Ashgate Publishing Co.

Globalization's limits; conflicting national interests in trade and finance.

A business consultant with a background in science and mathematics, Chorafas warns business professionals and researchers that the progress of globalization everyone loves so much may not be able to continue forever. He traces most of the problems back to China, eventually, and its impact on world trade and the manufacturing capacity in other countries. His topics include the rise of Asian giants, globalization and the European Union, sovereign wealth funds, China's banks and the economy, financial integration in the European Union, and whether the Euro is a blessing or a curse for the Union's economy. Distributed in the US by Ashgate. (Annotation ©2009 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The globalization of corporate governance.

Dignam (U. of London, UK) and Galanis (U. of Leeds, UK) analyze processes of change in global corporate governance systems, focusing on the issues of convergence and between stakeholder systems such as those of Germany and Japan and Anglo-American shareholder systems. They take a broad historical view of change in the British, American, and German systems and emphasize diversity in reaction to change in the development of economic globalization over time — particularly in the interaction of economic and legal reforms — which brings into serious question both the inevitability and superiority of a convergence towards shareholder systems. (Annotation ©2009 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Heaven forbid; an international legal analysis of religious discrimination.

"Law is a powerful tool which can and must be used to better society." (p. 3) This is the theme of Cotter's series of monographs on efforts to combat discrimination. In this volume, she examines religious discrimination in Britain, Ireland, North America, The European Union, Australia, New Zealand, Africa and South Africa. She also looks at how international treaties have helped decrease religious discrimination and the role of the United Nations. Each chapter contains long excerpts of codes or treaties that legislate against religious discrimination, including some that are not specifically worded to address the issue. Students of international law and human rights advocates will find this a useful reference book. (Annotation ©2009 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Ideas and cultural margins in early modern Germany; essays in honor of H.C. Erik Midelfort.

This excellent festschrift in honor of German historian H.C. Erik Midelfort reflects his lifelong interest in the margins of Early Modern society. Editors Plummer (history, Western Kentucky University) and Barnes (History, Davidson College) provide an affectionate academic biography of Midelfort as well as a bibliography of his work. The book is divided into four parts: laity, clergy, academics, and legal authorities, but all the essays are concentrated on the fringes of the topics. For instance, the mixed blessing of the printing press is discussed in essays on witch hunting and rumor mongering. In a book concentrating on Early Modern Germany, it is not surprising that Luther appears in several articles. However, one might not expect to find him in juxtaposition to nude paintings by Lucius Cranach. Other topics include clerical bigamy, murder to avoid suicide, torture, levitation and leprosy. The changes occurring in the collective world view caused by the explorations of the Atlantic and the discovery of new/old learning from the Greek philosophers are a background to many of the articles. Each one is a thought-provoking, enlightening example of fine scholarship on the long neglected liminal edges of German culture. (Annotation ©2009 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Instruments and their music in the middle ages.

McGee compiles 28 significant studies of instrumental music and their repertories in the Middle Ages, written between 1950 and 1998 and published mostly in music journals. Essays discuss instrument classification, keyboards, plucked and bowed string instruments, winds, and repertoire, as well as the controversies and problems that arise in studying this area, particularly in drawing from iconography for evidence, which applies to information about the keyboard instrument called the "chekker" and the existence of the slide trumpet. Other articles provide information on style and uses. Brief context for the musical period is provided in the introduction, although knowledge of the period is assumed. (Annotation ©2009 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Islam in American prisons; black Muslims' challenge to American penology.

Kusha (East Carolina U.) examines the rapid growth of Islam among African-Americans US prisons, arguing that it poses an epistemological and ideological challenge to American penal philosophy, which theoretically is structured on the ideal of rehabilitating offenders through penance and appropriate penal measures even as its dehumanizing practice and racial character undermine those ideals. Prison-bound conversion to Islam, particularly with regards to the Nation of Islam, which has achieved significant success due to its provision of an effective mechanism of protection for its converts and its promises of reintegration into its social and economic infrastructures following release, thus poses a counter-narrative of rehabilitation that resonates strongly among African Americans who have experienced the racist brutality of American penology. (Annotation ©2009 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Jerome of Stridon; his life, writings, and legacy.

