Uruk: the First City is the first fully historical analysis of the origins of the city and of the state in southern Mesopotamia,the region providing the earliest evidence in world history related to these seminal developments. Contrasting his approach -- which has been influenced by V. Gordan Childe and by Marxist theorywith the neo-evolutionist ideas of (especially) American anthropological theory, the author argues that the innovations that took place during the Uruk period (most of the fourth millennium B.C.) were a true revolution that fundamentally changed all aspects of society and culture. This book is unique in its historical approach and its combination of archaeological and textual sources. It develops an argument that weaves together a vast amount of information and places it within a context of contemporary scholarly debates on such questions as the ancient economy and world systems.It explains the roots of these debates briefly without talking down to the reader. The book is accessible to a wider audience, while it also provides a cogent argument about the processes involved to the specialist in the field.

Uruk: The First City (Bible World)

History

Mario Liverani

World

Equinox Publishing Limited

Few British jazz musicians have been at the cutting edge of as many movements as Ian Carr. A pioneer bebop player in his youth, a colleague of Eric Burdon and John McLaughlin in the R'n'B explosion of the 60s, co-leader of one of Britain's most innovative jazz groups, the Rendell-Carr Quintet, a free-jazz colleague of John Stevens and Trevor Watts, and the founding father of jazz rock in the UK with his band Nucleus, Carr's musical career alone is truly remarkable, and a one-man history of British jazz in the 60s and 70s. Add to that his work as a member of the United Jazz and Rock Ensemble with such distinguished leaders as George Russell, Stan Tracey and Mike Gibbs, and his work as a player is even more remarkable. Yet Ian Carr is also one of the most perceptive critical writers and broadcasters about jazz, being not only the co-author of the Rough Guide, but also the celebrated biographer of Keith Jarrett and Miles Davis. In recent years he has transformed his writing talents into making innovative and prizewinning films on the music he loves, for which he has always been a fearless and outspoken advocate, from the time of his 1973 book Music Outside. As a teacher, his pupils have included such stellar British talents as Julian Joseph, the Mondesir brothers and Nikki Yeoh. He has been a professor of jazz at London's Guildhall School of Music since the 1980s and was founder of the jazz workshop at the Interchange arts scheme. In this full length biography, Alyn Shipton examines the fascinating mix of ingredients that comprise the man and his music, and in the process draws a vivid picture of Carr's home region, the North-East of England, of National Service, of such literary influences as W. Somerset Maugham, of post-war continental Europe and its Bohemian arts scene, and of the London jazz world from the 1960s onwards. The book shows that jazz does not have to have an American accent to be original and innovative, and to inspire audiences all around the world.

Out of the Long Dark: The Life of Ian Carr (Popular Music History)

Biographies & Memoirs

Alyn Shipton

Arts & Literature

During his 13 year career between 1955 and 1968, Paul Chambers was one of the leading double bass players in jazz, performing with a wide variety of artists and a range of the musics sub-genres and recording over 300 LPs for labels such as Blue Note, Riverside, Mercury and Columbia Records. Chambers performed as a sideman with some of the greatest names in jazz including Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Sonny Rollins, Wes Montgomery, Joe Henderson, Bill Evans, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Hank Mobley, Lee Morgan, Gil Evans and Freddie Hubbard. He recorded a half dozen LPs under his own name including his own compositions but is probably best remembered for his contribution to the greatest jazz recording of all time; Miles Davis 'Kind Of Blue'. Mr. P.C.: The Life and Music of Paul Chambers tells the story of this quiet giant of jazz; his early experiences in Detroit, his early rise to jazz celebrity, his time at the top, his ultimate struggle against the tides of change enveloping the music that he loved and the circumstances surrounding his tragic death, aged 33, in 1969. Using material from other literary sources and interviews with family members, friends and colleagues with the jazz fraternity, this book represents the first time that much of this influential musicians story has been told. The book includes a comprehensive discography detailing all of his recordings both as a sideman and bandleader.

