Ashgate Publishing Co.

From Judaism to Calvinism; the life and writings of Immanuel Tremellius (c. 1510-1580).

Tremellius was born a Jew in Italy, but after two conversions identified with the Reformed branch of Protestantism and exiled to northern Europe where he had a successful academic career. Austin (early modern history, U. of Bristol) explores what his life and work reveal about the Jewish contribution to 16th-century culture, early modern Judeo-Christian relations, the character of the European Reformation, and the nature of Reformed religion. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

From positivism to idealism; a study of the moral dimensions of legality.

Conventionally, an analytical theory of jurisprudence identifies the correct legal practice in a situation prior to any substantive engagement. Coyle (jurisprudence, U. College London) departs from that approach, resurrecting a tradition that considers aspects of the law's role within the wider currents of political through and practice that shape daily life, rather than focusing on the abstract necessary concepts and categories that positivism left in the wake of its extinction. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

From primitive to indigenous; the academic study of indigenous religions.

Having taught religion for many years in an academic discipline that rarely recognizes any but the major world religions, Cox (religious studies, U. of Edinburgh), critically analyzes the history of and assumptions underlying the use of the category Indigenous Religions as a distinct tradition alongside World Religions. He suggests that because the variety of religions that fall under this classification is so broad, teachers must focus on specific types or — more often — specific locations to make any sense; as in his courses, he takes examples from Alaska and Zimbabwe. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

George Goring (1608-1657); Caroline courtier and royalist general.

Memegalos (British and European history, Hunter College, City U. of New York) presents the first modern biography of George Goring, one of the leading royalist generals serving King Charles I in the English Civil War of 1642-46. His flamboyant lifestyle of excessive drinking and gambling, lavish dressing and entertaining, and frequently abandoning his wife often overshadowed his achievements on the battlefield. In this text, Memegalos offers a reexamination and reassessment of Goring's life, character, and career, and places him within the times in which he lived. In the process, the author provides readers with a look at English society and culture in the first half of the 17th century. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Geographies of Muslim identities; diaspora, gender and belonging.

Aitchison (human geography, U. of the West of England, UK) et al. bring together 10 contributions from the social, cultural, political, historical, and economic subfields of geography, along with gender, cultural, and leisure studies, to understand the construction, representation, contestation, and reworking of Muslim identities in everyday life and international contexts. Contributors wish to reveal the diversity of Muslim identities, their geographical specificity and variation, and the ways markers of their identities are affected in time and space and how they interact with gender, race, and class. Research for the essays was conducted around the world, in urban, rural, regional, and national contexts, and with different social groups and forms of identities. Topics specifically consider, in particular contexts, migration and mobility; gender issues relating to education and the media; and belonging, including the experiences of young Muslim men following 9/11. Essay authors work in human and social geography, sociology, social and behavioral sciences, anthropology, and other fields in Australia, the UK, and US. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Greek philosophers as theologians; the divine arche.

Providing a history of theological thought by Greek philosophers from the Presocratics to the early Hellenistic period, Drozdek (Duquesne U., US) focuses on the attributes of God and the impact on formal thinking on views concerning eschatology, ethics, and social thinking. His topics include Heraclitus and the Logos, rationalization of religion, Aristotle and the unmoved mover, and early stoics. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Great writers on organizations, 3d omnibus ed.

Pugh (international management, Open U. Business School, UK) and Hickson (U. of Bradford Management School, UK) present a collection of succinct descriptions of the contributions made by 80 key management thinkers to the understanding of organizational behavior and managerial thinking. In the 40 years since the first edition of Writers on Organizations first appeared, new writers have been added and others dropped. The latest edition features not only several new writers — Lex Donaldson, Stewart Clegg, Richard Whitley, Michel Foucault, and Kathleen Eisenhardt — but also a description of the work of every writer included in all the previous editions of the book. For academics, students, and management professionals. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Inspiring faith in schools; studies in religious education.

Has secularism sounded the death knell for religious education? Where will students who need answers about faith and faith systems turn? The result of a series of colloquia held at St. Deiniol's Library near Chester between 2003 and 2006, this collection of essays by experts describes the trajectory religious education has taken in the UK over the past several decades and possibilities for a critical preview of conditions for upcoming years. Contributors address the current effects of secularism on religious education, the interactions between understanding and belief as well as perceptions of truth, the relation between confession and reason, religious education and committed openness, the misrepresentation of religion, atheism and deception, the "skills" of religious education, the process of dismembering and remembering religious education, the grammar of religious discourse and education, liberal nurture, and the divide between confessional and non-confessional religious education. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

International order in a globalizing world.

Stivachtis (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University) gathers practitioners and academics in political science, international affairs, and economics to discuss international order from the perspective of the English School of international relations. They concentrate on assessing the impact of major actors' policies and actions on the five institutions of international society as identified by Hedley Bull, one of the founders of the English School: the balance of power, great power management, diplomacy, war, and international law. Taking Bull's The Anarchical Society (1977) as a starting point, they assess the relevance of international society's institutions to international order in a globalizing world. Some issues examined include transatlantic intelligence cooperation in the global war on terrorism, business and civil society partnerships with the United Nations, and China's foreign policy dynamics. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

John Owen; reformed Catholic, renaissance man.

Trueman (Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia) characterizes Owen (1616-83) as one of the most significant Protestant theologians in England and Europe during his time, but also a Puritan and therefore one of history's losers. He summarizes his theological arguments on the trinitarian God, Catholic and Christology, and justification. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Krishen Khanna; images in my time.

