As a fairly secular American Christian I feel relatively nonpartisan in this tragic and ongoing confrontation. However, the more I have interacted with Israelis and Palestinians over the past 3 years, the more I began to feel that the debates between them did not square with my understanding of the conflict. Especially with respect to the peace process after 1993 and the entire involvement of the Clinton administration.

This book is a powerful, succint and spot-on antidote to the heavily biased media coverage in the United States. It presents the Palestinian case in an articulate fashion and lays out why seemingly fair proposals were designed such that their implementation would have either been impossible or deeply favorable to the stae of Israel.

But above all, Bishara explores the less tangible elements of the conflict which are oft ignored, yet are perhaps the most crucial dimensions. Who is "guilty"? Who will emerge as the "benevolent" party in the conflict? Who is generous & fair, and who is hateful and untrustworthy? These attributes Bishara argues are deeply skewed to the advantage of the Israelis under nearly all current negotiations, no matter what their strictly territorial or other tangible aspects. These psychological dimensions are what remain unaddressed and are what will perpetuate the violence which has already harmed so many.

Read this book if only for the sake of those whose voice goes unheard.

These days, Marwan Bishara's older brother, Azmi Bishara, the Palestinian member of the Israeli Knesset, is being prosecuted for political statements he made in Syria and Um-Al-Fahm. As a Palestinian living in Israel, i sympathize with Azmi Bishara and point an accusing finger at Israel's hypocritical and racist "democratic" machinery. My accusations do not stem from hate nor from any racist basis, but from a belief in the justice of the Palestinian cause, and the belief in a future where Palestinians and Jews will be able to live together in peace and as equals. However, Marwan Bishara's analysis of the Palestinian/Israeli dispute current condition enlightens the reader with details that have not been highlighted during the conflict in the last decade. Marwan is a penetrating critic of Israeli and American policies. He guides the reader through layers and layers of details concerning the dispute on a very profound level. During his analysis, the reader gets to know the true origins of the term 'Tanzim', and how the Israeli secret security service(Shabak) turned it into a name of a notorious terrorist group that did not exist. Marwan also provides the reader with information about Al Gore's motivation for supporting the Oslo Agreement, and about his economical interest in the success of the agreement. This book should be read with an open mind, and the reader should prepare him/herself for fundamental changes in his/her perception of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict.

McDowall did a great job listing the facts of Palestinian history. He showed how false the Zionist claims are of "land with no people for people with no land", and brilliantly analyzed the causes and effects of the Palestinian dispossession and "expulsion" of their land. He listed the facts and figures associated with the Zionist occupation of Palestine and leading to the Palestinian Diaspora and fight for freedom. Great work.

McDowall did a great job listing the facts of Palestinian history. He showed how false the Zionist claims are of "land with no people for people with no land", and brilliantly analyzed the causes and effects of the Palestinian dispossession and "expulsion" of their land. He listed the facts and figures associated with the Zionist occupation of Palestine and leading to the Palestinian Diaspora and fight for freedom. Great work.

Paper Before Print is a glorious achievement from all perspectives: historically, culturally, and as an impeccable model of how books of this sort should be presented (though too often they do not). Jonathan Bloom's text is revealing and intellectually stimulating without alienating the average reader. His premise, though not a popular one -- that the Middle East played a far more important role in refining and introducing paper to the West than is usually acknowledged -- carefully unfolds with unassailable research and arguments. The illustrations, mostly early Islamic texts (700s-1300s), are tastefully selected and compliment the text perfectly. The typography, layout, and presentation are superb. Anyone interested in history, art, and printing will profit from having this book on their shelves.

The only reservation I have about this book is Bloom's rather confused knowledge of typography. The book suffers from his misuse of the terms "cold type" and "hot type," as he continuously confuses the terms.(For example, on page 224, he writes, "Cold type...required each letter to be set individually...".) "Cold type" is a term invented in the 1950s to describe the new phototypesetting machines; it was coined to distinguish it from the "hot type" of lead typecasting machines.
Neither term is applicable to what Bloom is describing in most cases.

This book was absolutely great. It tells the history of paper before it reached the Christian world. This is the time before the printing press was invented. Paper had just come from China. This book tells about this time that is sometimes forgotten. This book is the best

The beautiful photographs of the belle epoque buildings of Cairo fairly jump off the pages at you. This lovely, understated book should be a guide for architecture and restoration students and buffs. This is a great gift book for the right people.

