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This volume does not focus on “theory” in a broad sense, but specifically on theories of religion. Theories of religion are texts that seek to interpret or explain “religion”, attempting to account for its meaning of “religion”, its specificity and its ontological status. They typically discuss the origins, structure, and functions (or products) of “religion”. Hence, theories of religion differ from “theoretical approaches”, “theoretical frameworks”, “theoretical models”, “definition of religion”, “ideas”, or similar concepts.The volume explores “theories of religion” as a fundamental concept in the study of religion/s in a specific, albeit interdisciplinary sense. Notably, many of the key theorists of religion are anthropologists, cognitive and evolutionary theorists, philosophers, and sociologists, in addition to scholars of religion in a more disciplinary sense. The book starts by giving a brief synopsis of theories of religions advanced since 1966. This starting point is chosen because of the appearance of two theoretical manifestos–contemporary classics–by Clifford Geertz, and Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, which have set the stage for subsequent theories of religion as points of references.The main part of the volume surveys some 40 works by the following theorists in chronological order: Clifford Geertz, Thomas Luckmann, Peter Berger, Pierre Bourdieu, Niklas Luhmann, Donald Crosby, Andrew Greeley, Ninian Smart, Martin Prozesky, Rodney Stark (with William Sims Bainbridge and Roger Finke respectively), Felicitas Goodman, John Hick, E. Thomas Lawson and Robert McCauley, Stewart Guthrie, Danièle Hervieu-Léger, Henri Hatzfeld, Jacques Derrida, Walter Burkert, Roy Rappaport, Pascal Boyer, Scott Atran, David Sloan Wilson, Lee Kirkpatrick, Loyal Rue, Daniel Dennett, Thomas Tweed, Martin Riesebrodt, Peter Sloterdijk, Robert Bellah, Gavin Flood, Jeppe Sinding Jensen, Ronald Dworkin, Jan-Ove Henriksen, Christian Smith, Paul-Francois Tremlett, Jonathan Turner with Alexandra Maryanski, Anders Klostergaard Petersen, and Armin Geertz, Volkhard Krech, Gabriel Levy.The book is written in clear and accessible language and will serve as a unique resource for students and scholars alike.

Comparison is held to be one of the central methods of the academic study of religion. While many ostensibly engage in the comparative act, often overlooked is what it actually means to do this. What is comparison? Why engage in it and for what purposes? Can there be such a thing as a valid or invalid comparison? Can comparison itself be compared to anything? This book starts with the premise that while there are good comparisons and bad comparisons, what is common to both is the sheer artificiality of the enterprise and develops an analytical framework for using the method in the context of religious studies. After briefly tracing the history and genealogy of the category, Hughes draws on his own extensive work in Judaism and Islam to argue that comparison can be a useful method, but only under strictly controlled conditions.

Muslim Identities: An Introduction to Islam (Second Edition) presents a fully updated introduction to the religion of Islam and the various social groups who define themselves as Muslim. Unlike other such works, it presents both insider and outsider accounts with the aim of striking a unique balance between overly apologetical and overly Orientalist perspectives. With the first edition described as a "truly outstanding book", and "the very best introduction currently available in English for non-Muslims seeking a sound approach to Islam" (Journal of Islamic Studies), this new edition offers both students and general readers a comprehensive and balanced introduction to the world's second-largest religion.

As an innovative and constantly inventive jazz pianist, Brad Mehldau has attracted a sizable following over the years, one that has grown to expect a singular, intense experience from his performances. With Formation, Brad seeks to extend that experience to the page, by sharing some of the deeply personal elements of his life, and how these came together for him to become the musician and person that he is today. For the first time, he offers an in-depth look at how he came to understand his adoption, survive sexual abuse, and overcome heroin addiction. The book creates a vibrantly-written portrait of the jazz world in New York in the late 1980s and early 1990s, showing how a generation of musicians met and sparked off one another to take the music in new directions, drawing on a wealth of influences but also keeping sight of tradition, including those rooted in both the jazz and classical worlds. The atmosphere of the clubs, the creative scene in Manhattan and Brooklyn, and Brad's early experiences of touring are brilliantly brought to life. The formation of the "Mood Swing" quartet with Joshua Redman is described, as is the growth of Brad's own groups, leading to his acclaimed Art of the Trio series of recordings with bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Jorge Rossy. The trio's later life with Jeff Ballard joining in place of Rossy; Brad's solo ventures; and his explorations of other areas of music, are also covered. There is no holding back when it comes to Brad's period of heroin addiction - his painful personal decline and ultimate redemption make for compelling and often distressing reading. Yet throughout the book, his own reading and listening are a constant frame of reference and often inspiration, from the works of James Joyce and Thomas Mann to the sounds of Prog rock and Bob Dylan, not to mention critics from Harold Bloom to Terry Eagleton. The book can be read as a bildungsroman, but this coming-of-age is no novel, it is vividly lived personal experience. Intimate, vulnerable and profound, Formation is a rare look inside the mind of an artist at the top of his field, in his own words.