Published in an impressive oversized format (10.25x13.25 inches), this volume presents essays on different themes and images by the artist, with many full-page and two-page color plates of the works. Many of the works discussed contain Christian themes, including the Raising of Lazarus and the Last Supper, sometimes in an Indian setting, while others concern life in India. Born in Punjab, educated in India and England, Khanna has been based since the 1950s in Madras, India. Distributed in the U.S. by Ashgate. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Law and conscience; Catholicism in early-modern England, 1570-1625.

The question of the relationship between who governs bodies and who governs souls was reframed by the British monarchy and the Church of England in a manner that many in Europe thought rather peculiar. Tutino (history, U. of California-Santa Barbara) takes that issue, in particular the jurisdiction of consciousness, as an avenue by which to analyze and interpret English Catholic thought during the half century on the overall relationship between religion and politics. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Law and society approaches to cyberspace.

Berman (U. of Connecticut) assembles 16 readings from law journals and books published between 1996 and 2005 in this volume that provides an overview of law and society approaches that consider the institutional structures, behaviors, personnel, culture, and meaning of laws relating to cyberspace. Law professors mostly from the US consider issues involving online interaction from the perspectives of history, critical theory, cultural studies, anthropology, legal realism, and philosophy, all relying on the maxim that the interaction between law and society is essential to studying the field of online regulation. Specific topics include the psychological and sociological impact of online interaction, the impact of the printing press on legal culture, privacy, freedom of expression, the impact of thinking about cyberspace as a place, authorial control over digital distribution of creative works, and the relationship between online interaction and globalization. Only a name index is provided. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Ludwig Wittgenstein — a cultural point of view; philosophy in the darkness of this time.

DeAngelis (philosophy, Northeastern U., Boston) hopes and believes that after more than a decade of work, he has made a modest breakthrough in understanding and explaining Anglo-Austrian philosopher Wittgenstein's (1889-1951) cultural concerns, the influence of German philosopher Oswald Spengler (1880-1936) on his view of culture and philosophy, and how his lifelong qualms about the expressibility of religion emerge in his later philosophy. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Manu Parekh; Banaras, eternity watches time.

The 139 paintings by Indian Expressionist painter Manu Parekh reproduced here share a single subject: the holy site of Banaras, the city on the Ganges river where Hindus hope to scatter their remains and that is home to 1,500 temples and mosques. The paintings depict the abundant riverside burning ghats among other subjects, and the seven accompanying essays and one artist interview explore themes of death and rebirth, holiness, and the use of color in Parekh's works and the city that inspired them. Also included is a series of b&w paintings. This book is distributed in the US by Ashgate. Oversize: 11.25x10.25 inches. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Medicine and religion in enlightenment Europe.

Grell (history, The Open U., UK) and Cunningham (history and philosophy of science, U. of Cambridge, UK) bring together 13 essays that take issue with the notion that religious elements in the treatment of diseases disappeared in the Enlightenment and examine how religion maintained its ties with medicine during the period. Historians from Europe and the US consider religion and medicine in different European regions and topics such as midwives and the function of clergymen, anatomy, the role of physicians in collecting natural historical items, faith healing, and medical training. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The memetics of music; a neo-Darwinian view of musical structure and culture.

Jan (music, U. of Huddersfield, UK) applies Richard Dawkins' theory of memetics to music, offering a new way of analyzing musical structure. This concept of replication is explained, in addition to pre- and post-Darwinian ideas of biological evolution, and then applied to specific pieces, musical styles and periods, and composers' outputs. He focuses on the music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, and the common-practice era of Bach to Brahms. He also discusses how memes are transmitted in human culture and how they drive socio-cultural evolution and musical style. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Miracles and wonders; the development of the concept of miracle, 1150-1350.

American-born Goodich (1944-2006) spent most of his academic career in the history department at Haifa University, and died as this book was in the publication process. In it he examines a wide range of sources, most from the 13th century, in order to summarize the scholastic understanding of the miracle, to explain the causes of this need to justify belief in the supernatural, and to trace the efforts to provide this belief with a philosophically rational and judicially defensible foundation. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Mobilizing hospitality; the ethics of social relations in a mobile world.

Whether it is concerned with tourism or migration, the very notion of hospitality is predicated on the idea of mobility and it is therefore necessary to theorize the two together, suggest Molz (College of the Holy Cross, US) and Gibson (U. of Surrey, UK). This connection between mobility and hospitality is the binding thread that ties these 11 varied theoretical contributions together as they explore three core themes: "locating hospitality in a mobile world, performing the hospitality product, and defining the limits of hospitality." Among the topics addressed are hospitality as an element of city promotion and its connection to ideas about cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism; interconnections between place, mobility, memory, materiality, and practice in the context of Chicago's Maxwell Street, the landing site for many migrants; social networking sites on the Internet as an arena of hospitality; performance of notions of health and well-being in the commercial spas of Sweden; the blurring of dichotomies of public and private in hospitality encounters in commercial homes; shifting hospitalities and the intersection of religious, national, and sexual identities for queer Russian immigrants to Israel; political and popular discourses of hospitality surrounding asylum seekers in Britain; and the legacy of colonialism in the inhospitable xenophobia directed towards the figure of the migrant in contemporary Europe. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Modernity, religion, and the War on Terror.

Integrating and augmenting several works he had delivered and/or published from 2001 to 2004, Winfield (philosophy, U. of Georgia, US) explains the role that modernity plays in today's secular culture, religion, the post-colonial condition, and Islam. He also sets out the foundations of modernity in the Enlightenment, and the post-modern challenge to it. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)