BOOK REVIEWS and PRESENTATIONS HSS IV.2 (2015) DOI: 10.1515/hssr -2015-0019

BOOK REVIEWS: Basarab Nicolescu, From Modernity to Cosmodernity. Science, Culture, and Spirituality, Albany, New York, Suny Press, 2015, 282 p. ISBN 978-1438449647 ; Aliteea Turtureanu, Translinguisme et transculture dans l’oeuvre de Nancy Huston, Iași, Junimea, Col. “Ananta. Studii transdiscipli- nare”, 2014, Pref. by Basarab Nicolescu, 258 p. ISBN 978-9733717508 ______

Basarab Nicolescu, From Modernity to Cosmodernity. Science, Culture, and Spirituality, Albany, New York, Suny Press, 2015, 282 p. ISBN 978-1438449647 p.

Sue L.T. McGregor, PhD, home economist, Mount Saint Vincent University, Canada ______

I am very familiar with Basarab Nicolescu’s formulation of transdisciplinarity, having been a keen student of his approach for over a decade. I have a deep respect for the brilliance and the quantum nuances of his approach. And I was not disappointed; this is a profound and groundbreaking book. I did take a conceptual detour before I read it, to discover the meaning of one of the words used in the title, cosmodernity. It is not until the last three pages of the book that he defines this concept in any detail. In hindsight, I now suspect that he did this on purpose. I just need conceptual clarity, so I stopped to figure it out before I read the book. Just as we have modernity and postmodernity, we now have cosmodernity. Modern means contemporary, up-to-date, and a departure from traditions. Postmodern means after modernism. It refers to a distrust of anything modern, including its theories and ideologies, and it expresses this distrust by drawing attention to modern conventions. Cosmodernity relates to the cosmos, a word that means that everything exists everywhere. Indeed, 135 Book Reviews and Presentations HSS, vol. IV, no. 2 (2015): 135-151

Nicolescu said “Cosmodernity means essentially that all entity (existence) in the universe is defined by its relation to all other entities” (2014, 212). As a side note, Nicolescu coined the term cosmodernity in 1994, in a book titled Poetical Theorems. This book contained 13 chapters and one group of poetical theorems dealt with the aforementioned controversial distinction between modernity and postmodernity. For clarification, he argued that a poetical theorem is neither a theory nor a poem but is a way to “concentrate in a few pages [concepts, ideas and] theories that would have taken years to be exposed in tens of volumes of scientific and academic discourse” (Dincã, 2011: 121). Poetical theorems serve to make everything clear. Also before reading this book, I recommend you head to pp. 212-213, where he references another book on cosmodernism by Christian Moraru (2011). Nicolescu explained that Moraru’s discussion is an “excellent and necessary complement” (p. 212) to his understanding of the construct. Moraru explained that a “powerful withness,” “a new geometry of we, ”distinguishes cosmodernity from modernity and postmodernity (p. 23, p. 7). Given that cosmos means that everything exists everywhere, and is in relation to everything else, it makes sense that Moraru described cosmodernity as an ethical project, and “the ethical imperative of cosmodernity is togetherness” (p. 304). Now… feeling a bit more comfortable with what cosmodernity actually means, I will proceed with my review of Nicolescu’s book. On a pragmatic level, the book is 271 pages in length, organized into 17 chapters. There is an index, notes for each chapter, and a list of references for the whole book. Nicolescu’s Introduction is powerful on its own, convincing and compelling. I read it before I stopped and figured out what he meant by cosmodernit y. With my emergent understanding of this new term, his introduction to the topic is even more meaningful in hindsight. He basically argued that the world has witnessed an unprecedented growth of knowledge but this is tainted because the growth in knowledge happened due to an accelerating proliferation of disciplines and not due to the unity of knowledge, by which he means connecting knowledge with being (connecting science with humans). Because technoscience triumphed over spiritualit y and human and social happiness, the world is not better for this growth of knowledge. He also has issues with the modern notion of reality, and claims that we lost faith in modernity with the events of

