Is it possible to capture the spirit of Buddhist meditation, which depends so much upon silence and unspoken wisdom? Can this spirit be found after two millennia? This wise and reassuring book reminds us that the Buddhist meditative tradition, geared...

The word "possession" is trickier than we often think, especially in the context of the Black Atlantic and its religions and economy. Here possession can refer to spirits, material goods, and, indeed, people. In "Spirited Things", Paul Christopher Jo...

This engrossing book encompasses the extraordinary history of the papacy, from its beginnings to the present day. This new edition covers the unprecedented resignation of Benedict XVI and the election of the first Argentinian pope.

"Secularizing Islamists?" provides an in-depth analysis of two Islamist parties in Pakistan, the highly influential Jama'at-e-Islami and the more militant Jama'at-ud-Da'wa, widely blamed for the November 2008 terrorist attack in Mumbai, India. Basing...

For sale in CIS only! Long a taboo topic, as well as one that has alarmed outside powers, sectarian conflict in the Middle East is on the rise. The contributors to this book examine sectarian politics in the Persian Gulf, including the GCC states, Y...

For sale in CIS only! While much current research on political Islam revolves around militant Islamism, the genesis of this ideology remains little understood. "A System of Life" is a pioneering examination of the earliest attempt at a systematic ou...

This compelling book retells and revises the story of the German Renaissance and Reformation through the lives of two controversial men of the sixteenth century: the Saxon court painter Lucas Cranach (the Serpent) and the Wittenberg monk-turned-refor...

The late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are known as the Age of Enlightenment, a time of science and reason. But in this illuminating book, Paul Monod reveals the surprising extent to which Newton, Boyle, Locke, and other giants of rational tho...

This book tells the story of the Scientific Buddha, "born" in Europe in the 1800s but commonly confused with the Buddha born in India 2,500 years ago. The Scientific Buddha was sent into battle against Christian missionaries, who were proclaiming acr...

For sale in CIS only! Although Iran's Islamic Revolution had an electrifying effect on Shiite movements in Lebanon, Iraq, the Gulf and Saudi Arabia, there exists a tendency to explain away much of Shiite politics in the Middle East as inextricably l...