reference for both plant enthusiasts and gardeners, Plant is a new-generation encyclopedia designed to provide environmental and horticultural information so that gardeners can make the right decisions about what to grow in their gardens. The planet is poised on the brink of a modern extinction episode, says Janet Marinelli, editor-in-chief of the new book PLANT, "that would rival anything in evolutionary history, including the demise of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago." Marinelli explained, "If current trends continue, two-thirds of all plant species will disappear before the end of the 21st century — more than 55 percent of conifers, 52 percent of cycads, 38 percent of cacti, about a third of all members of the lily family, and almost all 800 orchid species are at risk for extinction in the coming decades." But the good news is that "as gardeners, we can play a very personal and important role in the survival of these beautiful and fascinating creatures." More

Biology of Floral Scent edited by Natalia Dudareva, Eran Pichersky (CRC) The first book of its kind, Biology of Floral Scent provides comprehensive coverage of state-of-the-art floral scent research. This book explores the major aspects of floral scent biology including its function and significance for plants and pollinators, composition, enzymology, evolution, and commercial aspects. It employs a modern approach that incorporates molecular biology, enzymology, chemistry, entomology, genetic engineering, and functional genomics. By combining literature on plant reproduction into a single volume, this text provides an easy reference for plant biologists, natural products chemists, cell and molecular biologists, ecologists, and entomologists. More

Litchi and Longan: Botany, Production and Uses edited by C. M. Menzel , G. K. Waite (CABI Publishing) Litchi (lychee) and the related fruit longan are grown extensively in China and South-East Asia, as well as in Australia, Florida (USA), Southern Europe and Southern Africa. This book represents the only comprehensive, balanced and internationally focused publication on these fruit. It covers all aspects of production, from taxonomy and breeding, to propagation, flowering and fruit set, to diseases, pests and postharvest storage and processing. Written by leading scientists from Australia, China, India, Israel, Thailand and the USA, the book represents the standard work on its subject. As the fruit are imported to many developed countries, the book will be of interest to a wide audience. More

Prions by Claudio Soto (CRC) offers a well-organized overview of prion-related diseases. It reviews the symptoms, epidemiology, and neuropathology of the disease, and focuses on the idea that TSEs result from a novel mechanism involving transmission by replication of the misfolding of a single protein. The author, a renowned innovator in the area of neurodegenerative diseases, examines the structure, conversion, and mechanism of prion propagation and details its cellular biology. He also looks at other diseases that display folding aberrations, considers how common such aberrations are, and speculates on the impact of prions on broader areas of biology, public health, and biotechnological strategies. More

Medicine

Textbook of Pediatric Psychosomatic Medicine by Richard J. Shaw, David R. DeMaso (American Psychiatric Publishing) Psychosomatic pediatric psychiatry is one of the most complex specialties of medicine. This textbook manages to provide practitioners with all the necessary tools to successfully operate in this domain and provide children, parents, and pediatricians with much needed support and assistance in managing the overlap between psychiatric and pediatric illness. Psychosomatic medicine was recently recognized as a subspecialty by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, prompting creation of the first comprehensive edited volume on pediatric psychosomatic medicine by leading U.S. and international practitioners. More

The Human Amygdala by Paul J. Whalen and Elizabeth A. Phelps (Guilford)Building on pioneering animal studies, and making use of new, noninvasive techniques for studying the human brain, research on the human amygdala has blossomed in recent years. This comprehensive book brings together leading authorities to review the latest knowledge on the amygdala and its involvement in psychological function and dysfunction. It is a state-of-the-art reference for all researchers and practitioners interested in brain—behavior relationships. More

Clinical Malignant Hematology by Mikkael A. Sekeres, Matt Kalacyio, Brian Bolwell (McGraw-Hill Just the Facts: McGraw-Hill Professional) The only comprehensive guide to the clinical management of hematologic and lymphatic cancers.
Filling an unmet need in the clinical literature, this commanding, just-in-time reference sheds light on the full spectrum of cancers in the blood, bone marrow, and lymphatic system (leukemia, lymphoma, myeloma). Clinical Malignant Hematology is edited by staff members from the renowned Taussig Cancer Center at the Cleveland Clinic, which has pioneered some of the most important clinical discoveries and treatment trends in recent years. More

