Book reviews and abstracts
Four must read books: The Battle for the Arab Spring: Revolution, Counter-Revolution and the Making of a New Era. By Lin Noueihed and Alex Warren. Yale University Press; 350 pages; $28 and £18.99. The Rise and Fall of Arab Presidents for Life. By Roger Owen. Harvard University Press; 248 pages; $24.95 and £18.95. The Syrian Read more
Continue ReadingHeaven on Earth: a Journey Through Sharia Law, by Sadakat Kadri; 332pp, Bodley Head, t £16.99 (PLUS £1.25 p&p) Buy now from Telegraph Books (RRP £18.99, ebook £9.99). In February 2008 the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, delivered a lecture called “Civil and Religious Law in England: a Religious Perspective”. The title sounded innocent enough, Read more
Continue ReadingThe Religious Beliefs of America’s Founders: Reason, Revelation, Revolution by Gregg L. Frazer; University Press of Kansas, 2012; 296 pp., $35. by GARY SCOTT SMITH The religious views of America’s founders have been fiercely contested in the public arena for many years. The principal battle is between those who claim that most founders were Read more
Continue ReadingBy Sarah Ruden Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation, By Elaine Pagels, Viking, 246 pp., $27.95 The Book of Revelation is a jolt at the end of the New Testament: thrilling, baffling, or embarrassing to many Christians, shocking or laughable to many others. The monsters lumbering across its Read more
Continue ReadingThe New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness; by MICHELLE ALEXANDER; The New Press, Paperback, $19.95. The New Jim Crow Ever since Barack Obama lifted his right hand and took his oath of office, pledging to serve the United States as its 44th president, ordinary people and their leaders around the globe have been celebrating our Read more
Continue ReadingGeorge F. Kennan: An American Life, By John Lewis Gaddis, Penguin Press, 784 pp., $39.95 George Kennan was the J. Alfred Prufrock of American diplomacy—acutely observant, toxically self-absorbed, and to borrow T. S. Eliot’s words, “full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; / At times, indeed, almost ridiculous— / Almost, at times, the Read more
Continue ReadingExperiment Eleven: Dark Secrets Behind the Discovery of a Wonder Drug; By PETER PRINGLE Reviewed by Marc Parrish According to the famous German physicist Arnold Berliner, scientists are “a cross between a mimosa and a porcupine”: one part bubbly, intoxicating sweetness and one part prickly brawler. Along with their commitment to the intellectual pursuit of Read more
Continue ReadingKnowing Too Much: Why the American Jewish Romance With Israel is Coming to an End. By Norman Finkelstein. OR Books; 472 pages; $18 and £12. IT HAS become increasingly common for prominent liberal Jewish Americans to voice anguished disquiet over Israel’s behaviour. The most visible signs of this trend are books, such as Read more
Continue ReadingKafka Comes to America: Fighting for Justice in the War on Terror – A Public Defender’s Inside Account, by Steven T. Wax; Other Press; First Edition (June 3, 2008). ISBN-10: 1590512952. Hardcover, $22.89; 380 pages. Wax, the head of the Oregon Federal Public Defenders’ office, writes that when he volunteered to represent inmates at Guantánamo Read more
Continue ReadingIn Sex, Law, and Sovereignty in French Algeria, Judith Surkis enters the debate about the construction of the Algerian legal system under French colonization and argues that fantastical depictions and orientalist views inspired jurists as they developed the legal code in French Algeria. Significantly, she argues that sexual fantasies about Arab women did far more Read more
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