Eastern University Books

One of the most striking aspects of "Inextricably Bonded's" many worthy accomplishments is Brenner's persuasive dismissal of the notion that the internal post-Zionist critique of Israel's writers and historians is truly a new ideological or even "subversive" development. She achieves this by paying close heed to many early articulations of disapproval of institutional Zionism's varied roles in dispossessing the indigenous Arabs of land and society (among them Yosef Eliahu Chelouche, a founder of Tel Aviv, and the philosophers Ahad Ha'Am and Martin Buber). In light of increasingly shrill debates over this term (Zionists of the right predictably label the 1990s generation of "post-Zionist" historians and cultural critics as Jewish self-haters or worse), Brenner sensibly declares that the Zionist movement always encompassed a tradition of intense self-interrogation and moral argument. She also masterfully analyzes the receptions of canonical works by generations of Israeli scholars as well as the wider public. But what really stands as most innovative in her approach are her elegant comparative studies of the fiction of three Arab-Israeli writers, Emile Habiby ("The Pessoptimist"), Atallah Mansour ("In a New Light"), and Anton Shammas ("Arabesques") all of whom have written in Hebrew or published their works for Israeli readers in translation, alongside canonical works of several Israeli Jewish writers, including David Grossman, Amos Oz, and A.B. Yehoshua-all familiar writers in Europe and North America.

Throughout, Brenner produces highly original readings, masterfully demonstrating the peculiarly entwined nature of the realms of psychology and politics in the Israeli forum of art and politics. Subsequently, the author understands Israeli identity as having defined itself against a repressed Jewish Other, or history, as well as through its discriminatory practices vis-à-vis external and internal Arabs. As counter-narrative, Brenner cogently argues, the cumulative impact of the writings of Arabs and Jews in Israel, in spite of their disparate sociopolitical perspectives, effectively "restores the visibility of the Arabs in the `empty' land and calls into question the unequivocal Zionist claim to the land...by contrast, the story of the suffering that the triumphant Jews inflicted on the defenseless, defeated Arab population invokes the history of Jewish persecution and victimization in the Diaspora. Against the doctrine of exclusion, the literary representations reassert in the Israeli consciousness the denied histories of the Palestinian Arab and the Diaspora Jew."

Though Brenner always adds unprecedented insight to the broad ethical and political questions raised by the presence of the Other, a fascinating secondary issue, that of the peculiar nature of canon-formation often surfaces as a crucial dynamic. For instance, many readers (aware that Rushdie, Kundera, Solzhenitsyn, and others achieved their international fame as dissident writers at the cost of total repudiation at home), will be struck by the fact that Yehoshua, Oz, and Grossman, while deviating sharply from accepted political lines and cultural myths, nevertheless "gained canonical legitimacy from the cultural establishment that was founded upon the ideological orientation they defied." Without straying from her primary focus, Brenner skillfully addresses the ways that writers themselves (as well as their most sympathetic critics) often employ rhetorical strategies of a shared national identity to mitigate the effects of their radical writings in otherwise undermining the most precious myths of the Zionist revolution. Brenner raises uncomfortable questions about whether the literary work's dissenting messages about justice and displacement, once its author achieves canonical status, is ultimately neutered of its political potency.

Her answers are at times partial and at best uneasy but always thought-provoking. A further reason that this study will prove so eminently useful for scholars and teachers alike is that nearly all of the works discussed are readily available in English translation. "Inextricably Bonded" strongly warrants our appreciation and attention as one of the most innovative studies of modern Hebrew literary criticism, especially for its forceful demonstration that the identity politics of both Israeli Arab and Israeli Jewish writers together produce a dynamically "bi-ethnic" rather than a narrowly "national" body of literature. What Brenner so brilliantly reveals throughout this adroit analysis is that over the years the fraught realm of Arab and Israeli identity politics has provided art with a highly charged source of imaginative inspiration. Most importantly, literature clearly does matter in the "real world," for as she comes to affirm, however fragile the hope: "The readiness to tell one's story and to listen to the story of the other signifies mutual recognition, which alleviates fear. Attention to the story of the other signals the ability to transform the knot of violence into a dialogic interaction." To Brenner's lasting credit, the intertwined identities and destinies eloquently addressed in "Inextricably Bonded" go a very long way toward powerfully affirming the moral urgency of that claim.