From the Egyptian Press: "[Myntti's] photographs...overflow with her love of Cairo, so the photos have become more beautiful than professional photos, because it was the heart that recorded not the fixed lens that cannot feel the pulse." (Hussam Abd Rabbu, Akhir Saat.) "The French architecture of the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries makes up one of the most charming of Cairo's harlequin faces.... This era has left a strikingly beautiful imprint on the citscape. Myntti's zoom lens offers a graceful catalogue." (Francis Bickmore, Egypt's Insight.) "In its global significance and cosmopolitan sophistication, Cairo was not merely a copy of Paris, it was more than Paris. The book inivtes one to 'promenade' and also to protect these neglected treasures." (Bruno Ronfard, Al-Ahram Hebdo.)

This unique travel guide blends contemporary cultural attractions, parades, festivals, banquets, cotillions, tours, and ethnic museums, with a comprehensive dining and shopping guide. It also tracks the progress of diverse ethnic groups throughout their tenure in Chicago, one of America's most culturally diverse cities. Because of the natural and man-made barriers in this spacious city (25 miles long and ten miles wide), including railroad embankments, expressways and three branches of the Chicago River (extending 50 miles across the landscape), over the years different ethnic groups have lived in relative seclusion from each other, even when there has been as little as a few hundred feet between them.

This 378-page trade paperback has no index, but there is a clear table of contents listing these topics: (1) Native Americans, French traders and settlers from New England, (2) Irish Chicago, (3) German Chicago, (4) Swedish and Norwegian Chicago, (5) Jewish Chicago, (6) Czech and Slovak Chicago, (7) Baltic Chicago, (8) Hungarian, Serbo-Croatian, and Romanian Chicago, (9) Ukrainian Chicago, (10) Polish Chicago, (11) Italian Chicago, (12) Greek Chicago, (13) African-American Chicago, (14) Chinese Chicago, (15) Asian Chicago, (16) Latino Chicago, (17) Indian and Pakistani Chicago, (18) Middle Eastern Chicago, (19) Appendices with information on: multiethnic festivals, useful phone numbers and addresses, and a bibliography of suggested reading; (20) 18 maps of different areas of Chicago.

This book is not just for tourists, though they will certainly find it very useful. Anyone interested in the rich multicultural heritage of Chicago, both residents and visitors alike, will find much to appreciate in this book. I highly recommend it.

I've had this book now for several years and I refer to it often. The book is divided into ethnic chapters. Each chapter features an indepth history of the ethnic group, plus a listing of restaurants, shops and annual events. I've used this book as an aid in research for my own book "A Barfly's Guide To Chicago's Drinking Establishment." Mr. Lindberg's book has led me to many ethnic taverns in Chicago. His information is extremely valuable for anyone interested in exploring Chicago's vast ethnic neighborhoods.

A perusal of current media in print, radio and television reinforces the observation that we are living in a time when the cultures of the Middle East are portrayed as ideologically opposed to the West. At the core of our alleged differences is the role of Islamic fundamentalism with its hegemonic determination to dominate cultures both in the Middle East and abroad. Such views are not new. The "clash of civilizations" theory of Samuel Huntington had already proposed and popularized this understanding in the mid-1990s. At a time when this perspective is gaining momentum, it is helpful to seek a corrective to a myopic understanding of Islam that often accompanies Huntington's theory; namely, that Islam is nothing more than Wahhabism. Moreover, a historical reexamination of Christianity's own understanding of God can be beneficial for "Westerners" who tend to understand their own religious heritage typically through modern Protestant lenses, which often leads to the positing of false dichotomies between Islam and Christianity, seeing them as mutually exclusive with no common ground. By reconsidering the mystical theologies of each religion it can be shown that a fundamental convergence occurs in the mystical thought and experience of each tradition. In particular, this inner commonality can form the basis of a deeper conversation between Christians and Muslims than has been typical in our day, aiding in a clearer mutual understanding of the similarities that exist between the fundamental religious traditions of our cultures. To this end, Paths To The Heart is an excellent beginning.

As Thomas Merton said in his Conjectures:
"Le point vierge is in everybody, and if we could see it we would see the billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely...I have no program for this seeing. It is only given. But the gate of heaven is everywhere."

May we seek the gate of heaven everywhere.

