Continuum Publishing Group
Hegel; a guide for the perplexed.
James (no affiliation given) takes the concept of freedom as his guiding thread in this introduction to Hegel for undergraduates, and concentrates on his social and political philosophy. James begins with Hegel's philosophy of subjective spirit, bringing in Kant and Fichte on self-consciousness and self-consciousness as the truth of consciousness, leading to the development of the universal self-consciousness of spirit. James then works through Hegel's thought on objective spirit as a philosophy of right, and explains abstract right, the moral standpoint, civil society, ethical life and the philosophy of history. He then analyzes Hegel's approach to art and religion, including Hegel's account of faith, and the metaphysics of freedom in light of Spinoza's theory of substance and the dialectical method. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Heidegger's Contributions to philosophy; life and the last God.
Powell argues that unrepentant Nazi promoter Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) was justified and methodologically sound when he demanded that his readers change their human being in order to accommodate the problem of being. Assuming that his readers are familiar with Contributions, he devotes a chapter to each of the six "joinings" in the major work and another to the explanatory material in it. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
The historical epic and contemporary Hollywood; from Dances with wolves to Gladiator.
Russell examines the revival of epic Hollywood movies in the 1990s and how they gained mainstream popularity and declined in the middle of the first decade of the twenty-first century. He outlines the genre in Hollywood history, then provides case studies of recent films, also considering the producer and director's agendas and social, economic, and political factors that increased their production during this period. He begins with the 1950s and 1960s, the genre's decline in the two decades that followed, and continues with analyses of Dances with Wolves, Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan (particularly labeled a "baby boomer epic"), and the activities of the studio DreamWorks SKG and their focus on epics. This includes the animated film The Prince of Egypt, and is followed by a chapter on Gladiator and its economic issues. The book ends with a discussion of audience responses to The Passion of the Christ and the use of the epic film as political and social commentary, particularly after 9/11. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Hobbes; a guide for the perplexed.
Finn (philosophy, Seattle U.) helps undergraduates and general readers through Hobbes's ideas and also through the philosophical activities of interpretation and what Finn terms "enquiry," in part because scholars do not always agree about what Hobbes's ideas really are. Using Hobbes's political works Elements of Law, De Cive and Leviathan and his work on natural philosophy De Corpore, Finn prefers to lead readers into a state of perplexity and force them to respond as he introduces them to both Hobbes and the activities of interpretation and enquiry, describes Hobbes's epistemology in terms of his theories of truth, his metaphysics in terms of the nature of the mind, his moral philosophy in terms of whether his laws of nature are prudential precepts or moral obligations, his political philosophy in terms of appropriate limitations, and his philosophy of religion, in terms of the existence of God. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
How to be a successful secondary teacher.
Leach (education, Birmingham University, UK) takes readers through some of the key thinking, preparation, and evaluation processes necessary for successful teaching at the secondary level. Rather then merely 'tips for teachers,' the book aims to encourage readers to reflect on teaching and to use this reflection to formulate theories that inform teaching, reading, and research. Chapters are organized chronologically to cover important concerns before, during, and after teaching a lesson, and treat areas such as pupils' needs, managing learning and behavior, textbooks, and evaluating lessons. Each chapter is followed by a summary of the recommendations made within it, and by the UK standards for the Award of Qualified Teacher Status implicitly referred to in the chapter. Appendices cover pedagogy, the requirements of the National Curriculum across subject areas, and information about the Teacher Effectiveness Enhancement Program. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
How to be a successful teaching assistant.
Independent education consultant Morgan prepares teaching assistants, especially those working in the UK, through discussion of requirements and best practice and self-evaluation and comprehension exercises. Chapters address such topics as: behavior management, how to determine what time to spend on individual students vs. groups, management of misconceptions or difficulties regarding the TA's role in the classroom, and work with supervisors. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
How to be a successful head of year; a practical guide.
Carline (secondary education, UK) offers tips to UK educators taking on the head of year position, leading tutors and performing certain tasks for a specific grade. Basing his advice in personal examples, he discusses successful discipline, issues that arise with parents, colleagues with personal and social education and health responsibilities, work with support agencies, and conflict management. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
How to teach in FE with a hangover; a practical survival guide.
