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Like Shakespeare, J.S. Bach is known largely by his works. Peter Williams asks many questions in this examination of the man as well as the composer. What was Bach like as a youth, father, and, eventually, church elder? What music did he know and how did he compose and perform such an amazing amount?Ultimately, Williams questions the effects of unremitting acclaim on objective evaluations of J.S. Bach. ... Read more

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Cochrane Cancer Network, Oxford, UK. Utilizes an evidence-based approach to view the strength of the underlying evidence used to support some of the key decisions in cancer care. Discusses the principles and practice of critical appraisal, finding the best evidence for cancer care, and understanding the concepts behind health economics. For oncologists. ... Read more

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Natural and synthetic water soluble polymers are used in a wide range of familiar industrial and consumer products, including coatings and inks, papers, adhesives, cosmetics and personal care products. They perform a variety of functions without which these products would be significantly more expensive, less effective or both.

Written for research, development and formulation chemists, technologists and engineers at graduate level and beyond in the fine and specialty chemicals, polymers, food and pharmaceutical industries, the Handbook of Industrial Water Soluble Polymers deals specifically with the functional properties of both natural and synthetic water soluble polymers. By taking a function based approach, rather than a "polymer specific" approach the book illustrates how polymer structure leads to effect, and shows how different polymer types can be employed to achieve appropriate product properties. ... Read more

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This is a collection of original essays on a wide variety of topics on religion in the United States, covering both historical and contemporary times, by the most exciting scholars working in the field today. Topics covered include the African American and Native American religious experience; the roles of gender and family in various religious communities; diversity and pluralism in American religious life; regional differences throughout the US; the relationship between religion and economic life; popular and material culture; and major themes in American religious thought. The approaches used reflect the impact of American studies and social and intellectual history on the study of religion. Students, scholars, and general readers will encounter a stimulating introduction to current scholarship while instructors will find this volume a valuable source for teaching students about the depth and diversity of the American religious experience. ... Read more

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intellectuals and the growing field of material culture
A few weeks before Peter W. Williams, ed., Perspectives on American Religion and Culture, (Blackwells, Oxford 1999) arrived, I met a Chinese-American professor whose dress, accent and confidence suggested a long-established American family. In fact she was of Chinese-Vietnamese parents, brought up in Cambodia and had spent two years as a boat refugee. Sponsored by a Catholic agency at eight without any English, she subsequently gained a doctorate from the finest state university in California and still retains a traditional faith. She epitomises the thrust of this collection: America welcomes, liberates and enables her to negotiate her own adjustments.

The book has twenty seven essays around seven themes ranging across the nation, centuries and denominations. Five essays each discuss intellectuals and the growing field of material culture. Four cover pluralism while three each examine the colonial period, transitions, gender, race and ethnicity. Within those categories Mormons, Positivism, Native Americans, food, drink and serpent handling have one each, Judaism two and the largest single body, Roman Catholicism, three. Well-worn paths bypassed include spiritualism, abolitionism and prohibitionism: sport, movies, homosexuality and recent immigrant faiths are largely absent. Interestingly, a volume devoted to diversity has only two academics come from west of the Mississippi and no obvious 'new' immigrant essayist.

The writers underestimate Scottish influence from Witherspoon to Common Sense philosophy in transforming Puritanism; in Edward Caird promoting the Religion of Humanity; or in the fear of atheism and anarchy. But these are pedantic points about a lively set of essays and succinct bibliographies. Professor Williams and his friends deserve our thanks for a collection which reflects the vibrant nature of American religious studies, like the dynamic faith and joy of the nation itself. It will be valuable to undergrauate and researcher alike.

It shows a shift from old orthodoxies to new, more exciting, diverse views of immigrant spiritual experience is complete. Elites previously asserted moral superiority. whether ethical culturalist, revivalist, Episcopalian, Catholic conservative or even women. Popular revulsion against certain stereotyped immigrants overcame earlier tolerance: Crevecouer's dream foundered on Nativism. Laurie Maffley-Kipp shows Christians united in opposition to Chinese migrants as Carolyn Haynes's women endorsed social and racial superiority.

That day is done.

Group hagiography or celebration likewise have moved on to more critical assessment. Even Sydney Ahlstrom's magisterial study has succumbed to more complex interpretations. If George Marsden refreshed fundamentalist study, Jay P. Dolan and the Cushwa Center, showed the varied Catholic experience: like 'the Fighting Irish' themselves Catholicism is rich and diverse. Stephen J. Stein argues alternative lifestyles or minorities gave others greater confidence in their choices. The architecture of revivalism according to Jeanne Kilde produced new ideas of faith in the public arena, highlighted the individual preacher for good or ill and strengthened faith through public emotion. Patriotism united faiths in World Wars and Cold- War while postwar affluence saw increasing intermarriage between Catholics and Protestants, Christians and Jews. Anne C Rose argues upward mobility left traditional theologies and ethnic links behind. And yet identity persisted within a religious framework. Lyman Beecher's eleven children all abandoned his Calvinism; Jewish males often married Christian wives; only one daughter of publisher Henry Carey's large family married a Catholic while his grandson was H. C. Lea, historian of the Inquisition. If Washington Gladden gloried in an inter-racial social gospel, Congregationalists sustained a segregated system. The extreme case of Cornelia Connelly and her husband exemplifies each generation' search. in religious individualism: the consumer found meaning in the marketplace of competing faiths.