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September 11, 2001. Modernity promised endless progress, fuelled by technoscience and the belief that we live in a rational, deterministic, and mechanistic world. Modern science’s penchant for sidelining humanity (the subject) for the sake of objectivit y has lead to alienation, fragmentation, and the possible decimation of the planet. He is frustrated. He refers to the triple revolution that spanned the twentieth century – the quantum revolution, the biological revolution, and the information revolution. He thinks that these changes should have changed our view of reality – to a transreality that accommodates complexity, spirituality (humanity), and consciousness. Instead, the old views remain, and we are blind. However, Nicolescu holds out for the “hope of self-birth” and a “visionary, transpersonal, and planetary consciousness, which could be nourished by the miraculous growth of knowledge” (p.2). His hope is expressed in this book. I expected him to immediately elucidate his familiar methodology of transdisciplinarity, with its three axioms (below), first articulated in 1985; instead, they are woven throughout the book and only listed on page 207, nine pages from the end of the book: Axiom one – the existence of Multiple Levels of Reality (ontology), with movement among them mediated by the Hidden Third (the quantum vacuum); Axiom two – the Logic of the Included Middle; and, Axiom three – knowledge as complexity (epistemology); the Principle of Universal Interdependence. But then I reminded myself that this is a book, not a short article or a conference paper. He has the delicious opportunity and luxury to tell a story. Indeed, we are treated to a rich and enveloping narrative about the underpinnings of thought, science, and philosophy that shaped his approach to transdisciplinarity. This book focuses on the intellectual and philosophical backdrop of his musings about life beyond modernit y. It is a personal and poignant insight into his journey toward transdisciplinarity, and I felt privileged and honoured to read it. In chapters 1-3 (40 pages), we are guided through discussions of shattered cultures, contemporary physics and the Western tradition, and the grandeur and decadence of scientism. This part of the narrative paints a portrait of the harmful legacy of the modern era. As he presents it, he introduces the ideas of the transcultural, a transreligious attitude and the Sacred, and a quantum vision of the world. This sets us up

137 Book Reviews and Presentations HSS, vol. IV, no. 2 (2015): 135-151 for chapters 4-9 (73 pages), which cover the emergence of the quantum world (quantum physics) and the quantum revolution. Quantum matters (pun intended) in any conversation with Basarab Nicolescu, because his transdisciplinary scholarship is deeply informed by his work as a quantum physicist. He draws on concepts such as discontinuity, nonseparability, the quantum vacuum (which is not empty), the boot strap principle, complexity thinking, plurality, superstrings (the fourth dimension), nonresistance, reconciliation of contradictions, inclusive logic, the logic of contradictions, and so on. This book elucidates how these quantum concepts have shaped his approach to transdisciplinarity. Non-quantum physicists like myself (who struggle with these ideas, see McGregor, 2011), will welcome this contribution of the book. Chapters 10 and 11 (25 pages) revert back to the topic of the first three chapters. Chapter 10 focuses on dualism (a particularly strong bailiwick for Nicolescu) and Chapter 11 turns to reductionism. Again, as he lays out his discussion of the negative import of these two aspects of classical science (he titled one section “Are we too deeply immersed in the seventeenth century?”), he introduces exciting “new science” ideas, such as unity of the world, the included third, the nature of space and time, the experienced third, and the ternary-quaternary debate. Except for the hidden third, these were all new to me! What an intellectual ride. But he manages to keep you with him, as he turns his attention to other topics. Chapters 12-14 (29 pages) carried me into even more unfamiliar territory, but having read the previous 150 pages, I felt ready for the intellectual and philosophical challenges, and to be honest, opportunities. He broaches ideas such as quantum aesthetics, quantum theatre, and the quantum vision of literature and art. I was excited to see this idea in the book because Nicolescu deeply believes that we should focus on spirituality, aesthetics (beauty and art) and the Sacred if we hope to move forward as a species. He thinks a sign of the cosmodern era is the “interaction between the theory of relativity, quantum mechanics [physics] and art (especially surrealism)” (p. 175. In Chapter 15, he opens our eyes to the role of the imaginary (thinking without words) in the creation of knowledge and the unity of knowledge. He describes the imaginary as revelations without the benefit of logical thinking, evidenced by sudden insights such as those experienced in “the

