Eastern University Books

The most readable and trustworthy account of the history of the Sikhs yet. Sikhism has stood the test of time and stands for universal brotherhood. Here is a book that narrates the history of this glorious religion without emphasizing its recent dirty and divisive politics (as opposed to Patwant Singh's attempt at 'history')

Highly recommended for uninitiated westerners, serious scholars and history buffs.

there millions of sikhs all over the world, who would like to know about their heritage, in a nondistorted way. there is no reliable text that one could refer to. kushwant singh probably is the most reliable source at this point.we should not be deprived of this source of enlightenment.

Great book on a little reported subject-POW life during the Korean War. Mr. Zellers does an awesome job conveying the fears and hopes of POWs during that time. You can viscerally feel their fear through his writing. I highly recommend this moving book to anyone with even a passing interest for Korean War history.

Larry Zellers, a newly married Methodist minister serving as a missionary and teacher in a small South Korean town near the 38th parallel, was taken prisoner in the early days of the Korean War. He and his fellow prisoners were American combat soldiers who were the very first to arrive in Korea from bases in Japan. The youngest among them had received only minimal combat training. All of the mean were inadequately trained and furnished with sometimes malfunctioning weapons. After being taken prisoner by the North Koreans, the men suffered incredible hardships of cold, hunger, physical abuse, lack of medical attention, fatigue, fear isolation, and intimidation. In Enemy Hands is Zellers' first-hand story of his captivity from June 25, 1950 to his release in 1953. Throughout his personal account Zellers shows that, despite the opinion that POWs live only for themselves, many in the camps worked to help others and conducted themselves with honor. Zellers became a U.S. Air Force chaplain after his release. In Enemy Hands is a valued, important, biographical contribution to the growing body of Korean War literature and a much appreciated contribution to any academic, public library military history collection.

Smart, to the point and funny. Book of life in the sense. My favorite story - "Steffi Speck in The Jaws of Life". Ms. Ugresic's power of the observation is amazing. She has a way of presenting sad and ironic experiences of every day middle class life in hillariosly funny terms. Her "patchwork" (of stories) book is so true, no wonder she can move any reader. I am looking forward to reading her "Fording the Stream of Concioussness" book. Hopefully, there will be more books coming from this talented writer

What a pity Ms Ugresic is not known in this country - or if she is, as a Yugoslav/Croat, with all the heavy baggage that implies nowadays. These stories are absolutely delightful -- I can't remember the last time I laughed out loud when reading. Nothing escapes her wit and derision -- love affairs, relationships, writers, serious literature -- and we come out of one of her stories (in particular Hot Dog in a Warm Bun, Lend Me Your Character or Kreutzer Sonata -- not to mention the title novella)-- tonified and with our faith in life restored, as after a sauna or a refreshing cold shower. Ms Hawkeworth's translations are excellent too, it's hard to believe this wasn't written in English. Let's hope Ms Ugresic has kept her sense of humour, and that a major publisher will make her prose known to more of us..

This book is one of the best I have read so far. The first half of the book was about Lansdale in Philippine as an advisor to Phillipine's president at the time. I have been researching a lot into the period that the second half of this particular book covered. The author (Lansdale) had been very honest when he wrote this book, a must read for anyone with questions about what happpened in Vietnam in the time period from 1954 to 1960. I finally read something that had something positive about President Ngo Dinh Diem. This book tell the truth about Ngo Dinh Diem from someone who know him best because Lansdale had acted as Diem's political advisor and best friend. The book is a first hand account (sort of like a memoir) of someone who were actually there, and witnessed every ordeal that had happened. A fine book if you wanted to read something truthful. You don't have to believe me, so I will stop now so you can go ahead and read this wonderful book. By the way, have fun reading :) :) Gwynevere