The editorial review is quite complete as to the contents of "Inscribed Landscapes", but I'd like to give future readers a more general impression that I was left with:
I throughly enjoyed Richard E. Strassberg's book as an introduction to the combined arts of chinese travel writing, calligraphy, painting, and woodcut print making. Many of China's greatest writers are represented in cronological order, sometimes yielding interesting results when the same place is described centuries apart. I am not an expert in chinese literature, so I compared impressions with my chinese friends. Their only reservations were the translations of the poetry, which is always problematical. The translations in this book are good for description but one might want to compare other translations for different perspectives. (See "Chinese Poetry: An Anthology of Major Modes and Genres" by Wai-Lim Yip to gain a broader appreciation of chinese literature and the difficulties of its translation).
This book, unexpectedly, piqued my interest in the art of calligraphy, as well as that of landscape art, too. Richard Strassberg judiciously uses examples of some of China's best art work to illustrate many of the described landscapes.
Finally, I now find myself harboring a deep desire to vist, in person, many of the inscribed landscapes and picture them anew. This is a book that will encourage you to vist both a long lost China, and that which you can still find.

In this manuscript Ali Mirsepassi, a professor of Sociology and Near Eastern Studies at Hampshire College, broaches a question of the first importance. Why and how did Iranian intellectuals manage to embrace modernity while at the same keeping a critical distance from it? By deconstructing the discourse of modernity in general and its apprehension among Iranian intellectuals in particular, the author manages to provide a rich account of how Iranians negotiated with the multifaceted challenge of modernity. In the course of doing so he criticizes (neo) Orientalist accounts of how the ascendancy of political Islam was made possible in Iran. This book offers an insightful account of how despite its vociferous rhetoric; the Iranian discourse of authenticity was itself impregnated with modernist sensibilities.

Intellectual Discourse and the Politics of Modernization is a major addition to the field of Iranian intellectual history and deserves to be read by all those interested in this topic.

This superb work is not merely a collection of the late Marvin Fox's essays on Maimonides: it is a synthetic, tightly-knit work that connects, as the title suggests, the themes of 1) how to read Maimonides; 2) the Rambam's theory of being; and 3) his ethical theory. This last subject is somewhat of a misnomer, as Fox insists that Maimonides HAS no ethical theory per se: Fox believes that Maimonides held that there is no such thing as moral reasoning. Instead, moral values must come from God. This is a minority viewpoint among Maimonides scholars, but if Fox is not totally persuasive on it, he makes a plausible case.

And he does so--as he does in all of these essays--with a writing style that is fluid, graceful, and above all, clear without being simplistic. Reading Fox on Maimonides is to be in the presence of a great teacher discussing a great thinker.

Fox is particularly compelling in his discussion of Maimonides' view of reason. The popular view is that Maimonides was a thorough-going rationalist, insisting that reason and faith were completely compatible. Fox shows that this is not true: instead, Maimonides held a complex and tension-filled view of reason and faith existing in separate spheres. Yet Maimonides also realized that separating these spheres was anything but easy.

Fox' close reading of the first two chapters of the Guide of the Perplexed is alone worth the price of admission. I read this book shortly after Kenneth Seeskin's Maimonides: A Guide for Today's Perplexed, and while I liked Seeskin's treatment, Fox's is truly the gold standard. Isadore Twersky's classic work on the Mishnah Torah is also recommended, but is much denser and longer.

Of course, to some extent that is the price one pays (and the benefit one gets) from interacting with the Rambam. The only way to begin to understand Maimonides is to read him. Before reading Fox, I read the Guide myself, cover to cover, and perhaps understood 20% of it. Maimonides himself probably would not have approved of modern readers simply diving in, but in our age, with a dearth of great teachers accessible to an educated readership, that is the only way. Studying Maimonides is a lifelong occupation: Fox's book is a crucial step on that road.