In What the Buddha Thought, Richard Gombrich argues that the Buddha was one of the most brilliant and original thinkers of all time. Intended to serve as an introduction to the Buddhas thought, and hence even to Buddhism itself, the book also has larger aims: it argues that we can know far more about the Buddha than it is fashionable among scholars to admit, and that his thought has a greater coherence than is usually recognised. It contains much new material. Interpreters both ancient and modern have taken little account of the historical context of the Buddhas teachings; but by relating them to early brahminical texts, and also to ancient Jainism, Gombrich gives a much richer picture of the Buddhas meaning, especially when his satire and irony are appreciated. Incidentally, since many of the Buddhas allusions can only be traced in the Pali versions of surviving texts, the book establishes the importance of the Pali Canon as evidence. The book contains much new material. The author stresses the Buddhas capacity for abstraction: though he made extensive use of metaphor, he did not found his arguments upon it, as earlier thinkers had done. He ethicized and radically reinterpreted older ideas of karma (human action) and rebirth. Similarly, building on older texts, he argued for the fundamental importance of love and compassion, and analysed fire as a process which could stand as a model for every component of conscious experience. Morally, the Buddhas theory of karma provided a principle of individuation and asserted each individuals responsibility for his own destiny. To make the book completely accessible to the general reader, the author provides an introductory section of Background Information, for easy reference.

Tomasz Stanko is arguably the greatest jazz musician Poland has ever produced. His career spanned almost 60 years until his death in 2018. A visionary trumpeter and composer, a protege of Krzysztof Komeda and a colleague of musicians from Poland, Sweden, Norway, Britain, Cuba and the USA, his impact on jazz internationally was profound, proving that jazz was not exclusively an American art form but truly world-wide. In 2014 he was awarded the Polytika Passport in Poland, the Prix de musician European in Paris and the Preis der deutschen schallplattenkritik. The book is a no-holds-barred extended interview with broadcaster Rafal Ksiezyk originally published in Polish by Wydawnictwo Literackie.

As an innovative and constantly inventive jazz pianist, Brad Mehldau has attracted a sizable following over the years, one that has grown to expect a singular, intense experience from his performances. With Formation, Brad seeks to extend that experience to the page, by sharing some of the deeply personal elements of his life, and how these came together for him to become the musician and person that he is today. For the first time, he offers an in-depth look at how he came to understand his adoption, survive sexual abuse, and overcome heroin addiction. The book creates a vibrantly-written portrait of the jazz world in New York in the late 1980s and early 1990s, showing how a generation of musicians met and sparked off one another to take the music in new directions, drawing on a wealth of influences but also keeping sight of tradition, including those rooted in both the jazz and classical worlds. The atmosphere of the clubs, the creative scene in Manhattan and Brooklyn, and Brad's early experiences of touring are brilliantly brought to life. The formation of the "Mood Swing" quartet with Joshua Redman is described, as is the growth of Brad's own groups, leading to his acclaimed Art of the Trio series of recordings with bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Jorge Rossy. The trio's later life with Jeff Ballard joining in place of Rossy; Brad's solo ventures; and his explorations of other areas of music, are also covered. There is no holding back when it comes to Brad's period of heroin addiction - his painful personal decline and ultimate redemption make for compelling and often distressing reading. Yet throughout the book, his own reading and listening are a constant frame of reference and often inspiration, from the works of James Joyce and Thomas Mann to the sounds of Prog rock and Bob Dylan, not to mention critics from Harold Bloom to Terry Eagleton. The book can be read as a bildungsroman, but this coming-of-age is no novel, it is vividly lived personal experience. Intimate, vulnerable and profound, Formation is a rare look inside the mind of an artist at the top of his field, in his own words.