Steward (City College, Norwich, UK) writes from decades of experience as she describes the process of getting healthy enough in mind and body to be an effective "further education" (FE) teacher. She acknowledges that FE teaching is particularly fraught with low pay, high expectations, great instability and stress, and she gives FE teachers tools with which they can cope. She explains how to set personal and professional boundaries, provides step-by-step methods to smooth out the various types of hangover (from substances, bad habits, finances, guilt and low self-esteem) that affect teaching, shows how to identify and correct lifestyle issues and negative relationships, and gives ways to ally coping strategies with better teaching skills. The result is a realistic self-help guide that applies to most attempting to live by teaching. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
How to write: a screenplay, 2d ed.
Here's a new twist. Schwartz (screenwriting, Loyola Marymount University) offers a screenwriting manual written in the form of a feature-length screenplay (plus a log line, a synopsis, character profiles, a beat outline, and treatment). Our hero, aspiring screenwriter Danny, must prove to his love Bebe, a young starlet, that he can write a brilliant screenplay for her. A mysterious guide named Virgil takes Danny to Screenwriting Hell to see what happens to failed screenwriters, and teaches Danny the fundamental techniques that all screenwriters must master. As well as the screenplay itself, the book includes a foreword explaining how to get the most out of the screenplay and supporting materials. The author is former head of story development for Nelson Entertainment, story analyst for the David Geffen Company, and production assistant to Francis Ford Coppola. He has credits on over a dozen produced feature films and television movies. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Hume's social philosophy; human nature and commercial sociability in A treatise of human nature.
Scottish philosopher David Hume's (1711-76) account of causality is widely thought to be most relevant to natural science, but he explains it using examples and analogies from ordinary life. Finlay (politics, U. College Dublin) attributes this and other features of the Treatise to the social nature of his philosophy. Hume's intellectual background and influences have been widely studied, he says, but not the social context in which he developed his philosophy. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Idioms and collocations; corpus-based linguistic and lexicographic studies.
The ten chapters in this text report on different aspects of the Wolfgang Paul-Preis Project at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences, a corpus linguistics project conducted under the direction of Fellbaum (psychology, Princeton U.). The work centers on the extraction and in-depth linguistic and lexicographic investigation of some 1,000 German multiword units, particularly verb phrase idioms and support verb constructions that are considered fixed. Following an introductory overview, four chapters discuss the project's technical facets: the corpus itself, gathered between 2000 and 2003; the parser designed to find corpus examples of specific support verb constructions; methods for extracting target idioms; and the lexicographic workbench for creating an idiom database. The remaining chapters present detailed analyses of the syntactic, semantic and lexical properties of idioms and collocations, including support verb constructions. For researchers in academic and industrial settings, and lexicographers. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Imaginary biographies; misreading the lives of the poets.
Klock, a freelance writer in New York City, proclaims a new literary genre: the imaginary literary biography. The main character of works in this genre, he explains, are authors ripped out of history and slammed into a bizarre and idiosyncratic landscape. He further shows how it has been the arena for two major literary conflicts: the 19th-century Romantic imagination versus the influence of precursors, and 20th-century poets participating in Romantic idealism at the same time they are deflating it. He has not yet developed an index to the project. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Internationalizing the university.
Writing for academics, program administrators, and policy makers in higher education institutions, particularly in Anglophone countries, Turner (management, U. of Newcastle, UK) and Robson (education, communication and language sciences, U. of Newcastle, UK) offer an introduction to the practical aspects of higher education internationalization. Coverage includes the characteristics of an international higher education institution, educational challenges to internationalizing academic practices and supporting student learning in a culturally inclusive educational environment, strategic and management issues, and university teachers and professional development within such institutions. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
An introduction to assessment.
