Eastern University Books

Excelent book and the half text in Arabic is a wonderful idea since every person interested in learning about Ancient Egypt should learn the language and culture or Modern Egypt as well.

A book for those interested to learn about the history of ancient egypt.The writter tells the story of the sphix very well. I recomened it to all those interested in history.

If Shackelton made it across the antartic as planned he probably would not be as well-known as he is today. The feat he and his crew managed to pull is simply astounding. One of the most inspiring adventure stories of all time in my opinion.
Amru Albeiruti

The collective effort of Jonathon Shackleton (Antarctic special and a cousin of the famed explorer) and biographer John Mackenna, Shackleton: An Irishman In Antarctica is an informed and informative portrayal of Ernest Shackleton's historic, dramatic, highly dangerous South Pole expedition. Even though the voyage's ultimately failed to achieve it's stated goal, and Shackleton's crew were stranded on ice floes, all hands worked together to survive for a year before the perilous return to civilization could be made. Not a single man died in Shackleton's expedition, a credit to Shackleton's leadership and determination. His is a profound, inspirational, and keenly engaging story which is very highly recommended reading.

Korean shamanism played a crucial role in traditional village religion, and the concepts and assumptions embodied in it are still present in Korean culture. Yet the village traditions have been disappearing, or at least rapidly changing, in modern Korea.

Kendall's thesis is that if you really want to understand Korean religion, shamanism is essential. Traditional scholars (influenced partly by Confucianism and partly by a "scientific" disdain for "superstition") emphasized Buddhism and Confucianism, with Christianity appearing and thriving in recent times. Shamanism and women's religious traditions were considered unimportant to the "official" religion of Korea. But Kendall argues successfully that actually the various traditions (not counting Christianity) are/were complementary in practice; the women's rituals dealt with some issues, the men's with others.

Underlying the discussion is the issue of women's traditional roles in Korea, which were frankly oppressive, and yet as Kendall reveals, of course the women were not entirely powerless. Kendall argues that women's roles complemented men's roles, implying (Kendall doesn't say so explicitly) that traditional accounts have overemphasized women's formal inferiority at the expense of an accurate understanding of the reality of everyday life and religion.

Anyway, this book is a very good introduction to the shamanist tradition in Korea--not so much an overview, but an introduction. She barely mentions the varieties of traditional shamanism in Korea, and gives minimal accounts of the mythologies associated with the gods, very minimal descriptions of the rituals. She is a little more interested in the way the women understand and experience them. She is most interested in the relation of the shaman and household religion to elements of everyday life such as sickness, business or educational success, marital conflict, and so on.

In short, it's kind of an introduction to women's ritual from the point of view of the women who practice it, rather than from the point of view of comparative anthropology or folk anthologies or something like that. Yet of course it is ultimately anthropological and scholarly. She does make helpful asides in the text and footnotes regarding typical scholarly interests, and concludes her study with comparison to Japanese, Okinawan and Chinese folk religious traditions (missing, in my opinion, is the Burmese, which I think is more similar to Korean folk tradition than any of these).

I recommend, if you are studying Korean religion, reading this book early in your study, if not first. My only criticism would be its brevity: if you've never been to Korea, you can't begin to imagine what a "kut" looks or sounds like. She doesn't do a good enough job describing it. Thus, I would say, this should probably not be the only book you read on Korean shamanism; just the first one.

I want to emphasize a few other books on Korean religion, just in case. The Janelli's have done a great study of ancestor worship, which is as fundamental as shamanism to Korean religion; while Buswell has done good studies of Buddhism (start with "The Zen Monastic Experience"). He's turned his attention to Christianity now, and I haven't kept up with him, but I suspect his work there is the best in that field as well.

It's been years since I read this book and I still remember how delightful I found it. The author's participatory study is illuminating and her subject matter interesting, but one thing I remember above all -- her prose style, the manner in which she communicates, is of the highest order for a study of this sort. This author is worth reading wherever you find her for her literary value alone, let alone the light she sheds on an important and little-understood aspect of Korean life. Go read!!