Very often the American public has tended to view Lyndon Johnosn as the evil villian who escalated America's involvement in the warr in Vietnam. However, few people, including historians, know how the escalation came about. In this book Brian VanDeMark does not try to justify the decisions that were made between 1964 and 1968, but tries and explain how those decisions came about. VanDeMark also shows how Johnson slowly and reluctantly led the United States deeper into what has often been called the "quagmire" of Vietnam. VanDeMark balmes the American Policy maker's ignorance of the culture and politics of Southeast Asia for the slow deepening of the conflict. VanDeMark gives teh reader a very good view of how this happened by carrying the reader through almost every major decision made by the Johnson administration throughout this time period. Writen in a very readable style the near day-to-day account helps to emphasize the snowball effect of the events. The author uses a good range of source material for this book. THere is a strong reliance on government manuscripts and primary sources of the administration. He also includes oral histories and interviews. It is by using these sources and many quotations that VanDeMark is able to carry the reader through the day-to-day accounts of what happened. This book is very important for anyone interested in the VIetnam war or American foreign policy.

All too often people think of the Enlightenment as a group of smart people thinking about why we are so wonderful. The flip side of Enlightenment thinking is that to make Europeans seem so wonderful, the Philosophes described themselves against an Other, who possessed all the undesirable traits not accepted by the "Enlightened" people. Wolff shows how the Philosophes, with limited actual knowledge of Eastern Europe, used the civilizations east of Germany to show the benefits of living in the West. During the Enlightenment the language used to describe Eastern Europe ascribed barbaric qualities to the people and offered little faith that the people could ever "evolve" as Western Europeans had. Wolff uses maps and traveler's accounts to show the influence the philosphes had on perceptions of Eastern Europe. It is rather disconcerting to note that many of these same perceptions persist today.

This study by Professor Savory of the University of Toronto is the best one volume study in English of the Safavid Shahs in their era,1500 to 1736.

As a student, when we've learned about the Iraninan constitutional revolution of 1906 things were very simple: an alliance between the Ulamaa, the Bazaar and other people of interest, that created a united front against the shah, in order to create a constitution, a parliament and so on.

In this book, Bayat shows that things aren't that simple: She wonderfully paints and intellectual-social-religious profile of Iran before the Revolution. She shows the effect of Western ideas and the different forms it took. She describes the intellectuals and others who had taken part in the leading of the revolution. She writes with detail about the different secret societies that was formed, their tactics and their activities. She shows that the 'United Front' wasn't so united and that things aren't as clear as they may seem in first glance.

The book, not on the writer's fault, is very detailed and therefore somewhat confusing, at least for me. It'll take you some time to arrange all the names and organizations, and yet, because of that you grow curios to see how all those people, although they had different ideas and goals, had all united and managed to get what they wanted.

In conclusion, it is a book that's offering an interesting thesis and a new point of view on the Iranian Constitutional Revolution.

Met E.A. once in the mountains of colorado in the early 1970s. could see even then that he had a first class mind and that he understood the historical processes taking place in the Third World as well as anyone. His understanding of the war in Vietnam, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the great historic tragedy that would become independent Algeria combined with profound knowledge of India and Pakistan were already evident. This book is a collection of his writings. They give a birds eye view of the historical processes taking place in the Third World in the last half of the 20th century. This book is a gold mine of profound insights - provides a fine compass for what is happening in the Third World by one of its most perceptive observers and participants. I've started to use it as a text in some classes I teach. Hopefully his life and work will become better known in the period a head and can help guide us - all of us - to a better future.

Rob Prince.

One cannot consider themselves knowledgeable in the slightest about Central Asia if they have not read this book. Basically, the states of Central Asia are more a threat against Muslims then Muslims are a threat to the states. Written for a general audience, though still scholarship at the highest level. A must read.