Mr. P.C: The Life and Music of Paul Chambers (Popular Music History)

R. Palmer

Were David and Jonathan 'gay' lovers? This very modern question is at the root of the recent explosion of studies of the David and Jonathan narratives in 1 and 2 Samuel. But what makes it possible even to ask this question, and what agendas govern the ways interpreters try to answer it? This book begins by critiquing recent scholarship on David and Jonathan, with particular emphasis on the ideological use of historical criticism on the one hand and queer theory on the other. Neither approach to the relationship between David and Jonathan has taken seriously enough either the richness of the biblical text as a work of narrative art or the influence of reception history on the way scholarly agendas are framed. Beneath the plurality of interpretations currently on the market lies an ambiguous text that has drawn readers, beginning with the redactors of the Hebrew text and the translators of the Septuagint and Targum, to the task of resolving its several possible meanings. Generations of interpreters have read the biblical narrative through the lens of later codes and conventions, culminating in the use of this narrative as a resource for the reconstruction of gay history. Far from being a history of misreading, the reception history of the David and Jonathan narratives is a witness to the capacity of a richly ambiguous text to generate interpretations

The Love of David and Jonathan (BibleWorld)

James E. Harding

Religion & Spirituality

Reinterpreting the Eucharist (Gender, Theology and Spirituality)

Power and Responsibility in Biblical Interpretation (BibleWorld)

Nelson, Alissa Jones

Orientalists, Islamists and the Global Public Sphere (Comparative Islamic Studies)

Jung, Dietrich

In light of the ongoing public debate that focuses on differences between Islam and the West, this book suggests a change of perspective. It departs from the observation that both western Orientalists and Islamist activists have defined Islam similarly as an all-encompassing religious, political and social system. In shifting from differences to similarities, it leaves behind the increasingly circular debate about the true nature of Islam in which the Muslim religion has been represented either as intrinsically hostile to or as principally compatible with modern culture. Instead, it associates the evolution of a particularly essentialist image of Islam with a complex process of cross-cutting (self)-interpretations of Muslim and Western societies within an emerging global public sphere. Putting its focus on the life and work of a number of paradigmatic individuals, the book investigates the intellectual encounters and discursive interdependencies among western and Muslim intellectuals. In a historical genealogy it deconstructs the essentialist image of Islam in uncovering its conceptual foundations in the modern transformation of European and Muslim societies from the nineteenth century onwards. Thereby, the changing infrastructure of the global public sphere has facilitated the gradual popularization, trivialization, and dissemination of a previously elitist discourse on Islam and modernity. In this way, the idea of Islam as an all-encompassing system has been turned into accepted knowledge in the Western and Muslim worlds alike.

Prophecy and Power: Muhammad and the Qur'an in the Light of Comparison (Comparative Islamic Studies)

A posthumous work by the most rigorous comparativist in her generation of Islamic studies scholars, Prophecy and Power proposes a major innovative approach to both the Prophet Muhammad and the Noble Qur'an. By the end of the ninth century, the Prophet Muhammad had emerged as an intercommunal norm beyond compare, and yet the very constructedness of this model of Muhammad allows historians of religion to see how the process itself requires us to undercut the terms used. We undercut them by qualifying them with multiple meanings, both overlapping and corrective, but we also decapitalize them in order to suggest how much broader they were in earlier contexts, and how much broader they may become, or were intended to become, in later contexts.

Marilyn Robinson Waldman

Islam

A Critical Introduction to the Study of Religion

Societies are never ordered in ways that serve everyone's interests equally. Religious traditions - possibly more than any other aspect of society - have been developed over time to create, reproduce, and contest that social order. To study religion effectively is to be able to identify who benefits and who does not and how social structures are legitimated, maintained and contested. A Critical Introduction to the Study of Religion explains the key ideas and methods in the study of religion and demonstrates how they can be used. The aim is to provide students with a tool-kit of critical concepts for studying religious belief and behaviour. Throughout the discussion all ideas and methods are illustrated with clear case material. The critical concepts draw on sociological, cultural and anthropological thinking and include: classification and essentialism; naturalization and mystification; legitimation and social reproduction; habitus and normalization; and repression and domination. All offer valuable ways of viewing, analyzing, and evaluating social structures. A Critical Introduction to the Study of Religion presents students with a very productive and potentially radical way of studying religion, both its past and its present.

Martin, Craig

Religious Studies

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the Equinox Publishing Limited publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Equinox Publishing Limited

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the Equinox Publishing Limited publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Uruk: The First City (Bible World)

Out of the Long Dark: The Life of Ian Carr (Popular Music History)

Mr. P.C: The Life and Music of Paul Chambers (Popular Music History)

The Love of David and Jonathan (BibleWorld)

Reinterpreting the Eucharist (Gender, Theology and Spirituality)

Power and Responsibility in Biblical Interpretation (BibleWorld)

Orientalists, Islamists and the Global Public Sphere (Comparative Islamic Studies)

Orientalists, Islamists and the Global Public Sphere (Comparative Islamic Studies)

Prophecy and Power: Muhammad and the Qur'an in the Light of Comparison (Comparative Islamic Studies)

A Critical Introduction to the Study of Religion