BRILL
Diplomacy with a difference; the Commonwealth Office of High Commissioner, 1880-2006.
Lloyd (international relations, Keele U.) takes familiar topics, namely diplomacy and the Commonwealth, and finds a new study in the distinctive way Commonwealth members come to engage in official relations with each other. This unusual type of diplomacy is not only practical but also firmly grounded in emotions such as near-familial respect and appreciation for traditions to which many of the members violently objected in the past. Lloyd uses a variety of sources, including interviews and correspondence with diplomats and a range of archival material, and the result looks far more behind the scenes than it does on what we see at ceremonies. The material on the early formation of the office of High Commissioner is particularly interesting. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Discourse in ritual studies.
The study of ritual is not confined to one faith or even to one discipline. By definition it includes anthropology, history, religious studies, philosophy, performance theory or any other field that can help researchers interpret and explain ritual practice. This collection of ten essays, created to honor Dr. Ton Scheer of Radhoud U. Nijmegen upon his achieving emeritus status, reflects that diversity of approach as it addresses core issues in ritual studies. Essays describe perspectives from liturgical studies, evolutionary theories, non-reductive naturalist views and theories of language and performance. Empirical essays concern sacred space, the relations between matrimonial values and notions about the form of ecclesiastic marriage rites, Roman Catholic funeral liturgy and its linkage with fortitude, ministry as a ritual profession, the ethics of the relationship between ritual to hermeneutics, and the issue of memory in relation to the Eucharist. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Divine creation in ancient, medieval, and early modern thought; essays presented to the Rev'd Dr. Robert D. Crouse.
Students, friends, and colleagues of Canadian scholar Crouse present essays on such topics as Old Testament teaching on necessity in creation and its implication for the doctrine of atonement, the simple bodies as unities of quantity and quality in Aristotle's On Generation and Corruption, King Alfred's imagery of Wisdom's Land in the preface to his translation of Augustine's Soliloquies, the place of natural and necessary emanation in Aquinas' doctrine of creation, and eternal law as the fountain of laws in Richard Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
The doctrine of God in African Christian thought; the holy trinity, theological hermeneutics and the African intellectual culture.
Anglican priest Kombo (theological studies, Daystar U., Kenya) grapples with the problem of how to deliver the doctrine of the Trinity to the roots of the African cultural milieu using African intellectual tools or symbols. He begins by reviewing the doctrine as set forth by the Bible and the church fathers, and surveying the response of Western theologies to it. Then he explores the doctrine of God in African inculturation theology, and explains how to move from the African concepts of God to the doctrine of the Trinity. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Dutch East India Company merchants at the court of Ayutthaya; Dutch perceptions of the Thai Kingdom.
Historians describe a relationship based on mutual respect and partnership between Europeans and Asians during the 16th and 17th century, before the rise Euro-centrism led to the age of imperialism. Ruangsilp (history, Chulalongkorn U.) looks at interactions between European employees of the Dutch East India Company and members of the royal court in what is now generally called the Kingdom of Siam during that period. She argues that the contacts that took place in and around the audience hall exemplified the co-existence of partnership and a sense of differences. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
The encyclopaedia of Islam, new edition; index volume, fasicule 2: Glossary and index of terms.
The entries are listed alphabetically by the Roman alphabet, usually the singular with the plural following in parentheses if it is found in the Encyclopedia. Generally the Semitic root system is ignored, but some adjectives, plurals, and other derivative forms of a word are included in that word's entry. In addition to citing the volume and page where the term occurs in the Encyclopedia, entries also define the term briefly. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
The eternal present of the past; illustration, theater, and reading in the Wanli period, 1573-1619.
Hsiao (Chinese language and literature, U. of North Carolina-Chapel Hill) explores how illustration, painting, theater, literature, and philosophy interrelated and intersected in the context of drama publication, considered as a distinct literary genre. She focuses on drama illustrations as exemplary of most of the important trends and developments in illustration during the period, and because the quantity and quality of plays published then are unmatched in all Chinese history. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Fool me twice; intelligence failure and mass casualty terrorism.
Selecting the first World Trade Center bombing, the Oklahoma City Murrah Federal Building bombing, the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia, and the US Embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya as case studies, Copeland (political science, Geneva College) seeks to determine the causes of intelligence failure, focusing on leadership and policy failures, organizational and bureaucratic issues, problems with warning information, and analytical challenges. The findings from these four cases are then applied to analyzing intelligence failures regarding the September 11th, 2001 attacks and recommendations are drawn regarding the structure of the intelligence community, legal authorities, congressional accountability, and strategic intelligence. Martinus Nijhoff is an imprint of Brill. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Foreign investment, human rights and the environment; a perspective from South Asia on the role of public international law for development.