Jung's Red Book, finally published only in 2009, is a highly ambiguous text describing a succession of extraordinary visions, together with Jung's interpretation of them. Red Book, Middle Way offers a new interpretation of Jung's Red Book, in terms of the Middle Way, as a universal principle and embodied ethic, paralleled both in the Buddha's teachings and elsewhere. Jung explicitly discusses the Middle Way in the Red Book (although this has been largely ignored by scholars so far) as well as offering lots of material that can be understood in its terms. This book interprets the Red Book in relation to the archetypes met in its visions - the hero, the feminine, the Shadow, God and Christ, and follows Jung's process of integrating these different internal figures. To do this Jung needs to find the Middle Way between absolutes at every point, in a way similar to the Buddha.

This new edition of the Qur'an is specifically designed to meet the needs of students of religion, and provides them with a one-volume resource comparable to what is available for the Jewish and Christian scriptures. The meticulously crafted translation affords readers not only a better sense of what the Qur'an says, but how it says it, in a rendition that strives to remain faithful to the way it was originally expressed. Accompanying the translation is an extensive set of annotations. These are keyed to the text for ready reference, and divided according to their boldface topical headings at the bottom of each page. The annotations offer a wealth of linguistic and historical detail to enhance the understanding and appreciation of the text. They also contain abundant references to parallel passages within the Qur'an, as well as comparatively among the scriptures of Judaism and Christianity. With an introduction, set of maps, timeline, guide to further reading, and comprehensive index, this is the edition of the Qur'an all students of religion beginning as well as advanced will want to possess for their exploration of Islam s central text. Praise for this volume: 'The major benefit of this meticulously crafted translation is its extensive set of intratextual and intertextual references. The former cover all the major terms used in the Qur'an, providing the Arabic original word in a footnote, with usages, whether parallel or variant, from other Qur'anic chapters. The latter display an intimate engagement with both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, as well as a range of secondary literature that can be seen to supplement brief or cryptic Qur'anic references. Both sets of references make this an indispensable companion or guide book for reading, engaging and studying the Qur'an. A further, attractive feature of Droge's annotations is the highlighting of subsets or pericopes of each chapter in the footnotes; the reader, by glancing through these bold highlighted passages, can quickly surmise what are the chief elements, as also their relationship, within each chapter. Even the most seasoned scholar, and the most devout Muslim, will learn from Droge's annotated translation. It is a treasure trove of both familiar and novel elements of the Noble Book. In sum, Arthur Droge is to be commended for the extraordinary Herculean effort.' Bruce B. Lawrence, Duke University 'At long last, a version of the Qur'an that is willing to introduce the reader to the complexities of the historical formation and secular interpretation of this important text. Droge is to be congratulated for making accessible to the student of religious studies a critical apparatus, something that is all too often ignored in other translations.' Aaron Hughes, University of Buffalo 'Several new translations of the Qur'an have appeared over the past 20 years or so. None, however, have attempted the depth and breadth of annotation of the entire text that Droge's work provides. Readers coming to the Qur'an with a desire to compare the scripture to the Biblical text will especially find the extensive citation of parallel passages to be of interest. Droge has provided lucid explanations of unclear passages and significant variant readings, making the ambiguities and challenges of the Qur'an open to all curious readers.' Andrew Rippin, University of Victoria

Grażyna Bacewicz (1909-1969): a composer with an individual, expressive style, an excellent violinist, a very fine pianist, and a talented author. At the Conservatory in Warsaw she studied composition with Kazimierz Sikorski, her violin tutor was Józef Jarzębski and her piano professor was Józef Turczynski. Graduating in 1932, she travelled to Paris to study with Nadia Boulanger, later returning there to work with Carl Flesch. Her compositional output covered many genres, from ballets to songs and choral works, but also ranging from symphonies, concerti, and chamber works to pieces for solo piano. In 1936 she became principal violinist in the Polish Radio Orchestra. She then toured Europe as a soloist in the two years leading up to World War II, later resuming her career as a concert violinist and pianist after the war. For many years, Grażyna Bacewicz held the post of Vice-President of the Union of Polish Composers. She also served as a judge in many prestigious international music competitions. Strong and sensitive, and exceptionally family oriented, Grażyna Bacewicz was also blessed with unusual charm, phenomenal energy and huge creative potential.Grażyna Bacewicz became world famous and won numerous prizes for her compositions, which were regularly performed by the best musicians, and picked up for publication. She received enthusiastic reviews from music critics, among them Stefan Kisielewski, who noted the ‘passionate ferocity’ of her playing and described her concerto for string orchestra as ‘a rare piece of healthy and tasty music’.This biographical story, based in large measure on letters and other family documents, has been brought to us first hand by the composer’s grand-daughter, the writer Joanna Sendłak.