138 Book Reviews and Presentations HSS, vol. IV, no. 2 (2015): 135-151 very short intermediate period between sleep and waking up” (p. 180). I have personally experienced these aha moments, when I was chewing on something and then everything – everything – just clicks. My witness is this book review, when I finally “got it.” Like bookends, Chapter 16 mirrors Nicolescu’s angst expressed in the Introduction about adhering to the tenets of classical science despite the power of the quantum. As he debunks classical science, he identifies the basic features of cosmodernity, which I gleaned from reading Chapter 16: relationships, the interaction, the interconnection of natural phenomena the universe of interconnectedness, of nonseparability harmony between humans and nature (including intuition and spirituality), the subtle concept of substance/energy/space-time/information (replacing the concept of matter), the power of discontinuity and global causality (replacing continuity and local causality), the bridge between science and religion, intersubjectivity and the included third, a new cosmodern objectivit y – the subject, the object, and their interaction. The cosmodern world is a vast cosmic matrix, where everything is in perpetual movement and energetic restructuring – this is what the unity of the world means, the movement of energy, not matter. I think the intellectual contribution of this book is a form of beautiful, poignant, heart stopping art. It is an intellectual pièce de résistance; it is a creation that resists and defies orthodox or common conventions and practices (i.e., modernism), thereby making the whole of the creation unique and special (cosmodernism). Take a deep breath and read it, ideally from beginning to end, but even sampling it will change your life and open intellectual doors.

References Dincã, I. . Stages in the configuration of the transdisciplinary project of Basarab Nicolescu. In B. Nicolescu (Ed.), Transdisciplinary studies: Science, spirituality and society (No. 2) (pp. 119-136). Bucharest, Romania: Curtea Veche Publishing House, 2011. available at http://basarabnicolescu.fr/Docs_Notice/ Irina_Dinca.pdf McGregor, S. L. T. . Demystifying transdisciplinary ontology: Multiple levels of reality and the hidden third. Integral Leadership Review, 2011, 11(2) Moraru, C. . Cosmodernism. Ann Arbor, MI: Universit y of Michigan Press, 2011. Nicolescu, B. . Nous, la particule et le monde [We, the particle and the world]. Paris, France: Le Mail, 1985. Nicolescu, B. Théorèmes poétiques [Poetical theorems]. Monaco: Rocher, 1994. 139 Book Reviews and Presentations HSS, vol. IV, no. 2 (2015): 135-151

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Aliteea Turtureanu, Translinguisme et transculture dans l’oeuvre de Nancy Huston, Iași, Junimea, Col. „Ananta. Studii transdisciplinare”, 2014, Pref. by Basarab Nicolescu, 258 p. ISBN 978-9733717508

Pompiliu CRĂCIUNESCU PhD, Universitatea de Vest, Timişoara ______

L’entre-deux-langues

Investigating the transgressive-integrative dynamics which generates and nourishes Nancy Huston’s polyvalent narrative discourse, that is the world of senses configured in, within, between and beyond the levels of textual/ idiomatic organization, Aliteea Turtureanu’s book strongly highlights the irreducible role which creativity – in its triple linguistic, translinguistic and transcultural dimension – plays in the emergence of Meaning. Or, this aspect proves to play a major part in the creation/ re-creation equation, intrinsic to the self-translation practiced by the “canadienne et française et non pas canadienne-française” writer, as Nancy Huston defines herself. Seen through the monographic-transdisciciplinary lens, her complex work, crossed over by the force of the novel as a self-knowledge tool, enables the Hustonian “soi multiple” to emerge from/into place-non-place of “l’entre- deux-langues” (English/ French). In other words, the transgression of the strict boundaries of textual linguistics enables opening a horizon of comprehension in which the becoming of the self is interlinked with the projection of the self. Aliteea Turtureanu brilliantly demonstrates that Nancy Huston’s literature configures a third universe, in which the Subject- Object junction is just as real as the transcultural orbit which envelops and illuminates it. The Hidden Third is an unfathomable reason and a diaphanous link to this universe.