The papers in this collection on the endlessly fascinating Saint Jerome (c.346-420) were first presented at a 2006 conference held at Cardiff University, Wales. Jerome is considered one of the Church Fathers and he wrote hundreds of letters, commentaries and, sometimes, diatribes. Cain (University of Colorado, Boulder) and Lössl (Cardiff University) have arranged the articles in three sections. The first two, his life and writings, blend together as Jerome revealed himself in all his work, including biblical exegesis. The third, on his legacy, is not as often considered. This last section looks at the way Jerome's writings were used selectively over the centuries, ending with Martin Luther. The articles demonstrate how complex and contradictory Jerome could be. Several reevaluate much-studied topics such as Jerome's relation to women and his understanding of Hebrew. Others consider lesser known sides of Jerome: letters he wrote from Rome, early translations from Greek, his feeling for the last-minute conversion of the good thief on Golgotha. Jerome's determination to be the authority on orthodoxy is dealt with in his work against Pelagius. Each article contains nuances that cause the reader to rethink Jerome. They will be of interest to historians and theologians. Four of the articles are in French and the remainder in English, (Annotation ©2009 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Jewish/Christian/queer; crossroads and identities.

Using the term queer to convey dissonance generally as well as deviation from a sexual norm, scholars of Western literature and religion during various historical periods explore violations of boundaries between conventional categories. Their topics include the erotic adventures of rabbi Meir, the Queen Anne churches as queer spaces, queering the Jews in Protestant Europe at the fin de siécle, A Russian-Jewish-Catholic homosexual in Oscar Wilde's London, questions of morality and identity regarding Hitler's Jewish solders, and Judaic recovery and the broken Christian body in Michael Arditti's Easter and The Celibate. (Annotation ©2009 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Landscape, art and identity in 1950s Britain.

While the physical British landscape itself may not have changed much during the 1950s, representations of the landscape in painting in that era underwent several imaginative and intellectual transformations connected to anxieties concerning national, political, and regional identity, argues Jolivette (art history, Missouri State U.), who here explores British landscape art and discourses about landscape art in terms of such issues as the role of women in contemporary society, the status of immigrant artists in Britain, developments in science and technology, and the promotion of British art and culture abroad. (Annotation ©2009 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The late paintings of Velazquez; theorizing painterly performance.

Knox (art history, Indiana U.) argues that Spanish artist Diego Velázquez (1599-1660) was far more aware of contemporary European theoretical writings on art than has been previously acknowledged and that he responded with his own distinctive and personal theory of painting, propounding that theory not in texts, but in painting themselves, with two of his most famous paintings, The Spinners and Las Meninas, serving as highly self-conscious performances of his theories of painterly brushwork. The ideas, techniques, and innovations of many significant Baroque painters throughout Europe are discussed as part of the book's thesis, making the volume relevant to art historians not only of Spain, but of Baroque art in general. The volume is well illustrated with b&w and color plates. (Annotation ©2009 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Law in the service of legitimacy; gender and politics in Jordan.

Analyzing issues of gender and law in the political system of Jordan, Warrick (Villanova U.) argues that political legitimacy is fundamentally dependent upon cultural factors that affect the political system. In other words, the politicization of elements of culture contributes to the ability of the regime and other political actors to claim sociocultural legitimacy. She describes the legitimacy of the Jordanian state as combining both traditionalist and liberal strands embodied in Islamic and non-Islamic law that incorporate social values and practices with regard to gender, the cultural characteristic that is her focus here. The dual legal system, according to Warrick, is used as a strategic tool by the Jordanian state in its quest for legitimacy, with varying impacts on the interests of women that are by no means reducible to a simple dichotomy between Islamic and non-Islamic law. (Annotation ©2009 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Mendelssohn and Victorian England.

Aimed at musicologists and other scholars, this volume considers the reception of the music of Felix Mendelssohn in nineteenth-century England and his influence on English musical culture. Mendelssohn took ten trips to Britain between 1829 and 1847 (the year of his death), and Eatock discusses these, the musical context, and his relationship with English musicians and other figures and how he became very popular and influential there. The composer's posthumous reception to the end of the Victorian era is also examined. Eatock is a lecturer, editor, composer, and journalist who has Ph.D. in musicology from the U. of Toronto, Canada. (Annotation ©2009 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The music of Chou Wen-Chung.

Lai (music theory, Baylor U., US) characterizes Chou (b. 1923) as a modernist American composer and firm member of the east coast school, but at the same time a Chinese composer who has rejected the conventional fusion of Eastern and Western music (traditional Chinese melody and functional European harmonies) and founded a revolutionary dialogue between composers across Asia and across cultural borders. He looks at the man and his ideas, early compositional development; variable modes; rhythm and form; timbre, texture, and imagery; and the realization of re-merger. (Annotation ©2009 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The musical traditions of Northern Ireland and its diaspora; community and conflict.