I felt that Christina Ching wrote this book for me. She speaks to me in my mother's voice, telling me about the insurmountable obstacles she had to overcome to pave the way for me. I used to think of Chinese women of Ching's generation as old-fashioned and oppressed, but after reading her memoir, I realize what a giant leap they have made, and how much I owe them. This is a universal story of the emancipation of a group of people, in this case, Chinese women. From tiny, timid steps, Ching took bigger and bolder steps until she was unstoppable. Yet while living out her ambitions, she was also a devoted mother and wife. Her life offers many important lessons for younger women. The memoir moves at the page-turning pace of a thriller, but I can't help stopping frequently to savor the beauty of her words.

Veronica Li, Washington, DC, USA

This magnificent memoir is the first I have read that faithfully chronicles the love story of a 20th century Chinese woman with the idea of modernity. Many writers before Mrs. Ching-Tsao have tackled the gray and dismal role of women in traditional China, the horrors of the early and mid-20th century and equal tragedy of women under the Cultural Revolution, when supposedly they "held up half the sky." This account is more nuanced, more hopeful, and much more representative of the energy, dynamism and drive not just of Chinese women but all women entranced by the jazz age and the promise of equality. Mrs. Ching-Tsao's account is wonderful for its detail and its honesty, as well as the marvelous balance of her personality, whether she is unexpectedly charmed by her father's concubine or unexpectedly loyal to a man who has used rape to force her into marriage. This is an unusual woman who falls into no easy definition or category, as wife, mother, professional woman, or lover. She is simply herself, a Chinese Colette, charming, self-willed and compassionate. The book is beautifully written and paced, although as literature it has more the quality of a very good translation than a book that is fully comfortable in the boundaries of English, but that is to be expected from an author whose first encounter with English was as a teenager in a prep school in Shanghai. In the interest of full disclosure, I have known Mrs. Ching-Tsao's sons and daughters for many years, but was in no way prepared for the richness and depth of their mother's book.

Edith Terry, Hong Kong

Ranelagh does a fantastic job of condensing a couple thousand years of history into a readable couple hundred pages. This book is a first-rate shortened version of Irish history.

At times, one thinks more and deeper connections could have been drawn (such as the resurrection, by twentieth century hunger-strikers, of Brehon Law-era practices like fasting for the redress of grievances) and more discussion fostered on particularly hard-hitting aspects of Ireland's past and present. But this is, after all, a SHORT history, and a remarkable one at that.

There is good coverage of Ireland before the arrival of the English, in a way that touches on both historical developments and cultural ones. Likewise, the era of Cromwell and the disastrous run-up to and aftermath of Black 1847 are given good detail. One comes away feeling a bit as though more recent history (say, 1916 and on) has been slighted, but this feeling is probably just the product of years of weighted emphasis on the twentieth century; Ranelagh does well to bring a historical balance to the overall sweep of Ireland's development into what it is today.

And what it is today is, for Ranelagh, closely invested as well in the question of what England is and no longer is. "A Short History of Ireland" may disturb those who view England as a still-unwelcome visitor into Irish history and culture, but Ranelagh concludes convincingly that the story of Ireland from the 13th century on is intimately related to its evolving relationship with its slightly larger neighbor and one-time persecutor/antagonist. Ranelagh quite usefully and realistically departs from other histories of the Emerald Isle in asserting that the England/Ireland relationship can, for a slew of reasons that he points to, only ever be one of co-dependence.

For anyone who wants to understand the war on terror and its Irish formulation, this is essential and fascinating reading. Ranelagh is remarkably balanced and fair-minded, while at the same time providing the necessary information and facts without burdening the reader with excessive and obfuscatory detail. He deals with Irish prehistory quickly and interestingly, giving more space to the modern age and its complex of idealism, heroism, nationalism, murder and terror, explaining the motivations and historical prisons so many people in Ireland have endured, coming right up to the present North and South. It is a Short History. More detail would make it something else. But as a short history that is satisfying, well-written and authorative, it cannot be bettered. A remarkable achievement.