Compiled and edited by James S. Cutsinger (Professor of Theology and Religious Thought, University of South Carolina), Paths To The Heart: Sufism And The Christian East is an informed and informative study of the common threads and traits shared between the traditions of the Christian East and Islamic Sufism. A valued and highly recommended anthology of essays by a series of learned and erudite authors contemplating a lasting dialogue and connection between Christianity and Islam, Paths To The Heart compares saints, gateways to the heart, remembrances of God, and much more as seen by religions with so much more in common than is usually acknowledged by their practitioners.

This book shows the author's love of the land of Israel. Even with its difficulties, she shows that there is so much to learn from the country and so much to see. It is very spiritually uplifting. I have had the pleasure of seeing the land through the writer's eyes and would recommend anyone who wanted a unique experience that includes a full appreciation of the land to contact Miriam Feinberg to be your quide. If that is not possible, read the book and dream!

This book combines a deep knowledge of the Scriptures plus a touching love for the Land of Israel. Many who read it will want to see the Land the author is so inspired to write about and may even have the opportunity to meet her (licensed guide as well as a master of words), as she is a most reliable source of information for the tourist. Ask for her to lead your group through Sar El Tours, Jerusalem!

"Jeffrey Burds's _Peasant Dreams and Market Politics_ is an original, insightful interpretive study of the Russian peasantry confronting new challenges and opportunities during the late-19th century. The book focuses on peasant outmigration in the Central Industrial Region (encompassing the 300 kilometers around Moscow) in the period between the abolition of serfdom (1861) and the first significant rebellions against the tsar (1905). This was a period when an expanding commodity economy provided new opportunities for migrant peasant workers to gain supplemental incomes to offset the redemption taxes that their families and villages were collectively obligated to pay in exchange for taking possession of land formerly owned by the gentry. But, peasant outmigration also brought with it new threats for the traditional Russian peasant commune, which had to guard against the permanent resettlement of productive individuals or whole families who could place the remainder of the commune members under greater economic hardship as they endeavored to meet their tax obligations. The commune's efforts to contain these threats, and the manner in which the commune and individual peasants adapted to changing opportunity structures and outside influences, represent the most original and illuminating features of this book. . . . This book is an extremely interesting, informative, and well-researched ideographic work by a skilled historian. It is based on 3 years of archival research and analysis of ethnographic material, ranging from police records and peasant memoirs to written agreements among peasant households and their communes. It is written in a language accessible to specialists as well as nonspecialists. For area specialists familiar with the story of industrialization and peasant outmigration in prerevolutionary Russia, this book will offer a needed corrective for some of the more simplified, conventional characterizations of Russian peasant behavior. Valuable insights also can be gained from Burds's original treatment of the significance of reputational concerns in village life and his analysis of how commune norms and practices were influenced by, and deployed to contain, an expanding commodity economy." - Rudra Sil, University of Pennsylvania

Advance Reviews

"Brilliant, subtle, and richly documented, Burds's study of how the village and urban worlds remade one another puts the study of the peasantry, of urbanization, and of industrialization in Russia on a wholly new footing. His eye for the telling details of social relations, consumption, reputation, and the principles of navigation between two worlds illuminates subject after subject." - James C. Scott, Yale University

"The book contributes in fundamental ways to the historical debate about Russian development before the revolution. . . . It is original, brilliantly researched, and fascinating reading." - Lynne Viola, University of Toronto

"This excellent book . . . makes an important contribution to the fields of peasant studies, Russian history, and historical anthropology in general. Burds' analysis is original, lucid and convincing. . . . A pleasure to read. His main argument is that the village community dealt with the threat of change by anthropomorphizing it. The village community responded to the threat of modernity by anathematizing the most vivid symbols of modernity: agents with contact with the outside world. And the peasant migrant workers embodied this contact in the eyes of villagers. . . . While most historians have long tended to focus on high politics, Burds' work presents a strikingly new view of Russia's 'grand failure' from below. . . . Burds analyzes the 'culture of denunciation' as a process of constructing the enemy other out of the new forces threatening traditional village relations." - Hiroaki Kuromiya, Indiana University

"Jeffrey Burds' excellent study of the distinctive patterns of entrepreneurial activity, market strategies, and a commodity culture among nineteenth-century Russian peasants can serve as an important 'usable past' for post-Communist Russia, as it strives to find historical precedents and native roots for today's market reforms." - Brenda Meehan, University of Rochester