Each generation further distanced from Europe and enjoying higher standards, found self denial less resonant. They celebrated the triumph of American pluralism rather than that of a particular sect or denomination: E Pluribus Unum. Each praised the Lord and nation in its peculiar mode of expression. Portable expressions of faith, medals and books, spawned literary and artistic enterprises. More elaborate buildings made a statement of a group and its faith. In Beth Wenger's fascinating essay, the few interwar Jewish activists improved recruitment through more synagogue facilities and strengthened group identity through dynamic Zionism.

The New Deal recognised Jewish and Catholic needs, aspirations and permanent voting power. Like Mary Jo Weaver and Paula Kane's Catholics they moved from victimhood to fuller acceptance. Catholic parishes as Robert Orsi showed earlier provided witness to ethnic values and space for self-expression. Neo-Thomistic clergy and deferential laity reinforced faith in devotional and mutual aid organisations. But perhaps their decline owed less to 'discernment' and more to religion as lifestyle. The persistence of folk art, contrary to Leonard N. Primiano, in my limited experience, seems more generational: it flourishes in Florida retirement zones rather than in Louisville or Chicago. And was 'ghetto Catholicism' anything but a process of adjustment? Could anyone remain isolated in American culture? Married Catholic clergy might solve some problems, but raise divorce and child care issues. And homosexual clergy? As a venerable Dominican, rector of a Scottish university, said to me years ago 'We have had homosexual clergy for 2,000 years'. It is like the contemporary issue of homosexuals in the military. Social improvement meant adjustment and adaptation. Each group responded gradually and sometimes imaginatively to social change. But every vision from Puritanism, Mormonism to Catholicism adjusted in a similar way to marketing realities. Would their faith play in Peoria? For as Philip L.Barlow on Mormons and Russell E. Richey on Methodism show, religion is in permanent transition. Every visit to America is to a new country. On each occasion like Montalembert's visits to England, it is 'a bath of life'.

By the 1990s later arrivals had similarly adjusted and shared in a common progression. Religious divisions are more horizontal than vertical: conservatives and liberals have far more in common across than within denominations. In religion as elsewhere in America the consumer is king although in some areas women priests, homosexuality and abortion remain unresolved, divisive issues.

As one Progressive academic of the early twentieth century wrote 'Can a nation which has been through Calvinism ever be truly democratic?' The final answer is still awaited.



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How do I cook the perfect steak? How do I achieve a perfect souffle? The answers to these and similar questions are provided, telling the reader exactly how to cook food to perfection and explaining, for example, what "until done" means, and how to recognise it. ... Read more

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This book offers a carefully balanced, stimulating survey of marine ecology that introduces the key processes and systems that form the marine environment and examines the issues and challenges which surround its future conservation. Marine Ecology: Processes, Systems, and Impacts is ideal for undergraduate courses in marine biology or marine ecology.An Instructor's Manual is available to adopters. BLEmploys many examples from around the world to put concepts and issues in a real-world context BLPresents detailed case studies throughout the text BLContains numerous full-color illustrations ... Read more

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Very Good!!!
The book arrived very fast and in perfect conditions!! This book is very good, talks about every marine regions, from the Coastal Ecossystems to the Polar regions!!! The book is small, light and have many pictures and tables!! I recommend this book, specially for university students!! ... Read more

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2 Timothy is the last letter the apostle Paul ever wrote, and it contains his final counsel to Christian believers. From his opening wordsGrace, mercy and peaceto his closing blessingGrace be with youhis letter tersely counsels young Timothy what to do in the light of influences and pressures believers face as they live for God in difficult times. This easy-to-read guide to Paul's letter may be used for group or individual study. ... Read more

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three volume set of large encyclopedias ... Read more

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Perhaps the most significant and rapid advances in systematic methods have been made during the last forty years. However, little has been written on the development and contribution of the various disciplines that impinge upon the science of systematics. The purpose of this volume is twofold. First it reviews the major issues in systematic theory and practice that have driven the working methods of systematists during the 20th century. Secondly, it takes a forward look at the issues most likely to preoccupy systematists in the immediate future.Covering historical analyses of the evolution of systematics in the last one hundred years, Milestones in Systematics covers areas such as the development of the phenetic and cladistic methods of phylogenetic analysis and the associated algorithms; the revived influence of palaeontological data; the impact of new molecular data and the relationships between systematics, development and evolution. This latter subject is of particular interest as it echoes discussions prevalent at the beginning of the 20th century, but with the added perspective of modern analytical techniques and a molecular foundation.Biology postgraduates, postdoctoral students and researchers in evolutionary biology and systematics will find this a stimulating, thought-provoking read, and a platform for further debate and discussion. ... Read more

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Perspectives on Mozart Performance, published during the Mozart bicentennial year, is the first volume in a new series. It includes essays by distinguished musicologists and performers, each exploring a different aspect of Mozart's music in performance. Several studies consider the eighteenth-century roots of Mozart's approach to performance and examine such issues as the role of ornamentation (Paul Badura-Skoda, Frederick Neumann), improvization (Katalin Komlós), cadenzas (Christoph Wolff), and Mozart's conception of tempos in a pre-metronomic age (Jean-Pierre Marty). Two studies examine Mozart's string writing (Jaap Schroeder) and the influence of his father's remarkably popular Violinschule (Robin Stowell). An essay by Peter Williams treats Mozart's use of the chromatic fourth and performance styles associated with that figura. Finally, the later, nineteenth-century response to Mozart is explored through the study of Mendelssohn's performances of Mozart (R. Larry Todd). ... Read more