Reviews -- Commentary on contemporary books and artistic endeavors

Review: How Bahá'ís helped bring modern education to Iran

The role of the Bahá'í Faith in the modernization of Iran remains a history largely waiting to be written, according to the author of a new scholarly work about Bahá'í schools that once existed and flourished throughout the country. (December 2009-March 2010)

Review: Stories from the front lines in the most underreported conflict of the century

Early in their latest book, journalists Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn offer this startling fact: a straightforward calculation of male-to-female ratios shows that at least 60 million women and girls are "missing" from global population figures. (July-November 2009)

Review: A New Voyage of Discovery

The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century
By Thomas L. Friedman
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
New York

To come right to the main point of this review: Thomas Friedman's brilliant catch phase, book title and powerfully developed new thesis — "The World is Flat" — is yet another reaffirmation of what Bahá'u'lláh said about 150 years ago when He declared that “The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens.”

Review: A view from the South

Ciência, Religião e Desenvolvimento: Perspectivas Para o Brasil
Edited by Iradj Roberto Eghrari
Editora Planeta Paz
Brasília, Brazil

Perspectivas Para o Brasil contributes greatly to the overall discourse on how these new viewpoints — spiritual and southern — can be integrated into a new development paradigm.

Review: A mirror to our own time

Restless Souls: The Making of American Spirituality
By Leigh Eric Schmidt
Harper Collins
New York

Although it focuses on the American fascination with mysticism and churchless spirituality in 19 th century, many readers of Leigh Eric Schmidt's new book will undoubtedly see parallels to trends and events in our own time, and on a global level.

Some “impolite” conversation about racism

The Last War: Racism, Spirituality, and the Future of Civilization
By M. L. Perry
George Ronald
Oxford

In the minds of some, racism may seem a bygone issue. But then along comes a book like Mark L. Perry's The Last War: Racism, Spirituality and the Future of Civilization with a powerful challenge to any such complacency.

Clinical economics for the global emergency room

The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time
By Jeffrey D. Sachs
The Penguin Press
New York

In his bold and thoroughly engaging new book, Jeffrey Sachs lays out a broad plan — which was devised in part with the help of some 260 other economists and development experts under the aegis of the UN Millennium Project — that he believes could end extreme poverty in 20 years.

Review: How everyone can win

Beyond the Culture of Contest: From Adversarialism to Mutualism in an Age of Interdependence
By Michael Karlberg
George Ronald
Oxford

The adversarial system has distinct flaws. There is always a “winner” and a “loser.” Somewhere along the line, compromises are usually made, which may not be in the best interests of the whole. And there is always the possibility — and an increasing one as corruption of various forms creeps into the system — that money or power will win out instead of truth or justice.

Review: Good intentions, complex realities

Building Sustainable Peace
Edited by Tom Keating and W. Andy Knight
United Nations University Press
Tokyo / New York / Paris

When the Cold War effectively ended some 15 years ago, there was great hope that the world would soon move into a new era of peace and prosperity. But the post-Cold War era "has proven to be the world’s most violent period since World War II," and this book of essays addresses how that might be rectified.

Review: Religious history through the lens of Iran

Spirituality in the Land of the Noble: How Iran Shaped the World's Religions
By Richard C. Foltz
Oneworld
Oxford

Richard C. Foltz keeps the focus tight by using the lens of geography to examine the history of world religions, tracing the currents and cross-currents of religious history in Iran, which has "played an unexcelled role in influencing, transforming, and propagating all the world's universal traditions."

Review: Nationalism as a figment of our imagination

Postnationalism Prefigured: Caribbean Borderlands By Charles V. Carnegie
Rutgers University Press
New Brunswick , NJ , and London
In the opening chapter of his new book, Charles V. Carnegie describes in vivid detail a morning swim on a beach in his native Jamaica — the warm water, the cloudless sky, and string of bright buoys. But what made the morning so memorable was not the delightful exercise; it was the disturbing comments he overheard from beach attendants after the swim.

Review: A case study on religion and human rights

Human Rights, the UN and the Bahá'ís in Iran -- by Nazila Ghanea -- The coming of the new millennium has also brought a surprising upsurge in religious feeling around the world. Secularism, once thought to be the rising tide of modernism, seems to have been only a cresting wave. One side effect of the surge in religiosity has been an accompanying magnification of religious intolerance and even violence.

Review: Is there a roadmap to critical consciousness?