Fundamentals of Nuclear Pharmacy, 5th Edition by Gopal B. Saha (Springer-Verlag) Upon publication of the First Edition, Fundamentals of Nuclear Pharmacy emerged as the standard text and reference in nuclear medicine. Generously supplemented with charts, tables, and more than 100 illustrations, the revised Fifth Edition of this classic text has been thoroughly updated by judiciously replacing obsolete sections with new, cutting-edge material. Each chapter provides the reader with well-delineated descriptions of the subject matter from the basic atomic structure to the clinical uses of radiopharmaceuticals. Previous editions were highly acclaimed for their clarity and accuracy since Dr. Saha sets new standards for making complex theoretical concepts readily understandable for students and practitioners in nuclear pharmacy and nuclear medicine. More

Food and Nutrients in Disease Management by Ingrid Kohlstadt (CRC) Food and nutrients are the original medicine and the shoulders on which modern medicine stands. But in recent decades, food and medicine have taken divergent paths and the natural healing properties of food have been diminished in the wake of modern technical progress. With contributions from highly regarded experts who work on the frontlines of disease management, Food and Nutrients in Disease Management effectively brings food back into the clinical arena and helps physicians put food and nutrients back on the prescription pad.  More

Psychology

Jungian Psychoanalysis: Working in the Spirit of Carl Jung by Murray Stein (Open Court) Written by 40 of the most notable Jungian psychoanalysts — spanning 11 countries, and boasting decades of study and expertise — Jungian Psychoanalysis represents the pinnacle of Jungian thought. This handbook brings up to date the perspectives in the field of clinically applied analytical psychology, centering on five areas of interest: the fundamental goals of Jungian psychoanalysis, the methods of treatment used in pursuit of these goals, reflections on the analytic process, the training of future analysts, and special issues, such as working with trauma victims, handicapped patients, or children and adolescents, and emergent religious and spiritual issues. Discussing not only the history of Jungian analysis but its present and future applications, this book marks a major contribution to the worldwide study of psychoanalysis. More

Religious and Spiritual Issues in Psychiatric Diagnosis: A Research Agenda for DSM-V by John R. Peteet, Francis G. Lu, and William E. Narrow (American Psychiatric Publishing) The relationship between spirituality and mental health has been the focus of growing interest and research over the last decade. However, the implications for psychiatric classification are only beginning to be systematically explored. Religious and Spiritual Issues in Psychiatric Diagnosis: A Research Agenda for DSM-V gathers for the first time the collective contributions of the prominent clinicians and researchers who participated in the 2006 Corresponding Committee on Religion, Spirituality and Psychiatry of the American Psychiatric Association. The symposium was an attempt to expand the current DSM text on "Specific Culture, Age, and Gender Features" and "Differential Diagnosis" to include the impact of religious/spiritual factors on phenomenology, differential diagnosis, course, outcome, and prognosis. The philosophical issues at stake in the differential diagnosis of spiritual versus psychiatric conditions are explored at length, as is the case for updating the V Code for a Spiritual or Religious Problem. Two expert commentaries follow each chapter and seek to contextualize and extend the research, analysis, and recommendations presented. Mental health clinicians who seek to practice in a more holistic, integrative manner will find in this unique and important volume the theoretical and practical foundations to support and further their work. More

The Expression of Time by Wolfgang Klein, Wolfgang Klein, and Ping Li (The Expression of Cognitive Categories: De Gruyter Mouton) Time is the most fundamental category of human cognition and action, and all human languages have developed many devices to express it. These include verbal categories, such as tense and aspect, but also adverbials, particles, and principles of discourse organisation. The book consists of what are essentially tutorials on the various notions of time, their encoding in different languages, on the formal semantics, the computer modelling and the acquisition of temporality. It also includes chapters on the mental representation and on culture-specific perspectivation of time and event structure. It concludes with a comprehensive bibliography. More