Psychology today pathologizes all aspects of the human condition without ever examining its own ills, which have caused it to become fragmented. People from non-Western backgrounds are often adversely affected by the limitations of the discipline, and often avoid treatment altogether. By contrast, a true “science of the soul” has existed for millennia in all the world’s diverse spiritual cultures. Although a plethora of modern therapies are now available, they are hindered in their efficacy by having become entirely divorced from sacred reality. This work argues that it is necessary to restore this “science of the soul” by drawing on the perspective of non-Western wisdom traditions as understood since time immemorial. Examples are given of the fundamental differences that are found between modern psychology and the traditional psychologies of various religions, which also existed in the West prior to the Enlightenment era. Furthermore, this book will show how non-Western philosophy can help rehabilitate an authentically healing psychology in support of promoting sound mental health in our afflicted modern culture. Sacred psychologies, therefore, afford us the best opportunity to tackle the innumerable challenges that confront human beings today, such as trauma, mental illness, addiction, death, and the meaning of our lives.

COOL CAT BLUES is the story of singer / pianist Georgie Fame. Born Clive Powell, in Leigh, Lancashire, he rose from being a troubled kid to the very top of the British pop charts. Through conversations and correspondence with Fame, as well as diligent research, Ben Sidran traces Fame’s story from his long days touring the back roads of England with up-and-coming British acts, along with visiting American musicians, to his early 1960s residency at London’s Flamingo Club, where he began specializing in playing organ. This venue was a legendary melting pot of blues and jazz, and Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames, the band that grew out of their work there, went on to chart success as the decade progressed, with three UK No. 1 chart hits. In the years that followed, Fame combined his solo career with collaborations with other artists, including Alan Price and Van Morrison. He was a founder member of ex-Rolling Stone Bill Wyman’s Rhythm Kings, but also worked across the stylistic spectrum with musicians as varied as Count Basie, Muddy Waters and Joan Armatrading.The book also follows his personal life in the usually hidden world of British high society. The final chapters bring the story of a man who, all his life, has followed his head, heart and ears into the 21 st century, with headline appearances at Ronnie Scott’s Club and Glastonbury, as well as recordings and concerts with the band he leads with his sons Tristan and James Powell.

While it has long been acknowledged that Chan differs in many ways from more mainstream forms of Buddhism, recent scholarship has also resulted in an increasing awareness of the originality of early Buddhist teachings found in the Nikāyas and their distinctiveness from the later doctrine of classical Theravāda. This book is inspired by passages in Nikāya and early Chan texts that can be read as expressing surprisingly similar and at the same time very unconventional ideas about meditation, consciousness, and reality. While due to their unorthodox character, these passages have often been ignored or explained away when studied in the context of just one tradition, the new perspective provided by their comparative analysis allows a more direct reading to be considered, thereby drawing out their radical implications.This book argues that the unconventional concepts found in Nikāya and early Chan texts are part of a unique and coherent meditative paradigm that is very different from the one commonly associated with Buddhism and dominant in its history. One of its central ideas is that certain crucial meditative states cannot be directly attained through methods involving acts of will and mental effort such as active concentration, but their occurrence is dependent on a specific way of life, state of mind and existential condition. To make better sense of Nikāya and early Chan views that are often at odds with commonly held beliefs about mental functioning and the structure of reality, and to assess their plausibility, they are compared with relevant developments in Western philosophy and cognitive science.

The scientific study of religion has made significant advances in recent decades, explaining how the mind produces religious ideas, the motivations underlying religious behaviour, and the transmission of religious cultures within and across generations. In Religion Evolving: Cultural, Cognitive, and Ecological Dynamics, Purzycki and Sosis argue that further progress requires integration of isolated research findings on the various components - ritual, supernatural agent belief, myth, taboo, and so forth - that constitute religion. Religions, they contend, need to be understood as adaptive systems. Drawing from a wealth of ethnographic and experimental evidence, they situate religious systems within their local socioecological contexts, showing how religious culture adaptively responds to economic, environmental, and human health problems, as well as costly threats to cooperation and reproduction. Based in the evolutionary, cognitive, and anthropological sciences, Religion Evolving offers a holistic approach that attends to the complex, interacting features of religious systems.

