Some book reviews of recent publications in SOAS Library
(1) Mohammed Gharipour, ed. Sacred Precincts: The Religious Architecture of Non-Muslim Communities across the Islamic World. Leiden: Brill, 2015. xxxviii + 542 pp. $254.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-90-04-27906-3.
Reviewed by Nancy Demerdash-Fatemi (Princeton University)
Published on H-AMCA (April, 2017)
This “prodigious compilation” also underscores the growing need for more studies in global art and architectural histories, ones which investigate how aspects of trade, exchange, circulation, reception, transmission, as well as processes of transculturation and transmission of knowledge, impacted visual cultures and the built environment.
Click here to read the full Review on HNet
Click here to go to the SOAS Library record (also available as an e-book)
(2) Kristin Kleber, Reinhard Pirngruber (ed.), Silver, Money and Credit: A tribute to Robartus J. van der Spek on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday. PIHANS, 128. Leiden: Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten, 2016. Pp. xxix, 348. ISBN 9789062583393. €68.90 (pb).
Reviewed (in French) by Francis Joannès, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne
In conclusion “Il représente, en même temps qu’un amical hommage à Robartus van der Spek, une très utile synthèse de l’historiographie contemporaine sur la fonction économique des métaux précieux et élargit considérablement notre connaissance de leurs usages et de leur rôle historique”
Click here to read the full Review in the Bryn Mawr Classical Review
Click here to go to the SOAS Library record
(3) George Prochnik, Stranger in a strange land : searching for Gershom Scholem and Jerusalem. New York : Other Press, 2016
Reviewed in the New York Times by Alana Newhouse (5th May 2017)
The book will “make readers fluent in the language Prochnik will use to describe his own unfolding religious and political drama – his struggle to neatly reconcile Zionism as a concept with the Zionist project of which he and his family were now a part.”
Click here to read the full Review in the New York Times
Click here to go to the SOAS Library record
(4) Dov Weiss. Pious Irreverence: Confronting God in Rabbinic Judaism. Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion Series. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016. xii + 291 pp
Reviewed by Joseph Tabory (Bar-Ilan University)
“.. an interesting and challenging thesis that is based on great erudition …. book will be read with profit and interest by scholars and laymen alike.”
Click here to read the full review on HNet