New in the Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy Monograph Series

Compassion is a word we use frequently but rarely precisely. One reason we lack a philosophically precise understanding of compassion is that moral philosophers today give it virtually no attention. Indeed, in the predominant ethical traditions of the West (deontology, consequentialism, virtue ethics), compassion tends to be either passed over without remark or explicitly dismissed as irrelevant. And yet in the predominant ethical traditions of Asia, compassion is centrally important: All else revolves around it. This is clearly the case in Buddhist ethics, and compassion plays a similarly indispensable role in Confucian and Daoist ethics.

In Compassion and Moral Guidance, Steve Bein seeks to explain why compassion plays such a substantial role in the moral philosophies of East Asia and an insignificant one in those of Europe and the West.

Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy Monographs, No. 23
January 2013 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3641-2 / $45.00 (CLOTH)

Forrest Mims to Accept ASLI’s Choice Award for History

Atmospheric Science Librarians International (ASLI) has selected Hawai‘i’s Mauna Loa Observatory: Fifty Years of Monitoring the Atmosphere for the ASLI’s Choice 2012 Award in the History category. The book was praised for its “engaging perspective on the scientists, discoveries, and ground-breaking atmospheric measurements done at Mauna Loa Observatory.”

Author Forrest M. Mims III will attend the official presentation on Wednesday, January 9, 2013 during the American Meteorological Society annual meeting in Austin, Texas. (Mims recently wrote two articles on Dr. Robert Simpson, the founder of the Mauna Loa Observatory, who celebrated his 100th birthday last month.) ASLI’s Choice is an award for the best book of 2012 in the fields of meteorology / climatology / atmospheric sciences. Visit the ASLI website for more information on award criteria and past winners.

New Edition of Integrated Korean: Intermediate 2

This is a thoroughly revised edition of Integrated Korean: Intermediate 2, the fourth volume of the best-selling series developed collaboratively by leading classroom teachers and linguists of Korean. All series’ volumes have been developed in accordance with performance-based principles and methodology—contextualization, learner-centeredness, use of authentic materials, usage-orientedness, balance between skill getting and skill using, and integration of speaking, listening, reading, writing, and culture. Grammar points are systematically introduced in simple but adequate explanations and abundant examples and exercises.

Audio files for this volume may be downloaded in MP3 format at http://www.kleartextbook.com.

KLEAR Textbooks in Korean Language
December 2012 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3813-3 / $35.00 (PAPER)
Published with the support of the Korea Foundation

Four Plays from the Bunraku Puppet Theater

The plays presented in The Bunraku Puppet Theatre of Japan: Honor, Vengeance, and Love in Four Plays of the 18th and 19th Centuries, translated and annotated by Stanleigh H. Jones, were first performed between 1769 and 1832, a time when the Japanese puppet theatre known as Bunraku was beginning to lose its pre-eminence to Kabuki. During this period, however, several important puppet plays were created that went on to become standards in both the Bunraku and Kabuki repertoires; three of the plays in this volume achieved this level of importance. This span of some sixty-odd years was also a formative one in the development of how plays were presented, an important feature in the modern staging of works from the traditional plebeian theatre. Only a handful of complete and uncut plays—often as much as ten hours long—are produced in Bunraku or Kabuki nowadays; included here is one of these. Two among the four plays contained in this volume are examples of the much more common practice of staging a single popular act or scene from a much longer drama that itself is seldom, if ever, performed in its entirety today.

Newly translated and illustrated for the general reader and the specialist, the plays are accompanied by informative introductions, extensive notes on stage action, and discussions of the various changes that Bunraku underwent, particularly in the latter half of the eighteenth century, its golden age.

December 2012 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3680-1 / $29.00 (PAPER)

New Edition of a Classic Cookbook

Mary Sia’s Chinese Cookbook has been a classic of Chinese cookery since it was first published in 1956. This fourth edition features all 300 of the original recipes, ranging from simple, everyday fare to more elaborate dishes for entertaining, as well as essays by Mary Sia. An all-new food glossary provides up-to-date names for ingredients along with advice on appropriate substitutions and sources for 21st-century cooks. The work also includes an introduction by Rachel Laudan, renowned food historian and author of The Food of Paradise: Exploring Hawai‘i’s Culinary Heritage.

December 2012 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3738-9 / $16.99 (PAPER)

Cambodian Monks under Pol Pot

Buddhism in a Dark Age: Cambodian Monks under Pol Pot, by Ian Harris, a pioneering study of the fate of Buddhism during the communist period in Cambodia, puts a human face on a dark period in Cambodia’s history. It is the first sustained analysis of the widely held assumption that the Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot had a centralized plan to liquidate the entire monastic order. Based on a thorough analysis of interview transcripts and a large body of contemporary manuscript material, it offers a nuanced view that attempts to move beyond the horrific monastic death toll and fully evaluate the damage to the Buddhist sangha under Democratic Kampuchea.

December 2012 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3561-3 / $22.00 (PAPER)