This book is a wonderful reference for any reader who wants to learn about Batavia (now, Jakarta) of Netherland Indies. The book explores the social life of the people who build the city. A must for scholars too.

The title of the book perfectly describes author's purpose: study the Dutch and Eurasian society in Indonesia. We live through the rough conditions of the early colonists under the stingy United East Indian Company (VOC), the lack of contacts between Dutch and Indonesian society, most of the relations being between non-Dutch mercenaries and local Indonesian people, the influence of Enlightenment on Batavia, the change with the bankrupcy of the VOC in 1800 and the British occupation. And then Dutch direct administration until 1942 which many Dutch and Eurasian remember as Tempo Doeloe, a magic era with European children being raised in a totally javanese world of music, gamelan, puppet theater, contacts with the refined Indonesian courts at their adulthood, a society obsessed by Dutch speaking as symbol of class and fear of indentity loss but mostly using Indonesian because the refined and ancient local society. This was not so dreamlike for the Indonesian (Dutch were nicknamed the Butchers of Asia). Anyway an excellent book on one of the longest Western presence in Asia that ended abruptly with the Japanese invasion in 1942 and Dutch final departure in 1949.

Enjoyable, challenging book. Osa uses multiple data sources to analyze how socio-political change was accomplshed. She demonstrates how group ties evolved, moving from unsuccessful events to the successful ties and events. Osa challenges the current explanations, and succeeds.

In these days where 'uninformed wishful thinking' controls US policymakers, it is most helpful to read how political-social change was actually accomplished. Osa carefully and clearly describes the networks (personal & organizational) and historical events that lead to massive positive political change. She documents the changes in groups, and the composition of groups, that lead through sets of failed uprisings and culmunated in real political change. It is a most worthwhile book that challenges both common (mis)understandings and academic arguments about political change.

I had to order this book for a Russian History class. My prof is the author of this medium sized factual book and it has been a wonderful read. Full of little histories and facts that make reading easy and pleasant, it is an incredibly insightful look at how Russia has grown into the state it is now. The spiritual facts are introduced with a touch of mysticism, which is paralleled in Russia's orthodox history. A wonderful addition to any Russian history lovers' collection, and a small sample that easily fills for those not familiar.

Roy Robson's Solovki is a wonderful book. Robson had the inspired idea to write the history of Russia as reflected in the extraordinary past of the White Sea Solovetskii Island. There more than five hundred years ago two saints established a monastery that became legendary for its beauty, wealth and sanctity. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the monastery became a religious battleground between the state-approved Russian Orthodox and the so-called Old Believers, who considered themselves the true bearers of Orthodox piety and ritual in Russia. In the nineteenth century the monastery was a site of war (it was attacked by British warships during the Crimean war) and of pilgrimage (thousands of simple Russians visited it every year). In the twentieth century, from the early 1920s to 1939, it was the location of an infamous prison camp, described by Solzhenitsyn in the Gulag Archipelago. Today the Orthodox Church has re-established the monastic presence on Solovki and the place has been recognized by the United Nations as an international cultural treasure. Robson's history deftly analyzes each stage in the complex history of Solovki in prose that is a clear as the water of the White Sea on a calm day. The book is a deft portrait by a master craftsman. Splendid!

I picked up this book from my local public library solely on the basis of its title, but I was very pleasantly surprised once I started reading it. This book is a collection of autobiographical essays written by Chinese-American women who are now teaching at universities in the United States. All of the essays examine the authors' experiences growing up in China during the Cultural Revolution from a feminist perspective. The introduction makes it clear that the authors were motivated by a desire to go beyond the standard (at least in the U.S. and Europe) version of the Cultural Revolution as a period of complete chaos, despair, and oppression. Instead, the authors write about the many ways they felt, often including senses of empowerment, freedom, and creativity.

