Eastern University Books

The 'university talks ' of Sri Chinmoy are far from being academic presentations. They emerge directly from high meditative states and carry with them the spiritual power of the Master himself. To each particular seeker these talks can reveal and make accesible the dimension of the Divine most intimately suited to his or her temperment and degree of inner unfoldment.

Topics include:

The Inner Voice
The Quintessence of Mysticism
The Body's Reality and the Soul's Reality
the Secret of Inner Peace
Attachment and Detachment
How to Please God
Fear of the Inner Life
Intuition
Consciousness
The Ego
--- from book's back cover

Steve Runciman's book on the Eastern Schism has become something of a classic since its first publication nearly 50 years ago. Runciman's telling of this bitter tale - and it is a tale that spans not only the 11th and 12th centuries, but has roots going back far deeper - is both concise and lucid. Runciman clearly details this narrative that has proved debilitating to Christianity ever since - not only between the East and the West, but also between the umpteen gazillion Protestant churches and the Roman Catholic church.

Runciman does a wondeful job summarizing the various events of previous years (especially the Photian Schism, which occured in the 9th century) that helped to lay the "groundwork", so to speak, for the ultimate rending of Christendom. Yet, despite the great attention that is sometimes given to various events (especially to Cardinal Humbert's excommunicating Patriarch Michael Cerularius, who in turn excommunicated Humbert), Runciman's thesis is that the "schism" did not occur at a particular instant, but gradually over time. It was not until the middle of the 13th century that the received opinion of both clergy and layman was that the churches were no longer in communion with one another.

In fact, the mutual excommunications noted above, which occured in 1054, are really little more than a blip on the screen of East-West relations: Humbert did not have the power to excommunicate Cerularius, and Cerularius' excommunicating Humbert should not be understood as Cerularius excommunicating the whole Western church - something that the popular imagination of both Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy would do well to remember. So, the received thesis that the split occured in 1054 needs to be abandoned.

Runciman also does a wonderful job of appreciating and detailing the socio-theological and theological-political nature of the Church during the so-called "Middle" Ages. That the Church should have such a public presence, and that this public presence should be so important to both the popular mind and international relations may seem strange. It was, indeed, a different world, complete with its own pitfalls and glories. Yet, it is interesting to note that the most divisive theological issue - papal supremacy - also fueled the Crusades, which were more influential than anything else in breaking Christendom apart.

It is a shame that this book has gone out of print again. Perhaps on its 50th anniversary it will be printed yet again, and people will begin to appreciate the subtle differences that, given the fourth Crusade, were exacerbated into the greatest and most tragic split that the Church has ever known - and most likely will ever know. If you can find a copy of this book, I highly recommend picking it up. Although you will catch bits and pieces of this story in many other books, this volume will illuminate its complexities and clear away the myths surrounding it like other books - especially theological works - won't. It is, sadly, a crucial and divisive narrative.

Toomer has written a fascinating account of the start of Arabic studies in England, including a good overview of the state of Arabic studies throughout Europe until the end of the seventeenth century. English studies are traced through from their individualist start, through a mainstream, largely driven by bishops Ussher (he who computed the 4004 BC creation date, one of the most brilliant scholars of his day) and Laud (Chancellor of Oxford University), through Pococke's career to Arabic studies' decline as the eighteenth century approached.

Sadly the book has no illustrations: samples of the early Arabic founts discussed in the book and portraits of any of the men discussed would have added something (and at the exorbitant price ought to have been included). But do get your library to buy a copy!

This is a wonderful book about modern life in Dharamsala, exile home of the Dalai Lama in India. Dr. Diehl, an anthropologist, actually became a member of a local rock and roll band, the Yak band. Her story is about the day-to-day struggles of Tibetans to maintain their sense of identity while adjusting to the modernizing forces of global culture. The book is well-written and produced, with lots of sharp photos that give the reader a clear view of what life is like in the 'capital' of the Tibetan world in exile. Refreshingly, there is little anthropological jargon in this substantial and important book. I highly recommend it.