Foreign investment law is one of the most important factors in whether developing or transitional nations will have a positive development experience, one that benefits the people of that country as much as it does the foreign investors. Puvimanasinghe finds that so far most laws have been geared toward protecting foreign investors, which he does not find surprising. His study, which is unique in looking at both environmental and human rights issues, describes the contextual setting and concepts behind his work and then analyzes the relationships between transnational corporations and public international law and responsibility, the three dimensions of international law standards, the varying and sometimes conflicting roles of home and host states, the various regional and national arrangements, the interventions of non-state actors such as civil society initiatives, and final reflections on the findings and their implications to policy and practice. Martinus Nijhoff is an imprint of Brill. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Franciscans at prayer.
They prayed in spirals, in silence, on soaring arches over holy ground, under the stars they could nearly touch. They prayed in chicken markets, rain-soaked on porches, rain-soaked in fields, aloud, outstretched. They prayed in churches that were themselves prayers. They prayed in prisons. Their bodies were prayers. Their souls were prayers. In these essays on the men and women of the Franciscan order from its inception to the late sixteenth century, contributors to this annual cover the writings of St. Francis and their extraordinary affects, St. Claire's mysticism of motherhood, Celano's account of St. Francis's prayers, Bonaventure's take on contemplation and the spiritual life, Scotus's philosophy and prayer, Foligno's patterns, da Todi's rhetoric, the Beguins' orthodoxy and heresy, Espina's diverse polemical literature, the early Franciscans' extreme practice, icons' expressions as prayer and prayer traditions formed in Franciscan liturgy, religions instruction and even as recollection under the Inquisition. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Framing Iberia; Maqamat and frametale narratives in medieval Spain.
Wacks (Spanish, U. of Oregon) samples the genre of short stories and tales within collections, maqamat, as practiced in late medieval Spain by writers of Catalan, Castilian, Hebrew, Arabic, and Latin. He discusses storytelling and performance in the genre, reconquest ideology and Andalusi narrative practice in the Conde Lucanor, social change and misogyny in Jaume Roig's Spill, and other topics. The study began as his 2003 Ph.D. dissertation in Hispanic literature and the University of California-Berkeley). (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
From human rights to international criminal law; studies in honour of an African jurist, the late Judge Laïty Kama./Des droits de l'homme au droit international pénal.
This volume presents 30 papers in honor of the late Senegalese judge, Laïty Kama, the first President of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). The opening essays are examinations of Kama's pioneering work in the fields of international criminal law and human rights. The rest address a range of related topics, including state cooperation and its challenges for the ICTR, indictment rules to safeguard the rights of the accused, the jurisprudence of the right of legal assistance at the ICTR, commentary on the ICTR case against Laurent Semanza, gender and sexual violence under the Rome Statute establishing the International Criminal Court, challenges of investigating and prosecuting international crimes, the convergence of the common law and inquisitorial systems in international criminal law, independence and impartiality of the international criminal judiciary, the Abu Ghraib prosecutions as seen from the perspective of the ICTR and its counterpart for the former Yugoslavia, mercenary activities and conflict prevention in Africa, and women and human rights in the Asia-Pacific region. Ten of the contributions are presented in French. Martinus-Nijhoff is an imprint of Brill. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
The future of religion; toward a reconciled society.
Each year since 1976, an international course on the future of religion has been offered at the Inter-University Center in Dubrovnik, Croatia. The 20 studies here are revised from papers presented at the course between 2001 and 2006. Scholars of the social sciences and philosophy and theology discuss such topics as Pious XII and the Third Reich, religion within the space of reasons, civil society and the globalization of its state of emergency, the socio-economic basis for religious socialization and youth issues in Croatia, and the theology of revolution versus the theology of counter-revolution. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Gerald Fitzmaurice (1865-1939); Chief Dragoman of the British embassy in Turkey.
Gerald Fitzmaurice (1865-1939), in the estimation of biographer Berridge (emeritus, international politics, U. of Leicester, UK), was the real power in the British Embassy in the Turkish capital of Constantinople prior to the First World War. His extraordinary influence among Turkish and British officials alike came as (what used to be called in the ancien regime) a "Minister of the Second Order." This class of official has been unduly neglected in the study of international diplomacy, suggests Berridge, and he presents his account of Fitzmaurice's diplomatic career in support of the argument that not having the ambassador's full representative burden of sovereignty, a minister of the second order could take risks in pursuit of intelligence and influence that his ostensible superior could not. Martinus Nijhoff is an imprint of Brill. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Granddaughter of the sun; a study of Euripides' Medea.
