Author: Biz India

Editors: Mark Everist and Thomas Forrest Kelly Publisher: Cambridge University Press – 1,248 pages Book Review by: Sonu Chandiram In general, few books on music are available on the market today than on other broad areas of knowledge. Leaving the ‘Subject’ tab open, we typed in ‘music’ as a keyword in a search on Amazon.com of books published by Cambridge University Press, and the result was a listing of 915 books relating to music. Typing in ‘religion’ yielded over 2,000 books, and the keyword ‘language’ took us to a list of over 3,000 books. For other knowledge areas, we...

Editors: Assaf Yasur-Landau, Eric H. Cline, and Yorke M. Rowan Publisher: Cambridge University Press – 643 pages Book Review by: Sonu Chandiram The Levant is a large geographic area in the eastern Mediterranean (some writers call it ‘southwestern Asia’) that includes: Cyprus, Cyrenaica (eastern coastal region of Libya), Egypt, Greece, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, and Turkey. The total population of this region is presently over 44 million people. The term Levant is a French one that means ‘rising’ as in the rising of the sun in the east. This part of the world has been described as...

General Editors: Denis Twitchett and John K. Fairbank Editors: Denis Twitchett and Paul Jakov Smith Publisher: Cambridge University Press – 1,095 pages Book Review by: Sonu Chandiram This Volume 5 of the Cambridge History of China, almost 1,100 pages in length, covers a period of 372 years, from the year 907 to the year 1279. Most of the reigns of the emperors during this time were very short in length, such as those of Ying-tsung (just four years), Hui-tsung and Ch’in-tsung (just about one year each) and Kuang-tsung (five years). Other emperors ruled for much longer periods, such as...

Editors: Bas Leijssenaar and Neil Walker Publisher: Cambridge University Press – 236 pages Book Review by: Sonu Chandiram The editors and authors of this book discuss the question of whether the idea and the reality of sovereignty is growing or declining. More and more new nations have emerged during the past several decades. At the same time, alliances of nations have also formed, particularly in Africa, Asia, South America, and most notably in Europe. This book is a product of the 10 authors of its chapters including the editors, after they participated in a conference entitled Images of Sovereignty...

(This book is part of the series entitled New Directions in Sustainability and Society). Author: Alf Hornborg Publisher: Cambridge University Press – 288 pages Book Review by: Sonu Chandiram Many writers have described the period of time we are living in as ‘anthropocene’ – a period of severe global warming evidenced by extremes of weather in temperatures. We have for example, seen California fires caused by massive deforestation on the one hand, and hurricanes caused by the severely rising temperatures from the burning of fossil fuels and other human actions. But as recently as in June 2019, the term...