High-Yield Cognitive-Behavior Therapy for Brief Sessions: An Illustrated Guide, includes DVD by Jesse H. Wright, Donna M. Sudak, Douglas Turkington, Michael E. Thase (American Psychiatric Publishing) High-Yield Cognitive-Behavior Therapy for Brief Sessions: An Illustrated Guide breaks entirely new ground in explaining how to weave together the powerful tools of CBT with pharmacotherapy in sessions shorter than the traditional "50-minute hour." Written for psychiatrists, therapists, and other clinicians, the book details ways to enrich brief sessions with practical CBT interventions that work to relieve symptoms and promote wellness.
An engaging and instructive resource of video illustrations included with the book demonstrates how to successfully implement brief CBT sessions for some of the most common and important problems seen in clinical practice—depression, anxiety, psychotic symptoms, suicidality, sleep disturbances, substance abuse, and coping with physical health issues. Written by practicing clinicians with extensive experience in combining CBT and pharmacotherapy, this volume builds on the constructs and techniques described in the authors' earlier best-selling illustrated guides, Learning Cognitive-Behavior Therapy and Cognitive-Behavior Therapy for Severe Mental Illness.
A must-read for working clinicians as well as trainees, this book offers pragmatic solutions for the challenge of providing effective psychotherapy in brief treatment sessions. More

Psychodynamic Psychotherapy for Personality Disorders: A Clinical Handbook edited by John F. Clarkin, Ph.D., Peter Fonagy, Ph.D., and Glen O. Gabbard (American Psychiatric Publishing) This well-documented and articulate manual gathers in one place the psychodynamic psychotherapy thinking and research on each of the Axis II personality disorders. Psychodynamic Psychotherapy for Personality Disorders: A Clinical Handbook includes the work of 22 contributing writers in addition to the three primary authors, John F. Clarkin, Ph.D., Peter Fonagy, Ph.D., and Glen O. Gabbard, M.D. Each contributor has extensive clinical experience, and some also have research experience, with the assessment and treatment of specific personality disorders. The focus of the book is the psychodynamic conceptualization, assessment, and treatment of the personality disorders as currently described in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The 16 chapters are divided into sections that address the definition of personality pathology, approaches to treatment, and research for future directions. The authors conclude that to the surprise of many new research and reviews indicate that psychodynamic treatments are effective for personality disorders, and their impact is as great as that of cognitive-behavioral treatments. More

Handbook of Motivation and Change: A Practical Guide for Clinicians by Petros Levounis, Bachaar Arnaout (American Psychiatric Publishing) is a busy clinician s guide to motivational interviewing. With a special focus on substance use disorders and addiction, this unique handbook equips readers with a full understanding of the Motivational Interviewing approach an understanding that readers can flexibly apply to address patients issues of motivation and change even beyond substance use. The handbook is written by more than 20 practitioners of different psychotherapies who employ motivational work. This volume features a collection of case studies punctuated by movie references that illustrate discussed concepts, practical suggestions for treatment and trainee supervision, and summary key points and multiple-choice questions for readers. Authors focus on interventions ranging from psychopharmacology to support groups, zero in on the unique challenges of treating patients at various stages of their lives, examine how motivational work can change a culture, and discuss the evidence base of this effective and compelling therapy. The practical reach of this handbook will appeal not only to the general psychiatrist but to family practitioners, internists, pediatricians, medical students, and allied professionals. More than a how-to, this book provides clinicians with expert insight and information that will help them meet their patients in the midst of the very real challenges of motivation and lasting change. More

The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Psychology by John Symons and Paco Calvo (Routledge Philosophy Companions) is an invaluable guide and major reference source to the major topics, problems, concepts and debates in philosophy of psychology and is the first companion of its kind. A team of renowned international contributors provide forty-two chapters organised into six clear parts:

• I. Historical background to the philosophy of psychology
• II. Psychological explanation
• III. Cognition and representation
• IV. The biological basis of psychology
• V. Perceptual experience
• VI. Personhood

The Companion covers key topics such as the origins of experimental psychology; folk psychology; behaviorism and functionalism; philosophy, psychology and neuroscience; the language of thought, modularity, nativism and representational theories of mind; consciousness and the senses; personal identity; the philosophy of psychopathology and dreams, emotion and temporality. More

The Mind in Context edited by Batja Mesquita PhD, Lisa Feldman Barrett PhD, Eliot R. Smith PhD (The Guilford Press) Most psychology research still assumes that mental processes are internal to the person, waiting to be expressed or activated. This compelling book illustrates that a new paradigm is forming in which contextual factors are considered central to the workings of the mind. Leading experts explore how psychological processes emerge from the transactions of individuals with their physical, social, and cultural environments. The volume showcases cutting-edge research on the contextual nature of such phenomena as gene expression, brain networks, the regulation of hormones, perception, cognition, personality, knowing, learning, and emotion. More

Multiple Intelligences Around the World edited by Jie-Qi Chen, Sean Moran, Howard Gardner (Jossey-Bass) Since its introduction in 1983, Howard Gardner's multiple intelligences (MI) theory has become a touchstone of education. Embracing a wide array of human talents that significantly contribute to our intellectual and cultural life, MI theory offers a broader definition of intelligence than is measured by standard IQ tests.