Cooper (music and technology, U. of Leeds, UK) presents an analysis of the traditional music of Northern Ireland, first providing information on the geographical, historical, and social context of the region, then discussing songs and their texts, especially in the often neglected Protestant tradition. He covers regional performance practices, including the approaches and repertoires of musicians Joe Holmes and James Perry, and ends with chapters on Irish music in America, and the different approaches of various individuals to the process of collecting, transcribing, and transmitting Irish music. (Annotation ©2009 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Narratives of women and murder in England, 1680-1760; deadly plots.

This intriguing study blends fictional representations of female murderers with transcripts, biographies and broadsides about real women convicted of murder. Saxton (English, Mills College, Oakland, CA) constructs a remarkable analysis of the social expectations for women and how murder had to be put within that mental framework, however they disrupted it. For the fiction, Saxton selects work featuring female killers by both men and women: Defoe, Fielding, Behn and Manley. The opening chapter discusses eighteenth century attitudes toward murder and female criminals. Women could postpone execution if they were pregnant, showing mercy toward the child. But the horror of a woman committing a crime against morality and heirarchy meant that sentences could be harsher for female murderers. Saxton intends this to be part of a study of literary tropes and gender. The literary commentary is fascinating but her chapters on the manipulation of the stories of the four real murderesses are riveting. (Annotation ©2009 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Negotiating secular and sacred in medieval art; Christian, Islamic, and Buddhist.

This collection of 7 essays presents test cases for the usefulness of the terms secular and sacred when applied to examples of medieval art and architecture. First presented at College Art Association Conference sessions held in February 2006 in Boston, the essays address topics that include the rock caves of Cappadocia, Christian monasteries and Umayyad architecture in Syria, celestial imagery in a Carolingian manuscript, and the illuminations of the Taymouth Hours. The final chapter, by Samuel Crowell Morse (Amherst College), addresses the mix of genre and religion in pilgrimage mandalas of 16th-17th century Japan. The book is well illustrated with b&w and some color plates. (Annotation ©2009 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Negotiating Shakespeare's language in Romeo and Juliet; reading strategies from criticism, editing and the theatre.

Hunter (history of rhetoric and performance, U. of California, Davis) and Lichtenfels (theater and dramatic art, U. of California, Davis) worked for twelve years on the "transdisciplinary" study of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet They divide the study into two main sections with the subdivisions demonstrating the many aspects of their examination of the play. The first half looks at the play from the point of view of readers, performers and editors, all with different perceptions and goals. The second half discusses the play from a socio-historical standpoint, what is says about Shakespeare's era and the constants of the human condition. The accompanying DVD is a modern twist on the old variorum. It contains the text of Quarto I, notes and video clips of performances. (Annotation ©2009 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

North Korea's foreign policy under Kim Jong Il; new perspectives.

Kwak (PhD, international relations, Claremont Graduate U.) and Joo (political science, U. of Minnesota-Morris) present 13 chapters examining various aspects of North Korean foreign policy, with the key characteristic of the collection being a sustained attempt to examine the issues from the perspective of North Korea itself. Chapters address the role of the Juche (self-reliance) ideology in policymaking, the strategic intentions and motivations of North Korea, the reasons for shifting negotiating positions over North Korea's missile program, Kim Jong Il's worldview and perception of the US, and North Korea's peace regime proposals. Other chapters examine North Korea's policies towards, individually: the US, China, Russia, Japan, and South Korea. (Annotation ©2009 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Peter Blake; one man show.

Published in an oversized format (10x11.75 inches), this volume showcases the long career of the British painter, who began painting in the 1950s and has steadily produced paintings since. Livingston, an art historian who specializes in Pop Art, has written a full history of the artist and his work, situating the work within the context of its time and tracing the themes and motifs as they appear and continue over the decades. As is typical of this superb publisher, the volume is beautifully produced, containing color plates of the best quality. It is distributed in the US by Ashgate. (Annotation ©2009 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The pilgrims' complaint; a study of popular thought in the Early Tudor north.

Bush, formerly in the history department at Manchester University, has written extensively on the 1536-37 Pilgrimage of Grace, a rebellion starting in the North of England in protest of King Henry VIII's religious and political changes. In this book, Bush returns to the documents, including petitions, pamphlets, songs and broadsides that were created by the protesters in order to divine what they say about the attitudes of the ordinary people about religion, social order and politics. Even though religion cannot be taken out of the equation, Bush argues that there were many other complaints involved. He also differentiates between the concerns of the clergy and gentry and those of the peasant class. The belief that this movement was a recidivist protest against the transformation of tradition is also called into question. Examples of many of the sources are reproduced in an appendix. (Annotation ©2009 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)