Jews of Russia look different from Jews of Germany. Jews from Spain are not the same to look at as the Jews from Yemen. What did the Jews of Khazaria look like? The kingdom of Khazaria disappeared but not before the Khazaria diaspora had spread far and wide in Europe. One might not be aware that a significant portion of Ukranian Jews and a substantial chunk of the Jews of, say, Russia, Lithuanian or Hungary cane trace their roots a Turkic tribe which converted to Judaism.

The Jews of Khazaria narrates the fascinating and remarkable history of the Turkic kingdom of Khazaria, which was located somewhere between present-day Hungary to its east and Perisa to its west. Originally a small nomadic tribe, the Khazaria kingdom grew in stature and flourished as a powerful and influential independent state from the 7th to 11th centuries. It was in the ninth century that the Khazarian royalty and nobility as well as a significant portion of the Khazarian population embraced the Jewish religion.

As a major world power, Khazaria enjoyed diplomatic and trade relations with many peoples and nations (including the Byzantines, Alans, Magyars, and Slavs) and changed the course of medieval history in many ways. After their conversion, the Khazars were ruled by a succession of Jewish kings and began to adopt the hallmarks of Jewish civilisation, including the Torah and Talmud, the Hebrew script, and the observance of Jewish holidays. There was, however, a portion of the empire's population which adopted Christianity and Islam.

Kevin Brook traces the development of the fierce Khazars from their early beginnings as a tribe to the decline and fall of their kingdom, and tries to unravel a number of mysteries and myths surrounding the Khazars. He examines the many migrations of the Khazar people into Hungary, Lithuania, Romania, Ukraine, and other areas of Europe and feels it is plausible that Khazar Jews intermarried with "local" or "genuine" jews, most notably in Lithuania as well as in Poland. In this comprehensive treatment of such a complex subject, Brook also enumerates the Jewish communities of eastern Europe which sprung up after the fall of Khazaria and proposes that the Jews from the former Russian Empire are descended from a mixture of Khazar Jews, German Jews, Greek Jews, and Slavs.

The Jews of Khazaria draws upon the latest archival, ethnological, linguistic, and archaeological discoveries. Ashkenazic Jews who wish to explore their distant ancestry in eastern Europe will greatly benefit from reading this book. Additionally, Hungarians, Slavs, Turks, Arabs, and Ossetians will find a wealth of information concerning the historical interactions between their peoples and the Khazars. Students of history who desire a thorough yet easy-to-read account of the Khazar kingdom will gain in their understanding of this important but previously obscure topic.

The book also includes a map of the Khazar kingdom and a map of Khazarian-ruled Crimea; several tables illustrating royal genealogies, king lists, and the Turkic language family; a glossary of Khazarian words and other important terms which may be unfamiliar to readers; and an extensive bibliography of articles, books, and other essays.

Everest: terror and love
No veil is upon you, no cloud
Doubts the huge hump, mighty monument set on earth
Harp on the wind, snow-song and avalanche tears
And tinier tale of men. But men are so proud
Their mole-story is hill-high.
( Wilfrid Noyce, 1954)

The Kathmandu-based Integrated Centre for Mountain Development (ICIMOD) has been working primarily in the Himalayas-Hindu Kush region. But Asia has much more than only the Hindu Kush-Himalayas. It was with this in mind that the centre established the Asia Pacific Mountain Network (APMN) in 1995 with the help of the Swiss Development Cooperation. The APMN has developed as the Asia Pacific regional node for the Mountain Forum, a global network of institutions and individuals committed to promoting sustainable mountain development. This inventory compiled by Harka Gurung, a former director of the Asia and Pacific Development Centre is a product of these endeavours.

Arab geographers of the Middle Ages, in their own way, had described Eurasia as a desirable woman clothed in nothing but a long chain girdle around her waist. "This girdle was of mountains studded with snowy peaks that stretched from the Pyrenees through the Alps, Balkans, Caucasus, and Elburz to the limits of the known world in the Hindu Kush and Himalayas." Most of these mountain ranges are in the Asian part of the Eurasian landmass. Mountain-hearted Asia comprises the largest mass of highlands in the world. According to a list compiled by the National Geographic Society on 121 peaks exceeding 6,100 metres, the first 66 positions and exceeding 7,000 metres in height are all in Asia.

Yet precious little is known about these ranges and plateaux, proportionately speaking, of course. Gurung's compilation does provide an overview and insight into the principal mountain ranges "as dynamic entities in themselves". As his results indicate researching mountains can be as daunting mountaineering. If someone from the ICIMOD has to surf the Internet for information apart from delving into the centre's own resources and contacts, it is not difficult to conclude that a lot remains to be known about the mountains of Asia if the Hindu Kush-Himalayas are kept aside.

The book, even though it does not even cross the 100-page mark, offers little scope for complaints: it is a good starting point and it does not make claims taller than the Himalayas. It is, as the preface says, a "monograph" which has "attempted to produce a mere prolegomena towards providing an overview of the regional setting along with physical, cultural, and economic aspects". Gurung's survey of 110 mountain/hill ranges spread over 37 countries are classified into six regions: South Asia, West Asia, Central Asia, Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia and Australasia.