Published Reviews

"The strength of [Burds'] presentation is [his] rich, well-informed description of specific cases, often with long quotations from primary sources new to the literature, together with a complete command of the modern literature in peasant Russia." - James T. Flynne, College of the Holy Cross [Choice, November 1998]

"Using archival and published sources, Jeffrey Burds examines the impact of peasant migratory labor (otkhod) on villages of the Central Industrial Region. As he notes, this study is a "needed corrective" to previous treatments of otkhod which have been focused primarily on the impact of peasant migrations on urban development. Instead, Burds offers an interpretation of how familial and communal institutions incorporated increasing contact with town life and the market into their survival strategies during the onslaught of post-emancipation socioeconomic changes. Analysis begins by examining the threat of increasing otkhod in the village. Given krugovaia poruka (collective guarantee) the departure of entire families resulted in increased fiscal burdens for others. Futhermore, sons frequently found factory work easier and more rewarding than life on a farm. This threatened the ability of fathers to control sons and posed a challenge for communal elders seeking to extract urban earnings by binding migrants to the village. Finally, migrant laborers who returned to the village with changed tastes were potential sources of "moral corruption"--another threat to traditional social structures. Chapters 3, 4, and 7 discuss strategies communes and parents used to meet these challenges. A key strategy involved the control of passports. Otkhodniki remained responsible for assessments on their allotments. The commune ensured that it got some of this money up front as a "departure fee" before issuing of a passport, and often included a contract stipulating additional payments. Occassionally, communes arranged to have employers garnish otkhodnik wages. Communal and parental pressure to marry also served to tie otkhodniki to their rural roots, as did communal involvement in rural hiring. There were also legal options: refusal to issue another passport; threatened auction of property; and forcible recall to the village under police guard. Moral transgressions were checked by a "culture of denunciation"--the practice of labeling as "heretics" those migrants who seemed too attached to urban ways. To avoid any or all of these problems otkhodniki relied on "benefactors" (the maligned kulak) and the preservation of their village reputation. Migration, Burds notes, was a two-way street. Many migrants failed, and most became sensitized to fluctuations in the business cycle. Urban earnings could be just as uncertain as harvests. This helps explain why the majority of those with no allotment sent wages home. Maintaining a place in the village was a prudent hedge against an uncertain market. At the same time, urban contact encouraged a "culture of acquisition" in the village. This discussion constitutes the most original part of the book. The culture of acquisition meant not only new consumer tastes but also the gradual development of a café and shopping culture. As otkhod earnings invaded the village, the increased demand for goods led to the creation of fixed shops and taverns (which, through the sale of franchises, also provided a way for the commune to siphon urban earnings). The most significant consequence of this was not the fact that peasants now had a more convenient source of drink, but that they now interacted in a new way. The saloon became the center of village life, a source of news about a variety of topics, a place to make deals, and a place to show off new acquisitions. This infusion of otkhod earnings and newly acquired tastes created higher consumer expectations--an increase in the "break-even point" peasants used to evaluate their standard of living. Burds suggests that any "rural crisis" at the end of the last century must be assessed against this more dynamic conception of peasant needs. . . . . Burds's book is essential reading for all those with interests in the peasantry and economic development." --David Darrow, University of Dayton [The Russian Review, 1999]

In this very concise book (only 130 pages), Rubinstein gives the reader a great introduction to the average Palestinian refugee's attachment to the land of Israel. If you want a very easy to read, informative introduction to the attachment of Palestinian refugees to their homes this is the book to read. I highly recommend it!

That this book is out of print is unbelievable to me. It could help so many, today and tomorrow, to understand the Palestinian culture in a way I've never read about in any other book. Mr. Rubinstein is a revered Israeli columnist for Ha'aretz News and acknowledged as the leading Israeli "Arabist". Though his columns are information, this book is truly alive with visual images no where else to be found, with insights so critical for Americans and Israelis. How Random House allowed this timeless book to have only a short shelf life is really astounding and upsetting to me. Try and get it Used and then add your review to mine. You won't be disappointed; this book is a true gem.

The author offers a fantastic view of the Japanese monarchy that is well worth the read. A wonderful historical take on the subject.

Kenneth J. Ruoff is an Assistant Professor of Japanese History at
Portland State University. Dr. Ruoff is the Director of the Center for Japanese Studies at the university.