Book Notices
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Studies in Spirituality 29, 355-376. doi: 10.2143/SIS.29.0.3286950 © 2019 by Studies in Spirituality. All rights reserved. BOOK NOTICES Henk Rutten, the librarian and information manager of the Titus Brandsma Insti- tute, lists fifty to sixty titles with short descriptions. The intention of these book notices is to draw attention to new spirituality books that could be of interest to readers of Studies in Spirituality. They are not meant to be comprehensive and in-depth book reviews. Albin, Andrew, Richard Rolle’s “Melody of Love”. A Study and Translation, with Manu- script and Musical Contexts, Turnhout: Pontifical Institute / Brepols, 2018 (Studies and Texts; 212), 475 pages, ISBN: 9780888442123. The ‘Melos amoris’ stands as the most daring literary achievement of medieval Eng- land’s most influential mystic, Richard Rolle. Full of autobiographical glimpses and spiritual rhapsodies, this sustained étude in alliterative, rhythmic Latin prose contains Rolle’s first public account of his profoundly sensory mystical experience. The current volume provides the first full translation of this unstudied masterpiece into English, in alliterative prose that mirrors the original. As Rolle defends himself against controversy, he offers detailed descriptions of the spiritual fire, sweetness, and song that characterize his mysticism, amid a labyrinthine weave of scriptural exegesis, personal narrative, and inspired utterance. Among his longest and most literary works, the ‘Melos amoris’ has long been derogated as a frivolous gaud of the hermit’s youth. Read more generously, it offers a key to the corpus of Rolle’s Latin writings and opens crucial insight into his mystical discipline and the spiritual practices and experiences that stemmed from that discipline in the later Middle Ages. Andrew Albin is Assistant Professor of English and Medieval Studies at Fordham University. Andersson, Bo, Lucinda Martin, Leigh Penman, & Andrew Weeks (Eds.), Jacob Böhme and His World, Leiden: Brill, 2019 (Aries Book Series; 25), XIV, 386 pages, ISBN: 9789004385092. Jacob Böhme (1575-1624) is famous as a shoemaker and spiritual author. His works and thought are frequently studied as a product of his mystical illumination. This book adopts a different perspective. It seeks to demystify Böhme by focusing on aspects of his immediate cultural and social context and the intellectual currents of his time, includ- ing Böhme’s writing as literature, the social conditions in Görlitz, Böhme’s correspond- ence networks, a contemporary ‘crisis of piety’, Paracelsian and kabbalistic currents, astrology, astronomy and alchemy, and his relationship to other dissenting authors. Relevant facets of reception include Böhme’s philosophical standing, his contributions to pre-Pietism, and early English translations of his works. 356 BOOK NOTICES Bo Andersson is Professor of German at Uppsala University. Lucinda Martin is Director of a German Research Council project on Jacob Böhme and the Philadelphian Society at the University of Erfurt. Leigh T.I. Penman is Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Queensland. Andrew Weeks is Professor of German and Comparative Literature at Illinois State University. Balboni, Michael J., & Tracy A. Balboni, Hostility to Hospitality. Spirituality and Profes- sional Socialization within Medicine, New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2018, XIII, 333 pages, ISBN: 9780199325764. Spiritual sickness troubles American medicine. Through a death-denying culture, medicine has gained enormous power – an influence it maintains by distancing itself from religion, which too often reminds us of our mortality. As a result of this separation of medicine and religion, patients facing serious illness infrequently receive adequate spiritual care, despite the large body of empirical data demonstrating its importance to patient decision-making, quality of life, and medical utilization. This secular-sacred divide also unleashes depersonalizing, social forces through the market, technology, and legal-bureaucratic powers that reduce clinicians to tiny cogs in an unstoppable machine. Drawing from interdisciplinary scholarship including empirical studies, interviews, history and sociology, theology, and public policy, the authors argue for structural plu- ralism as the key to changing hostility to hospitality. Michael J. Balboni, PhD is on faculty at Harvard University and a theologian-in- residence in the Department of Psychiatry, Brigham & Women’s Hospital, Boston. Tracy A. Balboni, MD is an Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School and serves as the Clinical Director of the Supportive and Palliative Radiation Oncology Service at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham & Women’s Hospital. Baldwin, Lewis V., & Victor Anderson (Eds.), Revives My Soul Again. The Spirituality of Martin Luther King Jr., Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2018, 331 pages, ISBN: 9781506424712. The scholarship on Martin Luther King Jr. is seriously lacking in terms of richly nuanced and revelatory treatments of his spirituality and spiritual life. This book addresses this neglect by focusing on King’s life as a paradigm of a deep, vital, engaging, balanced, and contagious spirituality. It shows that the essence of the person King was lies in the quality of his own spiritual journey and how that translated into not only a personal devotional life of prayer, meditation, and fasting but also a public ministry that involved the uplift and empowerment of humanity. Much attention is devoted to King’s spiritual leadership, to his sense of the civil rights movement as ‘a spiritual movement’, and to his efforts to rescue humanity from what he termed a perpetual ‘death of the spirit’. Readers encounter a figure who took seriously the personal, inter- personal, and sociopolitical aspects of the Christian faith, thereby figuring prominently in recasting the very definition of spirituality in his time. King’s ‘holistic spirituality’ is presented here with a clarity and power fresh for our own generation. Lewis V. Baldwin is Emeritus Professor of Religious Studies at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee. Victor Anderson is Associate Professor of Christian Ethics at Vanderbilt Divinity School. BOOK NOTICES 357 Beehner, Christopher, Spirituality, Sustainability, and Success. Concepts and Cases, Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019 (Palgrave Studies in Workplace Spirituality and Fulfillment), IX, 325 pages, ISBN: 9783319778068. This book offers a pragmatic approach to the benefits of spirituality and sustainability for both individual and organizational success. It introduces sustainability and work- place spirituality as contemporary solutions to the challenging organizational environ- ment. The first few chapters introduce the fundamentals of spirituality, workplace spirituality, and sustainability. The author then demonstrates how the three qualities are beneficial in achieving personal and business success.Through the combination of synthesized research summaries and case studies of individuals and organizations, this book offers readers a fresh perspective on the importance of spirituality and sustaina- bility to organizational performance. Christopher G. Beehner is Professor at Seminole State College of Florida. Böhme, Jakob, Andrew Weeks, & Leigh Penman, De Tribus Principiis, Oder, Beschreibung Der Drey Principien Göttliches Wesens. Of the Three Principles of Divine Being, 1619 / by Jacob Boehme with Translation, Introduction, and Commentary by Andrew Weeks and a Discussion of the Manuscript Tradition by Leigh T.I. Penman, Leiden: Brill, 2019 (Aries Book Series: Texts and Studies in Western Esotericism; 26), 988 pages, ISBN: 9789004376892. This volume is vital for understanding Boehme’s work as a whole, its relationship to its epoch, and its role in intellectual history. Reproduced here using the methods of critical edition, the original of the work and its adjacent translation, together with an extensive introduction and commentary, provide unprecedented access to this essen- tial work of early modern thought and cast a fresh light on the revolutionary theo- logical, philosophical, and scientific developments coinciding with the start of the Thirty Years’ War. The 1730 edition is annotated with reference to the manuscript sources to clarify ambiguities so that the translation can interpret the text without refracting its meaning. This makes it possible to interpret Boehme’s complex theories of the origin of the divine being and of nature, the human creature, and the female aspect of divinity. Andrew Weeks is Professor of German and Comparative Literature at Illinois State University. Leigh T.I. Penman is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Queensland. Bouckaert, Luk, Knut J. Ims, & Peter Rona (Eds.), Art, Spirituality and Economics. Liber Amicorum for Laszlo Zsolnai, New York: Springer, 2018 (Virtues and Economics; 2), XII, 233 pages, ISBN: 9783319750637. This volume celebrates the work of Laszlo Zsolnai, a leading researcher and scholar in the field of the ethical and spiritual aspects of economic life, who has made significant contributions to the connection between ethics, spirituality, aesthetics and economic theory. The book offers a selection of essays concerned with the ethical, spiritual and aesthetic context within which economics as a social studies discipline should be situ- ated in order to avoid the sort of dehumanising consequences