Until now, no single work has been devoted to both a scholarly understanding of the complexities of the Daoist tradition and a critical exploration of its contribution to recent environmental concerns. The authors in this volume consider the intersection of Daoism and ecology, looking at the theoretical and historical implications associated with a Daoist approach to the environment. They also analyze perspectives found in Daoist religious texts and within the larger Chinese cultural context in order to delineate key issues found in the classical texts. Through these analyses, they assess the applicability of modern-day Daoist thought and practice in China and the West, with respect to the contemporary ecological situation.

On June 12, 1962, sixty young student activists drafted a manifesto for their generation—The Port Huron Statement—that ignited a decade of dissent. Democracy Is in the Streets is the definitive history of the major people and ideas that shaped the New Left in America during that turbulent decade. Because the 1960s generation is now moving into positions of power in politics, education, the media, and business, their early history is crucial to our understanding. James Miller, in his new Preface, puts the 1960s and them into a context for our time, claiming that something of value did happen: “Most of the large questions raised by that moment of chaotic openness—political questions about the limits of freedom, and cultural questions, too, about the authority of the past and the anarchy of the new—are with us still.”

Set along the Sahara’s edge, Sijilmasa was an African El Dorado, a legendary city of gold. But unlike El Dorado, Sijilmasa was a real city, the pivot in the gold trade between ancient Ghana and the Mediterranean world. Following its emergence as an independent city-state controlling a monopoly on gold during its first 250 years, Sijilmasa was incorporated into empire—Almoravid, Almohad, and onward—leading to the “last civilized place” becoming the cradle of today’s Moroccan dynasty, the Alaouites. Sijilmasa’s millennium of greatness ebbed with periods of war, renewal, and abandonment. Today, its ruins lie adjacent to and under the modern town of Rissani, bypassed by time.

The Moroccan-American Project at Sijilmasa draws on archaeology, historical texts, field reconnaissance, oral tradition, and legend to weave the story of how this fabled city mastered its fate. The authors’ deep local knowledge and interpretation of the written and ecological record allow them to describe how people and place molded four distinct periods in the city’s history. Messier and Miller compare models of Islamic cities to what they found on the ground to understand how Sijilmasa functioned as a city. Continuities and discontinuities between Sijilmasa and the contemporary landscape sharpen questions regarding the nature of human life on the rim of the desert. What, they ask, allows places like Sijilmasa to rise to greatness? What causes them to fall away and disappear into the desert sands?

This volume contains selected papers from a December 2006 Dumbarton Oaks symposium that complemented an exhibition of early Bible manuscripts at the Freer Gallery and Sackler Gallery of Art titled "In the Beginning: Bibles before the Year 1000." Speakers were invited to examine the use of the Greek Old Testament as a text, social practice, and cultural experience in the Byzantine Empire. Not only are reminiscences of the Old Testament ubiquitous in Byzantine literature and art, but the Byzantine people also revered and identified with Old Testament role models. The Old Testament connected Byzantium not only with its Christian neighbors but with Jewish and Muslim peoples as well. This widespread phenomenon has never received systematic investigation. The Old Testament in Byzantium considers the manifestations of the holy books in Byzantine manuscript illustration, architecture, and government, as well as in Jewish Bible translations and the construction of Muhammad's character.

Based on extensive new research and a bold interpretation of the man and his texts, The Passion of Michel Foucault is a startling look at one of this century's most influential philosophers. It chronicles every stage of Foucault's personal and professional odyssey, from his early interest in dreams to his final preoccupation with sexuality and the nature of personal identity.