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After a short introduction (Pour une vision transdisciplinaire sur l’œuvre de Nancy Huston, p. 19–25), which aims at updating the main ideas of the transdisciplinary methodology, fundamental for her approach, as well as a synoptic image of Nancy Huston’s life and work, Aliteea Turtureanu undergoes an ample process of understanding Huston’s universe (creation and life). This process develops on the dynamic-conceptual path dressed from the very beginning, crystallizing three distinct and interfering levels, all of them contributing to the architectural limpidity of the edifice. Thus, if the first level mostly actualises the synthesis, intensifying the analysis, the second reverses the relationship, and the last one is both a synthetic and an analytic one. Thus conceived, the research gives off an intense effect of totality; I am thinking of a gödelian totality, an open one, specific to any truthful interpretative approach. Chapters I. La traversée des langues, des cultures et des frontieres (p. 26–66) and II. Du bilinguisme au translinguisme en passant par l’auto-traduction (p. 67–129), which are osmotically linked, crystallise the specificity of the Huston phenomenon, whose landmarks are the issue of exile, as existential option/ solution(pertaining to the field of psychoanalysis) and the issue of self- translation, as a manifestation of the creative translinguism born in the indescribable space “de l’entre-deux-langues”; last but not least, Aliteea Turtureanu approaches the issue of transculture, i. e. the identity quest, as a genuine corollary of the relationships with the Other, in its multiple hypostases (language, culture, individuals, images, obsessions). Approaching reference texts such as Nord perdu, Journal de la création, Lignes de faille, Lettres parisiennes. Histoires d’exil or Plainsong/Cantique des plaines, the author shows that “La finalité de l’oeuvre de Nancy Huston est celle d’unifier ce qui est propre à ce qui est étranger dans le sens d’une transculturalité emergente” (p. 40). Starting, for instance, from Limbes/Limbo, a homage to Beckett and a “vrai manifeste du translinguisme” of the writer (p. 93), the researcher shows the ways in which the expressive constraints and freedoms of language (English/ French) determine a certain formal-semantic configuration of the text, taking into account the very creative force of language, but also of the individualising energy of thought. Highlighting the contribution of Humboldt’s or Wittgenstein’s theories, Aliteea Turtureanu readily grasps the way in which “l’espace

141 Book Reviews and Presentations HSS, vol. IV, no. 2 (2015): 135-151 transdisciplinaire de l’entre-deux-langues” effaces the difference between the original and its translation, replacing it with the effect of an inner bivalent whole. Nancy Huston’s work “ne peut s’identifier ni à la version de départ ni à celle de l’arrivée, mais à toutes les deux en même temps” (p. 129). The analysis as a whole highlights the way in which The Hidden Third, a keystone in the transdisciplinary approach to the world proposed by Basarab Nicolescu, reconciles “une écrivaine canadienne et française et non pas canadienne-française”; this status is intensely highlighted by the (re)writing – self-translation that the author of the concept of étrangéité undergoes at “une deuxième version originelle du même livre” (as she speaks about Cantique des plaines/Plainsong). Undoubtedly, seen through the lens of Huston’s assertion, Oustinoff’s claim that “«l’effet de clôture» de l’autotraduction va de pair avec une potentialisation de l’original”, diminishes its assertive touch. In effect, the idea of a (simultaneous) double original annihilates any possible suggestion of the split of the versions, for their unfathomably deep reliance. On an idiomatic level, the allographic regime of Nancy Huston’s creation does not imply any notable mutations on the semantic level (as far as messages are concerned). If with Panait Istrati – the Romanian example of the process of creation/ re-creation (through self-translation) – the work as a whole is revealed through the addition of sense actualizations of its two expressive manifestations (Romanian and French), with Nancy Huston they manifest themselves simultaneously, by putting together the versions of the work (or by their reciprocal substitution). This is why interdisciplinary operators of Reality levels, of language levels and of representation levels do play a major part in determining the translinguistic nature of the Hustonian creation. The permanent and subtle interplay (of semantic actualization-enhancement – a dimension which is specific to language itself as enérgeia –, Nancy Huston’s work is not a contradictory duality, but a complex-plenary unity. Linguistic particularities (English/ French) simultaneously participate in revealing the world and the self in the literary text, as well as in edifying the literary text as (another) world, structured on different and inseparable levels. Chapters III. La transculture dans l’oeuvre de Nancy Huston (p. 130–164) and IV. Représentations de la transculturalité (p. 165–198) constitute the second level of the research, a (pluri)nuclear and mostly analytic one. Making use

