As one who wishes to know more about the "nuts and bolts" of jazz, I always insist on reveling in the research conducted by these, the finest jazz authorities on the planet. Unlike the contributions of Ken Burns and others of his genre, this is the real stuff written by the real guys. Very Highly Recomended!!

Adamec, Ludwig
1996Dictionary of Afghan Wars, Revolutions, and Insurgencies. Lanham, Md.: The Scarecrow Press Inc. Pp. xvii, 364; illustrations, maps, war figures, table of chronology. ISBN # 0-8108-3232-1

Adamec has complied a fairly concise and to-the-point dictionary covering the affairs of Afghanistan from 1501 until around April of 1994. The book begins with a sweeping twenty-seven-page introduction to the "martial" history of Afghanistan. The introduction begins briefly with the rule of the Savids, but quickly moves on to a more in-depth history of Ahmad Kahn in the mid 1700's. In the introduction, Adamec covers a broad history of Afghanistan very effectively, and ends the introduction with Afghanistan being in a state of civil war. The introduction provides each period of Afghani history with a reference point in the dictionary itself. "In the introduction and dictionary there is also useful background material on how the war got started, and why, and how they were concluded" (p. ix). It is in the dictionary where Adamec goes into more in-depth information pertaining to certain Afghani events, rulers, weapons, and wars.
The dictionary provides fairly comprehensive information on all subjects discussed in it. This section also does a wonderful job of providing pictures, maps, and statistics on the subject matter discussed in their respective sections. The dictionary provides over two hundred entries, the most comprehensive ones dealing with Afghan foreign affairs and the Anglo-Afghan wars. "There are entries on the wars and campaigns, on the generals and sometimes diplomats, on tactics and logistics, and on weapons" (p. ix).
The last two sections of the book deal with chronology of events in Afghanistan and an extensive bibliography that can provide readers with additional books covering subject matter that they may be interested in. The chronology section begins in 1747 Ahmad Shah being crowned king, and ends in 1996 with Hekmatayar's anti-Taliban treaty with Rabbani. This section provides a great deal of information in a broad sweeping manner. The bibliography contains over 150 sources that one can use to research other topics on Afghani history. Overall, the dictionary does a tremendous job in providing a quick, and handy reference guide to anyone that has questions concerning Afghanistan. It makes accessing particular aspects of Afghani history extremely easy and informative.
Bryon Wait

I read this book shortly after the publication in 1997 and now again in June 2000. It is surprising how accurate Jon Woronoff's predictions of the ongoing societal and economic crises of Japan have been. The book was written before the consumption tax hike and the unfolding banking crises, and yet it catches the sentiments of present day Japan. I hope that Jon Woronoff will soon update his book with the latest twists of political disarray, runaway construction projects paving the country side, and the declining competitiveness of key sectors in the economy.

Jon Woronoff, in his book The Japanese Social crisis, sumarizes what is happening now with the Japanese society. He writes an antithesis of one book from Ezra Vogel and Richard Lynn's "The Japanese education system". PResents a great outlook about family relationships, education, job, tatemae and an anthropological view of the society.

It is amazing to look back over the last decade: from a much-lauded position of being ready to take over the world, Japan is now seen as a beleaguered backwater in a perpetual crisis of weakness and poor management. But for anyone who lived in Japan, it is hardly surprising. There was so much ridiculous hype about Japanese management, science and technology policies and the like by ignorent academics and credulous reporters that it made foreign residents sick with boredom. Having been steeped in that laudatory literature as a student, I went to live in Japan to learn more, only to find that that Japan simply didn't exist. For a while, I, like Woronoff before me, made my living debunking that hype.

Woronoff wrote this book as a corrective to the hype and mediocrity of such thinkers as Ezra Vogel, the title of whose book Woronoff mocks. It is excessively combative and personally bitter, as he felt that he was being ignored, but so much that he says resonates with truth. When he wrote it, not many readers wanted to hear it. Unfortunately, he presses his point so hard and so far that he nearly self destructs in the end, as even a sympathetic reader such as myself got tired of the tone.