MI theory supports and celebrates the diversity of children's strengths in school and other learning environments. Now, more than a quarter of a century later, Multiple Intelligences Around the World draws upon a select group of MI practitioners to show how Gardner's theory is applied in the international arena. In this dynamic book, the contributors-representing countries such as China, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, Australia, Norway, Denmark, England, Ireland, Scotland, Romania, Turkey, Argentina, Columbia, and the United States-share thoughtful stories and strategies of educational innovation.

Multiple Intelligences Around the World's cross-cultural discussions provide a valuable resource for teachers and administrators who are working with diverse student populations. In addition, the experiences of exam-driven countries like China and Japan will prove instructive to professionals faced with the task of improving both teaching and test scores.

This important book addresses a number of key questions including: How have different educational settings implemented MI? How does an educational idea created in one cultural milieu travel and take root in highly diverse educational soils? And, what universal lessons can be drawn from these experiences?  More

Essentials of Neuropsychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences 2nd ed. by Stuart C. Yudofsky, Robert E. Hales (American Psychiatric Publishing) This new edition of the Essentials of Neuropsychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences reflects the significant revisions in the 5th edition of The American Psychiatric Publishing Textbook of Neuropsychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences, published in 2008. Like its predecessor, this volume distills the critical information presented in exhaustive detail in the Textbook to create an accessible, comprehensible, and portable resource for front-line clinicians and psychiatry and neurology residents preparing for the formidable American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology certification examination. Abridged, yet undiminished in its utility, the book functions as a subspecialty reference that details assessment techniques and the full range of treatment options for patients with neuropsychiatric disorders. A concise opening chapter on Fundamentals of Cellular Neurobiology provides the reader with the scientific framework necessary to understand fully and contextualize the chapters on specific disorders and treatments that follow. Essentials of Neuropsychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences is an efficient yet comprehensive learning tool for both the basics and the advanced techniques on the leading edge of this swiftly expanding field. More

Understanding Consciousness: Second Edition by Max Velmans (Routledge) provides a unique survey and evaluation of consciousness studies, along with an original analysis of consciousness that combines scientific findings, philosophy and common sense. Building on the widely praised first edition, this new edition adds fresh research, and deepens the original analysis in a way that reflects some of the fundamental changes in the understanding of consciousness that have taken place over the last 10 years.  More

Memory by Alan Baddeley,Michael W, Eysenck, Michael C. Anderson  (Paperback) People seem to be intrigued by memory, and by its sometimes spectacular failure in (for example) people with amnesia. However, students of memory sometimes fail to retain this fascination. The reason is clear: in order to study memory we must carry out carefully-designed experiments, which can seem boring even when they are exciting science. Fortunately, we now know enough about memory to relate laboratory studies to the world beyond. In other words, our scientific knowledge of memory and how it works can help us to explain those aspects of memory that most people find of greatest interest. This book presents a thorough, accessible and appealing overview of the field, written with students in mind, by some of the world's leading researchers. It starts with a brief overview and explanation of the scientific approach to memory before going on to discuss the basic characteristics of the various memory systems and how they work. Summaries of short-term and working memory are followed by chapters on learning, the role of organization in memory, the ways in which our knowledge of the world is stored, retrieval, and on intentional and motivated forgetting. The latter half of the book involves the broader application of our basic understanding of memory, with chapters on autobiographical memory, amnesia, and on memory in childhood and aging. After chapters discussing eyewitness testimony and prospective memory, a final chapter addresses an issue of great importance to students - how to improve your memory. Each chapter of the book is written by one of the three authors, an approach which takes full advantage of their individual expertise, style and personality. This enhances students' enjoyment of the book, allowing them to share the authors' own fascination with human memory. More