This book is quite straight-forward and does not require anything more than a general knowledge of modern Chinese history and maybe a tiny bit of familiarity with feminist theory (for the introduction).

The American market has been flooded with memoirs from the Mao era that present this time, especially the Cultural Revolution years, as a purely dark, depraved, and tragic age with nothing but victims and victimizers, inhumanity, cruelty, and sexual repression. The editors of this volume, in their probing introductory essay, have no quarrel with these individuals representing their tragic experiences through memoirs, but do take issue with the assumption that many Westerners (and in some cases the authors of these other memoirs) take for granted, that is, that these victim/victimizer memoirs speak for all Chinese women who grew up in this era. The authors of these nine chapter length memoirs grew up in big cities in China during the Mao era, and all have gone on to PhDs and American professorships. While they note that this makes themselves unrepresentative in a sense, they are representative in that the vast majority of urban women were never victims or victimizers during the Cultural Revolution. These authors have both good and bad memories, were both harmed and empowered by the state's official ideology, and experienced personal growth.

One of the authors mentions that American friends act almost disappointed when she tells them she has no personal horror story to share. The editors mention a revealing anecdote from an American academic conference in 1999 titled "Memory and Cultural Revolution". During the Q&A session, someone said that their memory of the period did not coincide with the panel's wholly gloomy and tragic view, rather they recalled a high and youthful spirit, and that they were neither victim nor victimizer. The chair of the panel condescendingly dismissed this by saying that some Holocaust survivors are nostalgic for their camp days too. Thus, no more time needed to be wasted on such invalid memories, and the panel moved on with their discussion of politically correct memory. These authors simply want to add their experiences, and their astute and balanced analysis into the mix.

All nine memoirs are high quality and raise our understanding of what it was like for an average girl/young woman in urban China in the 1960s-70s, and they raise important philosophical and sociological questions about gender. Many are moving while always avoiding pretentiousness. Moments of humor are common. Horror story memoirs are sadly true, but the other reality is people laughed, children played, parents and children argued and bonded, adults gossiped, youth aspired, friendships formed, people worked, students studied (usually), performers performed, farmers farmed, and ordinary people lived their lives. These memoirs, being full of rich, colorful details of family and neighborhood life, increase our knowledge of Chinese culture as well as the Cultural Revolution.

Here is a brief description of each memoir. This by no means does them justice.

Naihua Zhang -- "In a World Together Yet Apart: Urban and Rural Women Coming of Age in the Seventies" -- tells a moving story of life long bonds formed with 2 rural young women after being sent to the countryside.

Wang Zheng -- "Call Me 'Qingnian' But Not 'Funu': A Maoist Youth in Retrospect" -- shares rich details of her happy childhood during the CR, then applies her scholarly expertise (women's studies) to her own life coming of age as a young woman in a time of empowering feminist ideology, yet continuing influence of older cultural assumptions about gender. Insights abound.

Xiaomei Chen -- "From 'Lighthouse' to the Northeast Wilderness: Growing Up Among the Ordinary Stars" -- was the daughter of two elite theatre stars who were persecuted during the CR. She nevertheless had a "happy, even exhilarating childhood, though I was not spared growing pains", including a sent-down experience where she got to understand ordinary people in the countryside via work as a reporter.

Bai Di -- "My Wandering Years in the Cultural Revolution: The Interplay of Political Discourse and Personal Articulation" -- Bai, who is from Harbin in northern China, discusses, among other things, how the CR impacted the parent-child dynamics of households in her neighborhood.

Jiang Jin -- "Times Have Changed, Men and Women are the Same" -- was the daughter of Shanghai intellectuals, a red guard, a sent down youth, a university student, and now a historian in the US. Inspired by her parents, especially her liberated mother, and using their private library of classics, she aimed to "read 10,000 books, travel 10,000 miles [for true knowledge]", a Chinese expression.