142 Book Reviews and Presentations HSS, vol. IV, no. 2 (2015): 135-151 of solid transdisciplinary information (linguistics, philosophy, translation studies, psychoanalysis, geophysics, optics, music, visual arts, drama), Aliteea Turtureanu thoroughly investigates Nancy Huston’s mysterious universe, from its thematic constituents (family history, childhood, her mother’s abandonment, creation, procreation, present-day issues, feminism, exile) to the (self)cognitive message, axial in her writings, in the specific context of self-translation and transculturality. Emerging from the “cognitive passion” – evoked by Milan Kundera, in the wake of Hermann Broch’s conception, but also of thinkers such as Musil, Jünger or Vintilă Horia –, the Hustonian narrative cosmos coincides with the emergence of an “espace tiers crée au carrefour des deux mondes, anglophone et francophone”, a fact which also speaks about the prevalence of the identity quest. In other words, by following the control of the multiplicity of her own self, the author does it only in the space of translanguage, where The Hidden Third, theorized by Basarab Nicolescu, and “l’absolue Parole non-parlée”, also tackled by René Daumal, se répondent (they call one another and respond to one another). It is no coincidence that the experience of transculture connotes the ineffable; “car – the author writes – elle fait référence au silence des différentes actualisations”, and even more so as the space between the levels of Reality and the different levels of perception “représente l’espace interieur de ce silence, qui correspond au vide quantique de l’espace extérieur” (p. 137). Crossing over the realms of language, the paths of knowledge (concerning the self and the world) converge beyond the attires of the natural languages, into an incandescence which is – according to Basarab Nicolescu – “l’Etre humain en sa totalité ouverte”. The universal onto-cognitive valence of the work reveals itself even more in the transcultural contextualization, rigorously undertaken on the basis of the theoretical contributions of Basarab Nicolescu, Andrei Marga, Michel Cazenave, and Jacques Lacan. The originality of the theoretical articulations is enhanced by the originality of the analyses of the mirror, the tree and the mask, transdisciplinary symbols par excellence. As a defining mark of the Huston totality, the mirror, for instance, in not only a mediator of the author’s multiple identities, just as the mask, but also a way of access to transculturality (p. 155). Its representations constitute the object of