Lansdale's book is one of those forgotten treasures for those studying insurgent warfare strategy. General Lansdale had an enormous fund of experience, contacts, and cultural knowledge of the Phillipines and his memoir about his role in defeating the Huk insurgency in 1950 tells us a lot about all the RIGHT things to do. Small footprint, work with and cultivate local leaders, disingage the population from the insurgents...all of this takes enormous personal communication skill and rapport along with the common sense of a beat cop. If anything, you'll learn that not everyone in the military is cut out for fighting insurgent warfare. After his success in in the Phillipines he was sent to Vietnam while the French were getting ready to pull out in 1954-1955. He details what the French had done wrong and how some of the French officers "got it" but unfortunately didn't have the support of superiors...something important to remember. Landsdale outlines the situation so that you can tell without his saying so, just when the point of no return for the French had been reached. This is not only a great book about insurgent warfare strategy but just a great read as well. No long drawn out tales of "there I was facing 50 insurgents armed with just my pocket knife" just a recitation of real events as he experienced them, including the not so exciting but essential grunt work insurgent warfare calls for. If you can find a copy...get it.

This book offers important insights into the debate about reciprocity. Weiner provides a great discussion of related social theory besides introducing her insights about reciprocity. An important book.

Annette Weiner does an amazing job with this book. For anyone interested in social relationships and economics, this book is for you. She reinterprets age-old anthropological data (upon which most current anthropology is based) with an entirely new focus. Rather than reciprocity being the foundation of society, the paradox of "keeping-while-giving" is what defines our social and economic lives, our histories, and our ancestries. She's bold and amazingly intelligent -- good work Annette!

This book (based on the author's doctorate thesis) is a good sociological review of various reactions to the West and Westernication by Iranian intellectuals. The personalities discussed in the book fairly represent the various intellectual factions. The author has done his homework by reading the original sources, analyzing and synthesizing them in an easy-to-read book. This book will be of great interest to the Western intellectuals and scholars as well as to the Iranians interested in tracing the roots of their worldviews. For the latter, it should be noted, that the book has also been translated into Persian (Roshanfekran-e Irani va Gharb, by Jamshid Shirazi, Farzan Pub., Tehran, 1378).

What started as a dissertation paper is now an excellent historical account of post-revolutionary Iran framed in the context of the key intellectuals of the time. Boroujerdi's work is exemplary in that it covers both the secular as well as religious (and those in-between) intellectuals of the time. He offers commentary and criticisms and doesn't fail to point out hypocrisy where encountered. A smooth and fast read, however, a pen and paper are useful as one encounters a multitude of interesting references that scream: "read me!"

An extraordinary book, that can make all of us to think deeper to what we can do that things like those not to happen again... A book that could be written only by someone who lived in the free world and spent enough time in the now-in-transition countries, to understand exactly what happened there and what could be done to help these countries. It is very difficult for people from there to find by themselves the answers to their questions, and it is difficult also for somebody who didn't live there to understand how communism changed the people's minds. This book has exactly these answers, presented in an elegant manner and in an easy to understand way, by study cases. And the question from title has not an easy answer. I lived there, I didn't like communism and so almost all of the population, but this still existed for 45 years. The communism destroyed any knowledge or instinct of freedom and made the people to be afraid of major changes until 1989, when the contradictions grew so much that erupted in a popular riot, there where the governance was so blind to accept any change - Romania. And now, those people discovered the values of free market and democracy, but they have also to learn again the rules of the game. The book helped me to understand this and to see what it could be done many years ago, when very few of us had the courage to predict these events. I recommend this book to everybody, both for study and personal knowledge.

This book provides a graphic description of a crumbling communist power and the stumbling steps toward capitalism that followed. The detailed descriptions of real people and their lives under both old and new regimes keeps the reading interesting. If you've ever wondered why, now that communism is dead these countries can't just pick up the pieces and move on you should read this book.