This is the first biography of Allan Bennett, one of the first British men to gain higher ordination as a Buddhist monk and one of the seminal figures in the development of Buddhism in the UK.Bennett rejected Christianity early in his life and turned to late nineteenth century new religious movements, namely theosophy and the Order of the Golden Dawn. His involvement in the latter led to friendship with Aleister Crowley. His main spiritual interest at this point in his life was the occult and the esoteric. After he travelled to Ceylon (Sri Lanka) in 1899 for health reasons – he had chronic asthma – he was attracted to Buddhism. Believing Buddhism in Burma (Myanmar) was purer than in Sri Lanka, he opted for ordination there in 1902.From Burma, he created an international Buddhist network, founding an international Buddhist association, the Buddhasāsana Samāgama and starting a journal, Buddhism – An Illustrated Quarterly Review. In 1908, he led a Buddhist mission to England. Convinced that the West needed Buddhism as an antidote to growing materialism, he became a prolific writer. Two volumes of his writings were published. The first recorded a series of talks he gave in London in 1917-1918, published just two months before he died (The Wisdom of the Aryas). The second was published posthumously (The Religion of Burma and Other Papers). Controversy has surrounded his life, particularly in western Buddhist circles, because of his early involvement with the occult.

This is the first edited, annotated collection of the writings of Allan Bennett, one of the first British men to gain higher ordination as a Buddhist monk and one of the seminal figures in the development of Buddhism in the UK. Bennett’s view of Buddhism reflects the intellectual history of his day and the debates that were happening between different religious groups in late Victorian and early Edwardian imperial Britain. His work represents some of the first writings by English converts to Buddhism, efforts which mobilized British Buddhists and sympathizers. Controversy has surrounded his life, particularly in western Buddhist circles, because of his early involvement with the occult.His major publications consist of two volumes. The first recorded a series of talks he gave in London in 1917-1918, published just two months before he died, The Wisdom of the Aryas. The second was published posthumously, The Religion of Burma and Other Papers. Both of these are included in this volume as well as excerpts from his esoteric notebooks, essays published in the journal he established Buddhism – An Illustrated Quarterly Review, the prospectus of the international Buddhist society he founded Buddhasāsana Samāgama, and excerpts from his letters and lectures as well as other publications.

Minority religions that differ from the mainstream are often perceived as controversial and as a threat to the individual and to society. During the 1970s and 80s, there were intense discussions about whether conversion to these groups was voluntary or an effect of brainwashing or manipulation. In recent years however the situation of children in these groups has taken over the public debate regarding minority religions. Many believe that childhoods in cults involve physical and psychological abuse, and that severe punishment, starvation, sexual abuse, manipulation, forced obedience, lack of medical care and demonization of the outside world is part of everyday life. This book presents four years of research. Its purpose is to highlight children's upbringing in certain minority religions with a high degree of "sectarian" criteria in a sociological sense including high tension with society/world; unique legitimacy; high level of commitment; exclusive membership; and conversion by personal choice. The study examines mainly, but not exclusively, seven minority religious communities: The Hare Krishna movement, The Family International (formerly Children of God), The Church of Scientology, The Family Federation (formerly The Unification Church), Knutby Filadelfia (a Pentecostal group), The Exclusive Brethren, and Jehovah's Witnesses. The fieldwork was conducted in Sweden, but the situation of the children and the findings are relevant to other countries. Most of the minority groups discussed have an international character with a presence in many countries, with only minor differences depending on local circumstances. The study is based on literature from the religions and observations of children and parents in religious rituals and daily life. However, the most important material for the book are twenty in-depth interviews with children between the ages of 8 and 17 living in these groups and sixty in-depth interviews with adults who grew up in minority religions and who are still involved, who grew up in minority religions, but are not now engaged, and who raised children in the minority religions.