143 Book Reviews and Presentations HSS, vol. IV, no. 2 (2015): 135-151 predilection of the minute analyses of novels such as L’ampreinte de l’ange, Lignes de faille, Infrarouge or Ultraviolet. The possible and implicit interplay between infra and ultra “melts” into the wrapping-transgressive horizon of the music, a real catalyzing element in Nancy Huston’s work. The theoretical considerations on polyphony – also occasioned (already in I. 7. L’exil polisémique et polyphonique) by the subtitle of the novel Prodige and of Les variations Goldberg – indirectly hint to the comprehension of the meaning (also) as a structure with a polyphonic effect, in the spirit of Bakhtin. Or, this calling without words can only reassert the validity of the transgressive approach to the allomorph Hustonian artistic manifestations, whose energy crystallises into multiple subjacent sonorities (reciprocally-enriching voices of the self in conjunction with the alterity), as the author convincingly proves here. The extremely rare subject adequacy of the research enables this specific phenomenon to vigorously emerge on the third level of the book. Indeed, chapters V. Dialogues transculturelles (pp. 199–222) and VI. Rencontres transculturelles. Temoignages (pp. 223–227) seek to explain the “spatialization”/ the manifestation in act of all the theoretical potentialities rigorously identified within the entire Hustonian work. Aliteea Turtureanu highlights the new transcultural syncretism practiced by Nancy Huston due to her encounters with musicians (le Trio), photographers (Oberson, Mangiulea, Winckler, Cournut), fine artists (Petty, Alleyn) or with Todorov (as a writer). The specific materializations of these interferences (volumes, productions) emphasise both Huston’s “le soi multiple” and the onto- cognitive resources of the transdisciplinary dialogism. On a personal note, I consider that volumes such as Chant du bocage (together with Todorov and Cournut), Visages de l’aube (with Winckler) or Démons quotidiens (with Petty), all of them subtly commented upon, enter a deep resonance with the glittering dialogue between the painter Réal Tétreault and Jean-François Malherbe, a theologian and a philosopher (v. La chouette ironique, Québec, GGC Editions, 2011), thus participating in the enlargement of the transcultural turn, so necessary in the present-day world. Likewise, I think that, on the whole, Nancy Huston’s work constitutes a galaxy (quasag) of the transliterary universe, initiated by Vintilă Horia in the 60’s, a wonderful realm in which the deep tonalities of our time emerge.

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Originating from a doctoral dissertation, achieved under the supervision of the most prominent world figure of transdisciplinarity, Basarab Nicolescu, and defended in 2012 at the “Babeş-Bolyai” University of Cluj- Napoca, Translinguisme et transculture dans l’oeuvre de Nancy Huston is a book which impresses, above all, through the plenitudinary-cognitive nature of its approach (not an immanent-descriptive one). Intensified by the transdisciplinary methodology, a royal path to the transcultural essence of Huston’s universe, Aliteea Turtureanu’s research fosters genuine intellectual delights. The solid continuity between the conceptual geometry and the analytical finesse, in a discourse which transparently speaks about the transcultural calling of the researcher herself, corroborated with the fascinating Huston phenomenon, turns this publication into a rare event. As Ion Barbu used to say: whim of the Grace!

BOOK PRESENTATIONS

Robert J. Shiller, Irrational Exuberance. Revised and expanded third edition, Princeton University Press, 2015, 392 p., ISBN 978-0691166261

Robert J. Shiller is the recipient of the 2013 Nobel Prize in economics, a best-selling author and a professor of economics at Yale University. In this fully updated edition, he added a chapter on the bond market and augmented the text in order to reflect developments over the last decade. Expressively written, Shiller’s economic analysis explains the forces that move all markets up and down, showing how investor euphoria can drive asset prices up to dizzying and unsustainable heights, and how, at other times, investor discouragement can push prices down to very low levels. Irrational Exuberance recommends urgent policy changes to lessen their likelihood and severity and suggests ways in which individuals can decrease their risk before the next bubble bursts.

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Scott L. Montgomery and Daniel Chirot, The Shape of the New: Four Big Ideas and How They Made the Modern World, Princeton University Press, 2015, 512 p. ISBN 978- 0691150642

Both authors teach at the University of Washington. Their book tells the story of how the most revolutionary concepts of the Enlightenment - freedom, equality, evolution and democracy have reverberated through modern history and shaped the world as we know it today. The authors highlight the power of ideas by offering impressive portraits of Adam Smith, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, Charles Darwin and Karl Marx, heirs of the Enlightenment. Their thoughts and ideals about progress deeply transformed the very nature of our beliefs, institutions, economies, and politics. But these ideas are not pure and they have been used by brutal systems such as slavery, colonialism, nazism, or communism, giving birth to reactions against the Enlightenment's legacy.