Table of Contents

PART I: INTRODUCTION

Chapter 1: Arabic Script: Its Role and Principles
A. The importance of writing in Islamic culture
B. Principles of Arabic script
C. The Koranic Text

Chapter 2: Materials
A. Supports
B. Special papers
C. Pens and pen cases
D. Inks and inkwells

PART II: THE DEVELOPMENT OF ARABIC SCRIPT IN EARLY ISLAMIC TIMES

Chapter 3: The Standardization of Arabic Script
A. The origins of Arabic script
B. The development of Arabic script
C. The evolution of a calligraphic style

Chapter 4: Early Manuscripts of the Koran
A. Physical characteristics
B. Methodologies for dating
C. Considerations for further study

PART III: THE PREEMINENCE OF ROUND SCRIPTS IN THE EARLY MIDDLE PERIOD

Chapter 5: The Adoption of Round Styles
A. Round book script
B. The new style of broken cursive
C. Broken cursive and Ibn Muqla
D. The standardization of naskh and thuluth under Ibn al-Bawwab
E. What caused the canonization of round scripts in the ninth century?

Chapter 6: The Diversification of Round Scripts
A. The stylization of broken cursive
B. Other round scripts
C. Towards a codification of round scripts
D. Pairs of text scripts
E. Maghribi script

PART IV: THE EMERGENCE OF REGIONAL STYLES IN THE LATER MIDDLE PERIOD

Chapter 7: Calligrpahy in Iran and its Environs under the Mongols and Turkomans
A. The Six Pens under the Ilkhanids and Jalayirids
B. The Six Pens under the Timurids and Turkomans
C. The Hanging Scripts

Chapter 8: Rectilinear and Curvilinear Scripts in Egypt and Syria under the Mamluks
A. Rectilinear scripts
B. Curvilinear scripts
C. Hybrid scripts

Chapter 9: Other Styles and Centers
A. Anatolia
B. India
C. The Maghrib

PART V: DYNASTIC STYLES IN THE AGE OF EMPIRES

Chapter 10: The Safavids, the Qajars, and their Contemporaries in Iran and Central Asia
A. Refinement of the Six Pens
B. Refinement of the hanging scripts
C. Pictorial writing

Chapter 11: The Ottomans in Anatolia, the Balkans, and the Eastern Mediterranean
A. The Canonization of naskh as text script Training, sources, and materials
B. The Canonization of thuluth as display script
C. The Hanging scripts

Chapter 12: Other styles and centers
A. The Mughals and their contemporaries in India
B. The Indian Ocean
C. The Maghrib
D. Sub-Saharan Africa

PART VI: THE MANY FACES OF ISLAMIC CALLIGRAPHY IN MODERN TIMES

Chapter 13: From traditional styles to calligraphic art and design
A. Traditional styles
B. Printing, typography, and computer graphics
C. Calligraphic art

Bibliography

Every college-level collection strong in either Middle Eastern Studies or Middle Eastern art must have ISLAMIC CALLIGRAPHY: it's a specialty item for the serious holding which offers the first reference work on Arabic script. Calligraphy is one of the foundation arts of Islamic culture and has been a primary method of artistic expression from the 7th century to modern times, so it well deserves its own book and is anything but the 'esoteric art' Westerners might believe. Over 150 color illustrations and over a hundred black and white details come from dated examples to provide insights on everything from construction and history to identifying forgeries and understanding differing styles. An essential key to understanding Islamic arts and civilization, this reference is not to be missed.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