Neo-Firthian theories — which include Systemic Functional Linguistics and its congeners — have, unlike other functionally oriented theories, engaged minimally with linguistic typology and have made little impact on the wider discipline. This book offers a programmatic and Neo-Firthian informed typological investigation that points to potential mutual enrichments of linguistic typology and Neo-Firthian theories. On the one hand, this book identifies the inadequacies of the dominant ‘atheoretical’ approaches to linguistic typology, and shows how these can be circumvented through a firm foundation in a Neo-Firthian theoretical framework. On the other hand, it contends that Neo-Firthian approaches must take typology seriously as a criterion of theoretical adequacy, and be able to account for the full range of grammatical phenomena and their variation across languages, as well as those features that are universal. Case studies illustrate this argument through a selection of grammatical phenomena — in particular, grammatical relations, the noun phrase, complex sentence constructions, optional case marking and grammatical classification. This book will be of interest to typologists, and well as to linguistics working within Systemic Functional Linguistics and other functional theories.

The Small Faces epitomised the maxim, "Never mind the width, feel the quality." In their brief original lifespan, they released just three official albums and a dozen-and-a-half authorised non-album singles and B-sides. Yet more than five decades after the London quartet's split the phenomenal quality of that compact body of work has ensured a continuing and unassailable musical esteem bordering on legend.Gut-bucket vocalist Steve Marriott brought a bluesy grit to both compositions of gravitas and effervescent pop numbers. Bassist Ronnie Lane collaborated with him to form one of the most formidable songwriting partnerships of the era. Ian McLagan was an exhilaratingly blurred-fingered keyboardist. Kenney Jones brought up the rear with blistering drum patterns, with his rolls often used to provide an explosive fanfare to Small Faces singles. Such a talent-oozing line-up was virtually predestined to conjure excellence. 'Tin Soldier', their exquisitely sophisticated psychedelic-soul release of 1967, regularly appears in polls to decide history's greatest singles. However, the band are just as much loved for rip-roaring power-pop like 'Sha-La-La- La-Lee' and 'All or Nothing' and storming instrumental B-sides such as 'Grow Your Own' and 'Almost Grown'. Their acknowledged masterpiece is Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake (1968), an album that was not only artistically superb but boasted a second-side narrative suite that paved the way for rock operas such as the Pretty Things' SF Sorrow and the Who's Tommy. Regardless of style, quality and innovativeness, the Small Faces' music was characterised by a life-affirming joyousness. All this explains why their catalogue is endlessly recycled and why their oeuvre has been disproportionately inspirational.Long Agos and Worlds Apart covers the Small Faces' full, tumultuous story. The book draws on lengthy new interviews, including ones with Jones, Lane’s close friend Pete Townshend and original Small Faces member Jimmy Winston. It features contributions from many associates and intimates, including managers, agents, publicists, songwriters, auxiliary musicians, fan-club personnel, recording engineers, journalists, friends and wives. It also draws on numerous interviews the author conducted down the years with both Jones and McLagan, much of which material is previously unpublished. It is a revealing, impartial, exhaustive and definitive exploration of the corpus and career of a truly great band.

Ray Brown: His Life and Music is the first full-length biography of Ray Brown, one of the most outstanding practitioners of bass playing in jazz music. Brown’s career spans the most popular and creative eras of jazz, from 1940 to the dawn of the 21st century. During his early professional career, Ray Brown first toured with territory bands, and by 1946, he was hired by Dizzy Gillespie to play in his small group and big band. At this time, Brown became the first call New York bassist to accompany other bop musicians like Charlie Parker and Bud Powell. He also served as the bassist with Norman Granz’s Jazz at the Philharmonic and frequently recorded with an impressive stable of jazz musicians. In 1947 Ray Brown married legendary singer Ella Fitzgerald and soon divided his time by working as the leader of Fitzgerald’s trio while playing with Gillespie, Jazz at the Philharmonic, and as a guest accompanist.After first playing together at Carnegie Hall in 1949, Ray Brown began regularly working with Canadian piano sensation Oscar Peterson until 1965. The Peterson Trio would become one of the most lucrative acts in jazz history. After leaving Peterson, Ray Brown worked as a Los Angeles studio musician and played on numerous commercial recordings but never abandoned swing-based jazz. During these years, he also became involved as a manager, promoter, and teacher. Throughout the mid-1970s until he died in 2002, Ray Brown remained one of the most excellent practitioners of mainstream jazz during a time when some elements of the music moved far away from this style. With so many bop musicians succumbing to drugs and tragedy, Ray Brown’s longevity and professionalism are a testament to his talents, intelligence, and professionalism.