Assaf Razin, Understanding Global Crises: An Emerging Paradigm, MIT Press, 2015, 256 p. ISBN 978-0262028592

Assaf Razim is a professor of International Economics at Cornell University. In Understanding Global Crises, Assaf Razin offers a review of an emerging paradigm that is consistent with the key features of recent global financial crises. This paradigm presents, in a transparent way, basic analytical elements of the theories of financial and monetary crises and how these elements fit together in macroeconomic analysis of global crises. Razin surveys the credit implosion that led to a severe banking crisis in Japan in the 1990s, the Asian financial crisis that began in 1997, the global meltdown of 2008, and the Euro-zone crisis, presenting key developments in the New Keynesian analytical framework.

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Hardcover edition Jessica Stern and J.M. Berger, ISIS, the State of Terror, Ecco, 2015, 416 p. ISBN 978-0062395542

Jessica Stern and J.M. Berger, experts on terrorism, fill a significant void in the literature with this impressive book, giving the readers full information on the roots and history of the Islamic State (IS). Additionally, they offer a series of suggestions on countering the messaging of the self-styled Caliphate. The text analyses the rise of ISIS and traces the ideological innovations that the group deploys to recruit unprecedented numbers of Westerners, the composition of its infamous snuff videos, and the technological tools it exploits on social media to broadcast its atrocities, and its recruiting pitch to the world, including its success at attracting thousands of Western adherents or in manipulating world leaders and its own adherents as it builds its twisted society.

Fundamentalism: Studies on a Contested History (Studies of Comparative Religion), ed. Simon A. Wood and David Harrington Watt, University of South Carolina Press, 2014, 296 p. ISBN 978-1611173543

Although the notion of fundamentalism as a global phenomenon dates from around 1980, the term itself originated in North American Protestantism approximately six decades earlier and acquired pejorative connotations within five years of its invention. Since the early 1990s, however, many scholars have endorsed the view that the notion of fundamentalism facilitates our understanding of modern religion by enabling us to identify and label structurally analogous developments in different religions. The editor's rigorous exploration of both the usefulness and the limitations of the concept makes the book also serve as an ideal text for religious studies, history, and anthropology courses that explore the complex interface between religion and modernity as well as courses on theory and method in religious studies.

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Ben Mezrich, Once Upon a Time in Russia: The Rise of the Oligarchs, Atria Books, 2015, 288p. ISBN 978-1476771892

A Harvard graduate and already a best-selling author, Ben Mezrich tells us the untold true story of the larger-than- life billionaire oligarchs who surfed the waves of privatisation to reap riches after the fall of the Soviet regime: “Godfather of the Kremlin”, Boris Berezovsky, a former mathematician and Roman Abramovich, his dashing young protégé who built a multi-billion-dollar empire of oil and aluminum battled their way through the “Wild East” of Russia. Written as a thriller, this story of amassing obscene wealth and power depicts a rarefied world seldom seen up close. Exclusively sourced, capturing a momentous period in recent world history, Once Upon a Time in Russia is at once personal and political, offering an unprecedented look into the wealth, corruption, and power behind what Graydon Carter called “the story of our age.”

Samuel Gerald Collins and Matthew Slover Durington, Networked Anthropology: A Primer for Ethnographers, Routledge, 184 p., 2014 ISBN 978-0415821759

Professors at Towson University, the authors offer us an essential roadmap for conducting engaged anthropology on a rapidly changing digital terrain. The advent of social media offers anthropologists exciting opportunities to extend their research to communities in fresh ways. At the same time, these technological developments open up anthropological fieldwork to different hazards. Networked Anthropology explores the increasing appropriation of diverse media platforms and social media into anthropological research and teaching. The book combines theoretical insights with case studies, methodological sketches and pedagogical notes. It points to the future of ethnography, both inside and outside the classroom, and consider ways in which networked anthropology might develop.