Venerable US classics scholar Luschnig regrets now having called Medea a monster and other bad names for so many decades. Having run into more and more students, especially women, who highly esteemed the character, she has reconsidered, and here offers teachers, scholars, and advanced students her insights on Medea and the play about her. Among her perspectives are the polysemous Medea, Medea and her children, the slave's voice, the battle of the stores, and Medea among us. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Greater Magadha; studies in the culture of early India.
Challenging conventional views, Bronkhorst (Sanskrit and Indian studies, U. of Lausanne, Switzerland) offers evidence that Greater Magadha, the eastern part of the Ganges Plain in northern India, displayed an independent and vital culture until close to the beginning of the Common Era, and was not simply a passive receptor of Brahmanism and Jainism. He combines new with previously published material to look at the cultural features of the region, Brahmanism in relation to rebirth and karmic retribution, and the chronology of texts and culture. Very very technical discussions are appended, but much of the main text might still be a struggle for readers without some background in the Sanskrit grammatical tradition. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
The great perfection (rDzogs chen); a philosophical and meditative teaching of Tibetan Buddhism, 2d ed.
Tibetan rDzogs chen is a philosophical and meditative teaching in Tibetan Buddhism that parallels Ch'an in Chinese Buddhism and Zen in the Japanese Buddhist tradition, and was the first of the various religious traditions to be formed in Tibet. A scholar of religion and philosophy, Karmay (emeritus, National Center of Scientific Research, Paris) investigates what kind of ideas gave impetus to the formation of rDzogs chen thought in the ninth century AD and the historical, social, and religious circumstances underlying its birth and its literary and historical development during the following two centuries. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Handbook of New Age.
Kemp (co-editor, Journal of Alternative Spiritualities and New Age Studies) and Lewis (religious studies, U. of Wisconsin at Stevens Point) collect 22 examples of recent scholarship on "New Age" religion and spiritual practices. Opening chapters discuss definitions of New Age and broadly chart its origins and development. Some papers discuss disciplinary contributions to the study of New Age from the perspectives of psychology, quantitative social science research, and the conceptual terrain of networks and diffusion, while others discuss New Age in relation to business, science, and pilgrimage. Global aspects of New Age are discussed as manifested in Latin America, Japan, Hawaii, and Scotland. A final set of contributions look at New Age in relation to different worldviews, including New Age skepticism, astrology, paganism, Christianity, and the holistic health movement. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
The Hundred Poets compared; a print series by Kuniyoshi, Hiroshige, and Kunisada.
In this attractive, oversized (10x12 inches) volume, full-page color plates of superb quality present all 100 scenes in Japanese prints by the artists, with a description of the story found in the scene on the facing page. Translations of the inscriptions, signature, and seals on each print are included in each entry. The authors relate the story depicted, indicating variations from other prints or poems, and aspects of the figure's dress, pose, and enactment of the scene. A lengthy introduction describes the series and its production in print. Both authors are print collectors; Mostow teaches Asian studies at the U. of British Columbia, Canada; Herwig is editor of Andon, the Bulletin of the Society for Japanese Art. Distributed in North America by Brill. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
`Incidental' ethnographers; French Catholic missions on the Tonkin-Yunnan frontier, 1880-1930.
The texts Michaud (anthropology, U. Laval) examines are from the margins of colonial Indonesia, are about minority people living in the mountains, and were written by amateurs. That counts as three strikes to mainstream academia, which has persistently overlooked the documents. He sets the scene in general and summarizes colonial ethnography and the French heritage, then focuses on the upper Tonkin and the missionary authors and their texts. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Intertextuality in the tales of Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav; a close reading of Sippurey Ma'asiyot.
The text that Schleicher (Jewish studies, U. of Aarhus, Denmark) examines records 13 fairy tales told by Nahman from 1806 to 1810, as an alternative genre to homilies for disseminating his religious thought. The tales contain heroes, villains, supernatural forces, and other fantastic elements; but, she says they do not make any sense whatsoever. She argues that the meaning only becomes accessible by relating the plot to external sign systems taken from the cultural environment to which it refers. Her quotations are in English. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