This second book in the 'Middle Way Philosophy' series develops five general principles that are distinctive to the universal Middle Way as a practical response to absolutization. These begin with the consistent acknowledgement of human uncertainty (scepticism), and follow through with openness to alternative possibilities (provisionality), the importance of judging things as a matter of degree (incrementality), the clear rejection of polarised absolute claims (agnosticism) and the cultivation of cognitive and emotional states that will help us resolve conflict (integration). These are discussed not only in theory, but with links to the wide range of established human practices that can help us to follow them. Like all of Robert M. Ellis's work, this book is highly inter-disciplinary, drawing on philosophical argument, psychological models and values that prioritize practical application.

How do people come to experience invisible beings as real social presences? And what happens when those experiences emerge in minds that are assumed to struggle with social imagination?In Autism and the Supernatural, Ingela Visuri explores the richly textured worlds of autistic young adults who describe vivid relationships with gods, spirits, ghosts, fictional characters, and unseen companions. Drawing on immersive ethnography in secular Sweden, the book follows participants who experience intimate relations, sensory experiences, and parasocial bonds that blur the boundaries between imagination, religion and everyday life.A central assumption within the cognitive science of religion is that belief in invisible agents depends on intuitive mindreading abilities - the human capacity to imagine what others are thinking and intending. Because autism is associated with differences in social cognition, scholars have suggested that autistic individuals would be less likely to form supernatural relationships. The narratives in this book challenge that assumption, as well as the idea that autistic individuals would be less imaginative, in profound ways.Visuri shows how autistic individuals may come to experience invisible others through alternative pathways rooted in sensory perception, narrative immersion, imaginative practice, and embodied experience. Rather than treating autistic religiosity as a deficit or anomaly, the book reveals how supernatural worlds can become emotionally vivid, socially meaningful, and profoundly real.Combining cognitive anthropology, psychology of religion, and neurodiversity studies, Autism and the Supernatural offers a deeply original account of how humans cultivate relationships with invisible beings - and what these invisible relationships reveal about culture, cognition, imagination, and the varieties of human experience.

The Book of Esther is a thrilling story about how Esther and Mordecai averted the plan to annihilate the Jewish people in the Persian period. Both its many textual versions and different readings in various media imply a wealthy interpretive tradition of the story. For centuries, readers have been fascinated by the narrative’s suspense and drama, its courageous and smart Jewish protagonists, and its happy ending. However, the story has also troubled generations of readers. Among other things, Haman’s genocidal plan and his Jew-hatred, the lack of references to God, and the battle scenes before the celebration of Purim in the ninth chapter have led to intensive and often contradicting discussions among interpreters.Standing on the shoulders of an amazingly rich history of interpretation, this volume gathers innovative research on core aspects of the book that challenge long-held scholarly assumptions. The articles in this volume trace the reception history from antiquity to modern times among Jewish, Christian, and Islamic circles, discussing the story of Esther in, for instance, its Hebrew and Greek versions, Targum, Babylonian Talmud, the synagogue paintings in Dura Europos, and the Lutheran reformation. In bringing together experts working with comparative material and interdisciplinary approaches to identity, belonging, gender, migration, violence, horror, fan fiction, and social media, this volume offers fresh perspectives and invites readers to reshape their understanding of the Book of Esther.

Mormonism in Five Minutes provides an accessible introduction to the origins, ideologies, and practices of Mormonism in its different forms. It comprises brief and readable essays that answer common questions that those unfamiliar with the tradition might ask, including:Is Mormonism Christian?What is the relationship of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to Mormonism?How did the Mormon scriptural canon develop?Why does the Book of Mormon quote so much the book of Isaiah?What do members of the Community of Christ believe about the Book of Mormon?Do some Mormons still practice polygamy?Did Joseph Smith base temple rituals off Masonic rites?Do Mormons believe they are saved by works?What does Mormonism teach about the environment?Why couldn’t Black people enter Latter-day Saint temples until 1978?Is Mormonism problematic for Indigenous peoples?Why do many Mormons wear special “garments”?Do women exercise priesthood authority within Mormonism?Why do some Mormons believe they will rescue the US Constitution?Because each chapter can be read in about five minutes, the book offers ideal supplementary resources for classrooms or an engaging read for those curious about the world around them.