Nasr is a prolific author and prestigious witness to the contemporary relevance of Islamic philosophy in its traditional form, especially as fashioned within the Shia tradition. Nasr is also a masterful propagandist, attempting to reinvigorate the traditional point of view, not only in Islamic studies, but also in religious studies generally. This volume pays tribute to the change in religious studies orientation over the last 20 years, showing how into Islamic studies, the traditional point of view, which was definitely marginal and suspect 30 years ago, has now moved more towards the center of normative religious studies. In many ways Nasr and his colleagues have been the patient architects of this movement.
Islamic Philosophy from Its Origin to the Present attempts to open up what the West considers Islamic philosophy. It moves beyond the usual capstone of Islamic influence on the west being the Averroes' Aristotelian translations which made their way into Latin through Spain and set the theological stage for the High Middle Ages and the Summa of Thomas Aquinas. As Nasr well demonstrates Averroes' rationalism was not the end of Islamic philosophy but actually a sidestream that did not centrally impact the consideration of Kalam, nor the spread and elaboration of Ibn Sina's epistemology as it impacted the central motive of Islamic thought which is to elaborate the presence of revelation and prophecy through the Qu'ran and the community of prayer. Nasr manages a good survey of the scope of Islamic philosophy available in English translation today, and he presents a rationale for his continued encouragement of the traditional viewpoint as valid today as ever.

Seyyed Hossein Nasr, a reviver of the Islamic intellectual tradition and expositor of those traditional doctrines associated with the Sophia Perennis, or al-Hikmah al-Khalidah as it is known in Islamic intellectual discourse, has provided for those pursuing the illumination of the Spirit through the way of the Intellect with a seemingly constant flow of treatises touching on nearly every aspect of what is known as the Din al-Islam. This particular work seems to be Nasr's final word on the subject of Islamic philosophy; conclusions arrived at after many decades of study, teaching and contemplation. The chief aim of the work can be seen in the following quote from the second chapter:

"This philosophy [Islamic philosophy] remains of the greatest pertinence to the contemporary world because of the harmony it has achieved between logic and spiritual vision and also because of the profound metaphysical and cosmological doctrines it contains within the pages of its long and extended historical unfolding. Furthermore, because of the present encounter of Islam with an alien philosophy and science--this time from the West--Islamic philosophy must be called upon once again to play the role it fulfilled in early Islamic history, namely, to provide the necessary intellectual instruments and the requisite intellectual background with the aid of which Muslims can face alien philosophies and sciences from a position of discernment and intellectual rigor. Otherwise the encounter with the West can only result in calamity for the future of Islamic intellectual life and threaten even more than what happened in the colonial period the continuation of the life of falsafah itself. Only in remaining true to its own genius, to its own roots, and to the role it has always played in Islamic history in a land dominated by the reality of prophecy can falsafah (and hikmah) fulfill its vital function of providing the Muslims themselves with the necessary intellectual background to confront the modern and now postmodern West and to remind the world at large about the long-forgotten but urgently needed truths that Islamic philosophy has been able to preserve within its treasury over the centuries and that it is able to present in a contemporary language to the world today." (pg. 47)

Nasr's genius lies in his birds-eye perspective and his illuminating commentary on the history, development and spiritual underpinnings of Islamic philosophy. Unlike modern scholars and historians of Islamic philosophy, and their Muslim imitators, or Muslim scholars who wish to compare this or that Islamic philosopher with some modern philosopher or another--a boring preoccupation on the part of certain Muslims educated in Islamic philosophy who seek approval from the dominant philosophical currents of Western modernity--Nasr constantly reminds us that philosophy, when pursued within the framework of the Islamic tradition, or within the "land of prophecy", is not an inquiry into the phenomenal world with phenomenal ends in view, nor the endless, labyrinthine analysis of those possessed with an obsessive mental passion, but an inquiry into the very nature of things in view of reinstating the intelligence back to its original sanctity.

When Nasr maintains that Islamic philosophy "remains of the greatest pertinence to the contemporary world because of the harmony it has achieved between logic and spiritual vision", he is referring, in my mind, to the culmination of the Islamic philosophical project in the grand synthesis found in the Eastern lands of Islam. While there exist several "schools" which deal superbly with systematic metaphysics and the sciences of realizing the end--one of the most popular and direct being Advaita Vedanta--they don't enter too deeply into the domain of discursive philosophy and natural science. In the West--which serves as the model for the rest of the world now--these two traditions of inquiry became more and more separated from each other until discursive philosophy eclipsed metaphysics altogether; sending the West into its current spiritual, philosophical and civilizational bankruptcy. However, the synthesis established by later Islamic philosophy between peripatetic (mashsha'i) philosophy and the metaphysical/theosophical (al-hikmah al-ilahiyyah) discourse of the Sufi sages harmonized discursive philosophy with what Suhrawardi called "Divine Philosophy". Islamic philosophy, if properly taken account of, offers the West many important insights which, if considered seriously, could help in placing a derailed Western philosophical tradition back on its tracks.