Perhaps the ICIMOD and APMN should start preparing for an even exhaustive book on the subject because any reader going through the monograph is bound to, like Oliver, ask for more. Not without reason, though -- the book has so much of nuggets of information thrown in for good measure, leave aside the inventory in itself. The thematic overview of the physical environment and cultural diversity thankfully is the last of the eight chapters. Both the bibliography and the glossary are fine, but what is not is the inclusion of only China in the appendix on mountain areas and minority peoples. Asia is much more than that.

A magisterial, colourful narrative illuminating the central tragedy of the nineteenth century: that God (or man's faith in him) died, but the need to worship remained as a torment to those who thought they had buried Him. By the end of the nineteenth century, almost all the great writers, artists, and intellectuals had abandoned Christianity, and many abandoned belief in God altogether. This was partly the result of scientific discovery, particularly the work of Charles Darwin in The Origin of Species. (No reader here will soon forget the venomous Oxford debate between Thomas Huxley, brilliant defender of Darwin, and Bishop Wilberforce in 1860.) But as Wilson demonstrates in such fascinatingly diverse lives as those of Gibbon, Kant, Marx, Carlyle, George Eliot, and Sigmund Freud, the doubt about religion had many sources. By 1900, the Church of England, so vastly rich, so politically and socially powerful, could be pronounced spiritually empty, however full its pews might be on a Sunday. Echoes of the "Death of God" could be found practically everywhere: in the revolutionary politics of Garibaldi and Lenin; in the poetry of Tennyson and the novels of Hardy; in the work of Freud, connecting this "death" to our deepest wishes; and in the decline of hierarchical (male) authority and the first stirrings of feminism. Wilson's exquisitely detailed argument reveals the growth of a new imaginative order of unbelief that supplanted organised religion, and left in its wake a devastating sense of loss extending to our own times.

What Amazon.com said:
God's Funeral is A.N. Wilson's account of the decline of orthodox Christianity in Victorian Britain. The most popular explanation for this widely-recognised phenomenon is the acceptance by intellectuals of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. Wilson describes a host of secularising predecessors and accomplices such as Hume, Gibbon, John Stuart Mill, Hegel, Marx, and Carlyle. All play major roles in Wilson's brilliantly staged reconstruction of the so-called death of God. God's Funeral also takes account of the pain and confusion these intellectuals brought upon themselves when their great achievements helped erode the social and intellectual foundations of their lives. Furthermore, Wilson shows how their crises of faith relate to our own. Like our Victorian forebears, contemporary readers still must ask, "Is our personal religion that which links us to the ultimate reality, or is it the final human fantasy...?" and, "Is there a world of value outside ourselves, or do we, collectively and individually, invent what we call The Good?" God's Funeral helps readers learn to ask these questions in smarter and sharper ways by giving them a clearer sense of how Western society reached its current state of confusion. © Amazon.com

In an effort to determine why people buy, Paco Underhill and his detailed-oriented band of retail researchers have camped out in stores over the course of 20 years, dedicating their lives to the "science of shopping." Armed with an array of video equipment, store maps, and customer-profile sheets, Underhill and his consulting firm, Envirosell, have observed over 900 aspects of interaction between shopper and store. They've discovered that men who take jeans into fitting rooms are more likely to buy than females (65 percent vs. 25 percent). They've learned how the "butt-brush factor" (bumped from behind, shoppers become irritated and move elsewhere) makes women avoid narrow aisles. They've quantified the importance of shopping baskets; contact between employees and shoppers; the "transition zone" (the area just inside the store's entrance); and "circulation patterns" (how shoppers move throughout a store). And they've explored the relationship between a customer's amenability and profitability, learning how good stores capitalise on a shopper's unspoken inclinations and desires. Underhill, whose clients include McDonald's, Starbucks, Estée Lauder, and Blockbuster, stocks Why We Buy with a wealth of retail insights, showing how men are beginning to shop like women, and how women have changed the way supermarkets are laid out. He also looks to the future, projecting massive retail opportunities with an ageing baby-boom population and predicting how online retailing will affect shopping malls. This lighthearted look at shopping is highly recommended to anyone who buys or sells. © Amazon.com


What The New York Times said:
The author, Paco Underhill, is a former urban geographer who has made it his business to lurk in supermarkets and bookshops and department stores to observe "shoppers in situ." His idea of a good time is to stalk the cereal aisle or the produce section and count the number of men (not very many) who check the price of an item before tossing it into the grocery cart. Teams of "trackers" from his consulting firm catch consumers in the act of looking, touching, sniffing, weighing, comparing, trying on, buying. Armed with this information, Underhill advises businesses on how to increase sales. Put the Cap'n Crunch down where kids can reach it, he might suggest. Or get rid of that dumb display and put in another cash register. That sort of thing. In Why We Buy, he distills 20 years of studying "how people interact with the retail environment." The picture he paints is not a pretty one. As consumers, we're led to believe that manufacturers, marketers, advertisers and retailers worship at our feet. But in the trenches, where the real shopping takes place, we're treated like dirt. Underhill has the proof, and on videotape. He reminds us just how much discomfort consumers have come to accept. In too many stores, products are hard to locate, badly labelled, difficult to examine and tedious to pay for. Shopping baskets are stacked where no one notices them. Goods are shelved out of reach, or hidden behind irrelevant cardboard displays. Forget about mirrors. Dressing rooms are grungy and badly lighted. Children's clothing sizes are impossible to figure out. Ladies' rooms are half the size they should be. Signs are unreadable or out of date. Drive-through fast-food joints put menu boards where only Car No. 1 can see them. And have you shopped for a mattress lately? © The New York Times Company