There are not many good history or ethnograpy books about the Korean society of the 1980s except for some impressionistic or too journalistic writings, even though the period is very important in terms of the political, social, cultural and intellectual transformation of contemporary South Korea. In this sense, this book by Nancy Abelmann is superb.

This book focuses on tenant farmers' movement in 1987, both in a Southwestern village of Korea and in Seoul. In this process, the author not only deals with farmers' movement, but also examines the issues of class, nation, capitalism and democracy in the context of modern Korean history. Especially, the wholeness of social movement in Korea is revealed, when the author finds some links between 'minjung'(people, mass) like farmers on the one hand and student activists on the other. In this way, this book may become one of the rare books revealing some clear pictures of progressive Korean student movement during the 1980s, which was decisive in the process of 1987 democratization movement and later changes in South Korea.

And this book is also theoretically insightful and sound in terms of relating both a history writing and politics as inseparable discursive constructions, while showing the importance of [class] positioning in narrating history. Thus, the author compares both narratives given by capitalists who hire tenent farmenrs on the one side and by farmers and minjung activists on the other.

Compared with other books about Korea of the same period, this book includes more enormous details with a focus on farmers' movement in the 1980s. And the author's concious self-positioning among other subject figures in this work appears to be one of interesting characteristics here.

It can be said that this work, with a book about Korean Workers by Hagen Koo, is a must-read for understanding the transformation of 'social mentalities' in today's Korean society, which had a watershed in the 1980s and still going on in different forms in the current post-radical social context since the early 1990s.

This volume should become the standard work on the Ottoman Empire. It gives as complete a picture of life, commerce, diplomacy and ottoman bureaucracy as possible considering the relative unavailability of reliable sources for the empire. It brings together intra-empire, inter-continental and international trade as it changed over the centuries in this one volume, an achievement not mirrored in very many other histories of the period.

The effects of wars (lots of these),governmental efficacy, ending monopoly of the Black Sea trade, the discovery of the New World and the Atlantic routes to East Asia and India are all discussed in a manner which makes not only Ottoman history, but also the rise and flourish of the rest of the subsequent colonial states easier to understand. Rather than focus on the Sultanic whims and decrees as the major force or variable in the Ottoman Empire, this history focuses on the place of the Empire in Europe and the world, using economic analysis rather than Sultanic or harem memoirs to describe the state of the Ottoman subjects.

For the longest time the accepted viewpoint has been that histories of large tracts of land or of people are more or less approximated by court statutes. Fernand Braudel with his "The Mediteranean and the Mediteranean world in the age of Phillip II" went a long way towards changing this view, and with more studies like this, hopefully a more accurate picture of our past will emerge.

Its is amazing how relevant a study of this subject still is for understanding present/recent conflicts or hegemonistic attitudes in their entirety. I would give this book ten stars if I could.

this will be a great book for people who have little understanding of Japanese history.

This book provides a thorough account of the colonial affects that India went through to shape is modern economy. The first two chapters are broken up into agricultural development of the period and the industrial development of the period. It clearly shows that there was subsistence agriculture but industrial scale was struggled to be achieved. This book is very fine economic analysis and while having the common methods of econometrics it does not become bogged down in them so it can be understood by those without a mathematical background. If you do have one though you will find some extra goodies within the book. The last chapter looks at how the countries economy developed between the 1920's to the 1970's and focuses on the struggles India faced once it was free of colonial domination. Overall this is a very thorough account and one worth taking a look at if you are interested in colonial India.

This book discusses the economy and society of Byzantine and Roman Egypt, from 284 AD to the fifth century. Providing excellent archaeological sources, consisting mostly of papyri, the author has provided a well-documented and detailed account of the civilization, covering many topics : the environment, the people, the language, the cities, as well as taxation and religion. A scholarly book for the interested.

Being a beginner myself, I can't say that I enjoyed this book as an introduction to the Egyptians. The lack of a timeline and the assumtpion by writers that the reader is accustomed to the history of Ancient Egypt makes it difficult for someone who doesn't have a proper grasp of the ancient Egyptians' era to enjoy the reading. However, the portrait it gives of the various social groups which made up the Egyptian world is quite remarkable and can be enriching for any reader, even the unexperienced ones.