Nine lives : in search of the sacred in modern India

 by William Dalrymple. For the last 20 years, Scotsman Dalrymple (The Last Mughals) has made the Indian subcontinent his bailiwick. In his introduction here, he describes Nine Lives as "a collection of non-fiction short stories," and he does portray the "pluralist religious and philosophic folk traditions" found in India in a way that is compelling and accessible to all readers. His subjects here are all people living on the margins: we meet a wandering Jain nun, a Tantric housewife whose abode is the cremation ground, a Sufi holy woman, a refugee from two countries, a blind Baul minstrel, and a Rajasthani bard who can recite from memory an epic of 626 pages, to name only a few. Dalrymple shows us the "lived experience" of the practitioners of these different religious paths and how their worlds have been impacted in a rapidly changing India. VERDICT More accessible but less scholarly than Wendy Doniger's The Hindus, Dalrymple's book is highly recommended for all collections. Readers will sense the power of faith underlying the divergent religious paths, with stories that are enthralling and will keep them up late reading. --Library Journal (Check catalog)

Thomas Hobbes

 by R.E.R. Bunce. As the inaugural volume in a new series from John Meadowcraft, "Major Conservative and Libertarian Thinkers," Bunce's Thomas Hobbes sets a high standard for future volumes. Bunce (Univ. of Cambridge) has provided a text useful for undergraduates, graduates, and faculty alike. The book includes a brief yet informative biographical sketch, an account of the development of Hobbes's civil philosophy, and a particularly valuable discussion of how Hobbes's thought was received in his own day, as well as the various avenues of interpretation subsequently developed. The discussion of Hobbes's reception and interpretation is particularly useful to students as it addresses the critiques of Hobbes made by Pufendorf, Locke, and Rousseau. The account of contemporary views of Hobbes discusses his place in the thought of important recent theorists such as Michael Oakeshott, Leo Strauss, and Francis Fukuyama as well as his continued relevance to contemporary political subjects. Bunce's volume has the particular virtue of paying due attention to Hobbes's physics as well as his politics, clarifying the frequently neglected link between his physics and his moral and political teachings. Summing Up: Recommended. All undergraduate, graduate, and research collections. --Choice. (Check Catalog)