Nasr's outline of the history and influences which flavored different schools of Islamic philosophy is very intriguing, such as the Hermetico-Pythagorean influences which came in through Isma'ili philosophy. Nasr also gives ample room to a Nasir al-Din Tusi, Hamid al-Din Kirmani and Nasir-i Khusraw, enormous philosophers almost totally neglected by Western studies of Islamic philosophy, as well as reclaiming 'Umar Khayyum from the imagination of the Orientalist. The great merit of this work is the introduction of many Muslim philosophers who never make it into those histories of Islamic philosophy (sometimes clumsily referred to as Arab philosophy) written by Western scholars, who believe that "Arab" philosophy died after the death of Ibn Rushd. Some of these later Muslim philosophers, like Fath Allah Shirazi, Shams al-Din Kafri, Ghiyath al-Din Mansur Dashtaki, and Jalal al-Din Dawani are introduced with the hope that scholars in the West will turn away from the endless analysis of Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd and begin to study their works as well; especially since in many cases they offer a greater balance between philosophy, that is, man seeking to know the Real, and the call of Revelation - the Real disclosing Itself to man.

For anyone who is interested in the field largely known as 'holocaust studies', as well as in the middle-eastern conflict, this is a must read. Zertal explores aspects of Israeli nationalism and national identity, tracing it to events in the past (Tel Hai, the death of Y. Trumpledor etc) but also, more centrally to the book's theme, tracing it to more recent historical events such as the second world war and the holocaust.

Her main argument has to do with the close, entangled relation between considerations of the holocaust and the state of Israel. She shows, with a lot of interesting and thought provoking documentation, how this relation manifests itself. The holocaust, she believes, not only informs but actively shapes israeli national identity, and is negotiated constantly within Israeli society, often in the justification of military actions.

A large part of her book has to do with Hannah Arendt's work and the way it has been received (especially in the past, around the time of Eichmann's trial) in Israel. According to Zertal, Arendt has been greatly misunderstood in Israeli society, and her work has been unfairly treated, possibly because it does not 'fit' into the religiously-inspired schema of absolute evil vs. absolute good that is an important construction, serving as a framework to understand the holocaust (and, Zertal argues, Israeli society itself sometimes). Arendt's work moves away from a monodimensional, religious understanding of the Jewish people as eternally doomed to be victims, and this is not, it seems, an easily acceptable argument for parts of Israeli society.

For me, the most interesting part of Zertal's book had to do with the way she thinks about the identity of the victim that seems to be a constant shadow within Israeli nationhood, and the implications of such an identity for Israeli life. Her book, all in all, is an excellent and provocative read, and very imporant in light of recent events.

This is a fantastic book -- it actually starts before the Holocaust with the battle of Tel-Hai and the death of Yosef Trumpledor and touches also on the ghetto fighters, the Exodus affair, the Kastner trial, the Eichmann trial, the 1967 war, and the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin -- focused on exploring the treatment of the Holocaust and related issues by the Israeli political elite (especially Ben-Gurion) in their quest to craft an "Israeli national identity." As mentioned, the book touches on a number of different incidents and issues, but the keystone is the Eichmann trial and Hannah Arendt's book "Eichmann in Jerusalem" and the controversy that accompanied it. It is quite clear that Zertal is an admirer of Arendt, and has published on Arendt and her work before. It is well footnoted and very accessable (that is, you don't have to be an academic to really get a lot out of this book).