When Billy J. Kramer's "Do You Want To Know A Secret?" by Lennon and McCartney topped the charts in 1963, he was the first singer in the world to have a number one hit with a Beatles song, apart from the Fab Four themselves. This propelled the teenage Kramer into the fast lane, and he followed it with another five top twenty singles in the next two years. In this autobiography, Billy J. Kramer (born William Ashton) tells his rags to riches story, from his working class childhood in Liverpool to the racy world of international pop music. Managed by Brian Epstein, produced by George Martin, and friend, confidante and colleague of the Beatles, Kramer gives a definitive insider's account of the birth of the Liverpool sound and also the "British Invasion" of the USA. But there are dark secrets in the Kramer story. Before he reached his twenties, he was in the grip of drugs and alcohol, and there were constant tensions between him and his backing band, the Dakotas. When the screaming stopped, he reinvented himself as a cabaret performer, and some of his best records were made in the years he was out of the limelight. With a young family, drink and pills made his domestic life, and eventually his professional life, a struggle. In this no-holds-barred account, Kramer brings to life the vibrancy of the sixties. He then reveals how he exorcised his demons and forged a new career in the United States. He assembles his current band, shows a growing mastery of songwriting, and returns to national tours of Britain and the USA, keeping the flame of the Mersey sound alive. The lifetime of experience he brings to his new songs infuses every page of this enthralling read.

Madeira, Port, Sherry: The Equinox Companion to Fortified Wines fills a niche for all those seeking to understand the fortified wine industry as a whole: its history, producers, winemaking methods, and practical aspects of enjoying these unique wines, numbered among the world's most long-lived beverages. This book constitutes an educational compendium representing organised cutting-edge knowledge on the three classic fortified wines, brought to us by the Iberian culture. The reference work enables an appreciation of the histories of madeira, port and sherry against the background of world-changing events. Extensive terminological research has distilled years of professional knowledge into a reliable compendium, taking the reader on unique educational journeys through winemaking activities, from selection of grapes to bottle ageing. The companion offers comprehensive terminological coverage, including classifications and serving temperatures, as well as the intricacies of flavour compounds, responsible for various notes identified in wine bouquets, such as those of an old blended madeira, a vintage port, or a palo cortado sherry. Guidelines on wine and food pairing have been included to ensure the companion's suitability for a wide audience of readers: from wine experts to connoisseurs, from gourmet restaurant chefs to home cooks.

Twenty years ago some biblical scholars at the University of Copenhagen were denounced as being nihilists and a threat to western civilization. What was their crime? They had exposed the fallacies of traditional historical-critical biblical scholarship, which was neither historical nor critical. Although the historical-critical interpretation of the Bible had developed over a period of more than a hundred years, it had ended up, with the help of a rationalistic paraphrase of the stories of the Old Testament, creating a society out of this world called biblical Israel. Israel was like no other society in the ancient world, and scarcely a real historic society at all. It was structured like a house of cards. Therefore, when some scholars began to question the historical content of the construction of ancient Israel, as it was usually called, the edifice broke down, first in bits and then totally. This study addresses the development of 'Minimalism' from its roots in the historical-critical paradigm and outlines an alternative theory which exposes and explains the intention behind the fallacy of using a story found in the Old Testament to simply invent the biblical concept of Israel.

This book is a unique documentary history of the religious tradition known as contemporary Paganism. It covers the period from around 1700 to 1950, with an emphasis on developments in Great Britain.Through the medium of pertinent texts accompanied by narrative and commentary, it seeks to explain and illustrate how this fascinating tradition was conceived and how it evolved over time. It takes in the various twists and turns in the story, from the first stirrings of revival in the Enlightenment years, via Romantic poets and Victorian occultists, to the Woodcraft and witchcraft movements of the twentieth century.Some of the texts that are reproduced are well-known and familiar, while others are being made widely available for the first time.The story of how Pagan religious traditions came be revived in the modern world has been told many times, but the scholarship has tended to focus disproportionately on developments in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In particular, researchers have tended to focus on the decades after 1950, when Gerald Gardner and his followers were publicizing the witch religion of Wicca and the work of Aleister Crowley underwent a rediscovery.The Pagan Revival is a valuable resource for academics and students in the fields of Pagan studies, cultural history and the history of ideas. It will also be of interest to general readers who are curious about this absorbing chapter of modern religious history.