Lihua Wang -- "Gender Consciousness in My Teen Years" -- discusses her evolving perceptions and consciousness as a female worker (and later college) who ultimately realizes her aspiration of being an educated independent person who contributes to society while finding self-fulfillment.

Xueping Zhong -- "Between 'Lixiang' and Childhood Dreams: Back from the Future to the Nearly Forgotten Yesteryears" -- from Shanghai, whose parents instilled in her a love of learning early on; her mother pushing her to model herself after great intellectuals in history, like the author of _Dream of the Red Mansion_, Cao Xueqin. She did in fact follow the CR trend of rebellion, studying hard for college while others were not. Throughout, the conflict and harmony between lixiang [ideals] and personal aspirations are discussed thoughtfully.

Zhang Zhen -- "Production of Senses in and out of the 'Everlasting Auspicious Lane': Shanghai 1966-1976" -- a Cinema Studies scholar at NYU today, discusses her unique neighborhood, her childhood love of films and literature, her amateur performance experiences, and intellectual maturation.

Yanmei Wei -- "'Congratulations, It's a Girl!' Gender and Identity in Mao's China" -- the only one of these memoirs of someone who grew up mostly in the post-Mao era, which makes for an interesting point of comparison with the others. Expectations of female behavior evolved, but with some continuities too.

This book is a must for anyone who is interested in Slavic epic poetry. Unfortunately, I am unable to read these works in the Serbian. However, the editors have translated beautifully. There is no awkward attempt to catch the rhyme or meter, which so often ruins poetry in translation. Of all the translations of the Serbian epics which I have encountered (and I look for them diligently. . .), this one is the best. The translators' sensitivity to nuance and meaning allows you, the English reader, to experience these works as best as you possibly can without reading Serbian. Highly recommended.

I haven't read this edition, but I have grown up reading these poems in my and their native language. The poems were collected from the oral tradition by a great Serbian ethnographer and linguist Vuk Karadzic who also reformed Serbian spelling system and grammar and wrote first big Serbian Dictionary in 1818. Hence, the expert has chosen the best from the oral tradition that withstood through centuries. Since Karadzic new German, these poems made their way into a German translation first, and many German authors, including Goethe, admired their precise 10-syllable metric, emotions, and vivid depiction of characters. One of the specific literary techniques, persistently used at the beginning of many poems, has a special name --- Slavic Antithesis.

The poems can be compared to big national epic poems as Beowulf taken in their entirety. However, all are independent, and as a boy I used to think of them as good fairy tales. The characters are sometimes capable to do improbable things, and some of the poems have a fairy in them, but good always wins over evil.

I still remember the achievements of Marko Kraljevic (his surname means The Prince) who was able to do amazing things due to his strength, and how he drinks half of his wine and gives the other half to his horse. But he also asks God to forgive him for killing better knight than himself in "Marko Kraljevic and Musa the Robber". The other characters are more earthly, just as their destiny. I remember the courage of Old Vujadin who after being tortured with broken legs and arms refuses to tell where his friends are hidden, even if the torturers take out his eyes. He says: "I didn't say for my arms that were able to break any lance, I didn't say for my legs faster than any horse, I won't say for my lying eyes that forced me to my deeds, watching from the highest mountain on your caravans, full of treasure." Some of the heroes are driven by their love that is utterly unselfish as in "Banovic Strahinja".

These poems w! ere giving me a completely new world when I was a boy. A world of heroes and pride. A world of honesty and truthfullnes. Of course, a world of exaggeration, created by a nation that was suffering four centuries of occupation and desperately needed heroes from the past like Marko Kraljevic. And of course, the world of reality, created by a nation proud enough to resist all these four centuries through rebells like Vujadin, who died for their ideals. Finally, some of the poems are lyric poems and they show us that a folk poet was able to create highly emotional poetry.

Children can find in this book an amazing set of characters similar to the best fairy and hero tales in the world. Scholars can find in this book a lot just as Vuk Karadzic and Goethe did. This book reminds us on almost forgotten values. I hope the translation is good. Highly recommended.