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Ann Morgan, Reading the World: Confessions of a Literary Explorer, Harvill Secker, 2015, 336 p. ISBN 978- 1846557873

Ann Morgan challanged herself to read one book of all the globe’s 196 independent countries (plus one extra). In fact, this literary adventure starts from the evidence that only 3% of the books published in the US and UK are translated works. Why? Reading the World itself is not a discussion of individual books, it is mostly a study of the idea of what Goethe called Weltliteratur. Ann Morgan’s book sheds light on the issues that affect us all: personal, political, national and global. Using her quest as a starting point, this book explores questions such as: What is cultural heritage? How do we define national identity? Is it possible to overcome censorship and propaganda? And how can we celebrate, challenge and change our remarkable world?

Frank M. Turner, European Intellectual History from Rousseau to Nietzsche, Yale University Press, 2015, 320 p. ISBN 978- 0300207293

One of the most distinguished cultural and intellectual historians of our time, Frank Turner taught a landmark Yale University lecture course on European intellectual history. His lectures - lucid, accessible, beautifully written - distilled modern European history from the Enlightenment to the dawn of the twentieth century and conveyed the turbulence of a rapidly changing era in European history through its ideas and leading figures. Turner’s lectures demystify the bewildering ”isms” of European intellectual history with aplomb, ranging widely across these intellectual prairies. He turns out to be a judicious guide to a world that paved the way for our own. His lectures run from Rousseau to Nietzsche via Darwin, Marx and much else besides.

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Frederic Lenoir, Happiness: A Philosopher’s Guide (translated from Frenc by Andrew Brown), Melville House, 2015, 208 p. ISBN 978-1612194394

Philosopher, sociologist, religious historian, and professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, one of France’s elite universities, editor of Le Monde des religions, Frederic Lenoir takes us on an exciting journey on Happiness – a bestseller in Europe - that examines how history’s greatest philosophers and religious figures have answered life’s most fundamental question: What is happiness and how do I achieve it? From the ancient Greeks on - Aristotle, Plato, and Chuang Tzu to the Buddha, Jesus, and Muhammad; from Voltaire, Spinoza, and Schopenhauer to Kant, Freud, and even modern neuroscientists - Lenoir considers the idea that true and lasting happiness is indeed possible and he also provides a way for us to see us how happiness is attainable in our own lives.

Richard L. Horner, The Universal Pastime: sleep and rest explained, BookBaby, 2014, 279 p. ISBN 978-1939389343

Richard L. Horner is a Professor in the Department of Medicine and Physiology at the University of Toronto. His main research interest is in the human brain, which is the most complex known machine in the universe, yet it shuts itself off from the outside world each and every day, for hours on end. Why? This book explains why rest and sleep evolved in living things using simple principles from biology. The question of why we and other organisms sleep – which had long been considered a scientific mystery – is resolved. The book identifies that sleep serves a simple and biologically elegant function that applies to all living things with nervous systems. The answer to the question why we sleep has important implications for the understanding of the biological basis of sleep health, and in particular mental health.

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Mohsin Hamid, Discontent and its Civilizations: Dispatches from Lahore, New York and London, Riverhead Books, 2015, 240 p. ISBN 978-1594633652

Mohsin Hamid, born in Pakistan but living mostly in the USA, is the internationally bestselling author of Moth Smoke, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, and How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia. His novels and short stories have earned him a reputation as a “master critic of the modern global condition” (Foreign Policy). The essays in the present book are powered by innate wisdom and informed opinion, his solid, questioning, explorative writing not only picks fault and apportions blame but also offers tentative solutions. The author is a probing, critical political animal, one that is resistant to foreign intervention in Pakistan, anxious for more pluralism and tolerance within its borders, prepared to find good in the “brutal phenomenon”, that is globalization, and mystified by “illusory” civilizations.

151 Book Reviews and Presentations HSS, vol. IV, no. 2 (2015): 135-151

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