Broadfoot (U. of Gloucestershire, UK), a former professor of education, delves into the topic of assessment, for all individuals working in education. She introduces its definition and scope, discussing history and its effects on contemporary practice, problems and inaccuracies, international approaches, and its use as a policy tool, including evaluating professionals, the use of indicators, and using assessment to monitor standards. How assessment and learning are connected forms the fourth section of the book, with illustrations in different settings, followed by a section on recommendations for good practice. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
An introduction to conversation analysis.
Liddicoat (applied linguistics, U. of South Australia, Magill Campus) offers linguistics students and scholars an introductory examination of the basic machinery of talk that is used by conversation participants to structure their communication. Coverage includes an overview of conversation and conversation analysis; transcribing conversation; how turns at talk are structured and managed by participants; how turns at talk are organized into conversation as sequences; how basic sequences can be expanded to produce larger, coherent units of conversational action; and the repair system available to speakers to deal with problems that arise in talk. The author also investigates three areas of conversational difficulty — opening a conversation, closing a conversation, and telling a story — and the mechanisms for addressing these difficulties. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
An introduction to political philosophy.
A scholar of philosophy who has left tracks in Scotland and the US, Moseley introduces the branch of the discipline that investigates how individuals relate with others, asking such questions as their status relative to society, whether a coercive authority should impose law or rules of behavior, and what the basis of justice should be. He surveys various approaches, including, conservatism, socialism, anarchism, and environmentalism. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
An introduction to the Psalms.
Hunter presents his own views of the Psalms, but also describes analysis of other scholars, both contemporary and over the past couple generations, to introduce students to the modern study of the Old Testament book. His topics include the diversity of collections of psalms, liturgical approaches, and anthropological reflections. One chapter has been published separately. T&T Clark is an imprint of Continuum. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Iraq; searching for hope, rev. ed.
White served as the international director of the Iraqi Institute of Peace, which was founded in 2003 as a joint project of the Anglican Church's Coventry Cathedral and the United States Institute of Peace (or USIP — whose board of directors included in 2003 such notable Bush-appointed peaceniks as Douglas Feith and Daniel Pipes, along with the three ex-officio members of Secretary of State Powell, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, and the President of the National Defense University) with the ostensible goal of working with key Iraqi religious leaders to: "attempt to delegitimize terrorism and political violence," "develop effective working relations between Sunni, Shiite, and Christian leaders," "promote the status of women," and "serve as the advisor to Iraq's interim prime minister on interfaith relations." This is White's memoir of his tenure in that position, during which he spent significant time inside Iraq, albeit mostly within the "Green Zone." In addition to describing his activities, such as unsuccessful efforts to gain the release of aid worker Margate Hassan, he also reflects on various issues raised by his experiences, including the role of religion in terrorist violence (but not so much state violence) and the justness of the American-led war and occupation, which he finds to be fully supported by all three pillars of modern just war theory (jus ad bellum, jus in bellum, and jus post bellum). A new chapter has been added to this edition in which he describes why his hope "that Iraq will indeed one day be seen as the handiwork of God" remains undiminished. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Iris Murdoch's ethics; a consideration of her romantic vision.
British writer Murdoch (1919-99) is best known for her novels, but is increasingly being recognized as a major 20th-century philosopher as well. Laverty (philosophy and education, Columbia U., New York) argues that it is within the tradition of philosophical romanticism that she can best be seen reconciling the philosophical and poetic, synthesis and divergence as dialogical necessities, Kant's Copernican Revolution and Platonist metaphysics, existentialism and Platonism, the artist and the saint, and Socrates and the virtuous peasant. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
The irony of Heidegger; an essay.
Haas (philosophy, U. of New York at Stony Brook) separates the philosopher from the philosophy and concentrates on Heidegger's perceptions of irony and his use of it in his work. As he re-reads Being and Time through the "Rector's Address" and the "Letter on Humanism" to "The Origin of the Work of Art" and the famous Spiegel interview, Haas does not claim Heidegger is being ironic, but that the philosopher's writings make such an interpretation possible. In essence, Haas allows that one can read Heidegger with as much irony as dedication, if the essence of this irony lies in uncertainty. From this he asserts that the entire project of "onto-heno-chrono-phenomenology" is questionable. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
