Plato's ghost

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Hugh C. Adamson and Philip Hainsworth

Growing out of the teachings of the Báb, who introduced the idea of the coming of a great prophet (the one promised in the scriptures of all the world's major religions), the Bahá'í Faith was founded by Bahá'u'lláh, when in 1866 he publicly declared that he was the One the Báb prophesized. The 2nd edition of the Historical Dictionary of the Bahá'í Faith presents a general historical overview of both Bábí and Bahá'í religions, as well as a theological overview of the Bahá'í Faith, from their inception in the mid 19th century to the middle of 2005. It presents biographical details of the Founders and Central Figures along with numerous leaders and pioneers, most of the basic principles and precepts, as well as aspects of its organization and administration. Through the use of photographs, a list of acronyms, a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, hundreds of cross-referenced dictionary entries on nearly every aspect of the religion, and appendixes listing the genealogy of the Founders, statistical information, and lists of apostles, disciples, Hands of the Cause, Knights of Bahá'u'lláh as well as of more than 930 believers who have contributed to its growth and development, this book is a fundamental tool for finding information on all things related to the Bahá'í Faith.

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St. Augustine

This work was written by St. Augustine late in his life with the intention of supplying a well-educated Roman layman with a brief but comprehensive exposition of the essential teachings of Christianity. It contains many of his most profound and mature definitions of his thoughts on sin, grace and predestination, and is regarded as an indispensable guide to Augustinian Christianity.

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Sandra McColl

Music Criticism in Vienna 1896-1897 records a culture in which music criticism had achieved the status of a minor art-form. The period covered - October 1896 to December 1897 - was an eventful time in Vienna. Bruckner died, then Brahms; Mahler arrived; premieres of works by Czech composers coincided with increasing tension in the Empire between Czechs and Germans; Puccini's La Boheme reached Vienna on its sensational progress around the world; and the great programme music debate continued. These events and issues were recorded and debated by some two dozen critics ranging from Eduard Hanslick, widely credited with (and blamed for) raising music criticism to an art, to Heinrich Schenker. The focus of Sandra McColl's book is unashamedly on the critics themselves, and her reconstruction of the climate of debate about whatever music or musicians came to their notice. She illuminates the intellectual climate in which the music was created, performed, and received, and provides a foundation for the study of music criticism in the post-Hanslick generation.

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Elizabeth Rottenberg

This is an exploration of the notion of 'drive' as it passes from Kant's need of reason, to Freud's concept of hallucinatory wish fulfillment, to the relentless force of indifferentiation in Flaubert's 'Bouvard and Pécuchet'.