Critical Consciousness: A Study of Morality in Global, Historical Context -- By Elena Mustakova-Possardt -- Coined by Brazilian educator Paulo Freire in the 1960s, the term "critical consciousness" was at first applied mainly in the field of adult education. Translated from the Portuguese word conscientizadora, critical consciousness was defined by Dr. Freire as a state of in-depth understanding about the world and resulting freedom from oppression.

Review: A new approach to violence against women

Overcoming Violence against Women and Girls: The International Campaign to Eradicate a Worldwide Problem -- By Michael L. Penn and Rahel Nardos -- Why is it that although women compose half the world's population and put in nearly two-thirds of the world's work hours, they receive just one-tenth of the world's income and own less than one-hundredth of the world's property?

Review: Computers, logic, and a "middle way"

Minimalism: A Bridge between Classical Philosophy and the Bahá'í Revelation -- By William S. Hatcher -- While the application of the modern scientific method has reaped great rewards in terms of technological progress, its employment in the realm of philosophy has in many ways been a great disappointment.

An appeal to logic on national sovereignty

One World: The Ethics of Globalization -- By Peter Singer -- In academic circles, Peter Singer is considered one of the top experts on bioethics. His books on the ethics of the treatment of animals, for example, are best sellers in the scholarly world. In his latest book, Prof. Singer turns his attention to the ethical questions surrounding state sovereignty in an increasingly interdependent world.

Review: Finding the locus between faith and ecology

A Sacred Trust: Ecology & Spiritual Vision, edited by David Cadman and John Carey -- Thoughtful people have always understood the connection between nature and spirituality. But in terms of an explicit connection between organized religion and the conservation movement, an important milestone came in 1987, when the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) invited global religions to participate in an interfaith event at Assisi, Italy, to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Fund.

Review: Balancing human rights and state sovereignty in a multicultural world

Rethinking Humanitarian Intervention, by Brian D. Lepard -- One of the thorniest issues faced by the United Nations in recent years has been how to balance state sovereignty with human rights. At the core: when does the world have the right to tell a government how to treat its people?

Review: What is the real value of that weed at your feet?

The Future of Life, by Edward O. Wilson -- Although he is known primarily as a biologist, Edward O. Wilson spends a lot of his time in his latest book about the importance of protecting the diversity of life on earth talking like an economist.

Review: Reinterpreting religion without reference to gender

A Woman's Place: Religious Women as Public Actors, edited by Azza Karam --There is a famous Chinese saying that women hold up half of the sky. But such has not always been acknowledged by the leadership of most religions, which have traditionally been dominated by men. A new book published by the World Conference on Religion and Peace (WCRP) seeks to in some ways to address this imbalance, by showcasing the contributions of women of faith in the public arena.

New insights from a sweeping analysis of religion

The Phenomenon of Religion: A Thematic Approach
By Moojan Momen
oneworld
Oxford

In some 500 pages (626 pages with notes and index), Moojan Momen has undertaken a sweeping survey of religious phenomena and experience across the globe and throughout history. (July-September 2001 /OC 13.2)

Review: Can religion cure "inhumane global governance?"

Toward a Global Civilization? The Contribution of Religions -- Edited by Patricia M. Mische and Melissa Merkling -- As Richard Falk points out in a recent essay, religion has generally been excluded from the serious study and practice of governance over the last several hundred years, and especially in recent attempts to forge some sort of new world order. (April-June 2001 /OC 13.1)

A complex vision that transcends all categories

Logos and Civilization: Spirit, History, and Order in the Writings of Bahá'u'lláh, by Nader Saiedi, University of Maryland Press, Bethesda, MD, USA -- As humanity's interdependence has increasingly manifested itself, scholars of various disciplines have begun to examine more thoroughly the writings of Bahá'u'lláh, whose vision of human oneness and call for a new world order are without doubt one of the earliest expressions of peaceful and universal globalism. (OC12.4/January-March 2001)

Toward a new development paradigm

The Lab, the Temple and the Market: Reflections at the Intersection of Science, Religion, and Development -- For years, many of the world's top "experts" on social and economic development discounted the role of religion in the fight against poverty and social injustice - or, worse, considered the religious beliefs of the people they intended to help as antithetical to progress.

Community - more than the sum of its parts

Creating a New Mind: Reflections on the Individual, the Institutions and the Community

By Paul Lample
Palabra Publications
Riviera Beach, Florida, USA

The idea that we can transform the outer world by first changing our inner consciousness is a recurrent theme in many of the world's religious and spiritual traditions.