Nonetheless, I got a great deal out of Woronoff, for there were things that he understood long before others did. For that, I must thank him.

This book is the antithesis to Ezra Vogel's _Japan As Number One_ (1979) and pays more attention to the shortcomings of the Japanese socio-economic system. Woronoff rates various policies with superior grades, above average grade, below average grades, and inferior grades. He also debunks a lot of the glowing praise from the western ivory-tower "Japan experts" by closely examining the consequences of some government policies and strategies. A definately powerful book.

When I was an undergradute, my professor for histoiography often said, always "check your sources." Anyone using HISTORICAL DICTIONARY OF THE SHAKERS will need to do this extensively. Indeed, there is hardly a page of information that does not have a mistake or misinterpretation. As one of the Shakers said of the work, "The errors are outstanding, glaring, and more numerous than any fact."

Actually, this type of reference work has long been needed to supercede and supplement two excellent reference works: INTRODUCING THE SHAKERS by Diana Van Kolken and SHAKER HERITAGE GUIDEBOOK by Stuart Murray. Unfortunately, however good the intentions might have been which inspired the writing of HISTORICAL DICTIONARY OF THE SHAKERS, the outcome was dismal at best.

For example, any serious student of Shakerism must ask why so many question marks are used in place of the birth and death dates for the majority of the Shakers listed, especially famous ones like Emma Neal. This information has been available since 1915 from the Western Reserve Historical Society. Most good university libraries have copies of the microfilm of this Shaker collecion and an index of names is included. In addition, Magda Gabor-Hotchkiss, former assistant librarian at Hancock Shaker Village, when revising THE SHAKER IMAGE in 1993, took great care to provide extensive biographical sketches of all the most prominent Shakers from 1860-1920, including dates. This revision of THE SHAKER IMAGE can be found in Shaker libraies. As for the birth dates of present day Shakers, thousands of brochures were produced in conjunction with the exhibition, "The Quiet in the Land," in 1996 and these have been distributed throughout the Shaker library and museum world as well as at opening of this exhibit in major cities.

Such omissions cause the thoughtful reader to wonder just how familiar the author is with Shaker research. It would appear that a superficial knowledge of Shakerism gained from secondary sources has been sed to ake inferences. The "facts" thus presented are quite the contrary. For instance, the term "Lead Ministry" is used constantly, but this was never used by the Shakers. Lead for the Shakers was a noun not an adjective. The Shakers spoke of their "Lead" or Ministry, but never put the words together. This often appears in works about the Shakers, but not by the Shakers. Seemingly this has caused the author to make up a new phrase "Lead Elder" and this is his unique contribution to Shaker vocabulary. A similar fault can be found with the population figures he cites. In the past 20 years various scholars in COMMUNAL STUDIES and other highly esteemed publication, have carefully shown that the Shakers never exceed 4000 in membership. This revision seems to be ignored and population figures given in older, secondary sources are used. The same can be said for the author's inclusion of some of the Millennial Laws of 1845. When Edward D. Andrews did this at the conclusion of THE PEOPLE CALLED SHAKERS (1953) it became so trendy to use these laws, that it was 20 years before scholars realized that these 1845 laws had little force and were largely ignored outside of the Taconic-Berkshire Shaker communities, and that the laws were almost totally revised in 1860, taking out the extreme measures. Well, it appears that once again we have the 1845 laws at the end of a book. It is hoped that contemporary users will realize what a very limited scope these laws had and how they certainly did not in any way govern most Shakers, then or now.

Perhaps the most serious fault of the book, however, is his treatment of present day Shakers. The author states that the "Lead Ministry" closed membership in 1965 (though at least once he says it was 1957). It would be interesting to read the source of this information because such a thing did not ever happen, though the author constantly mentions it as a fact. As Shaker Brother Arnold Hadd pointed out in the 1996 edition of the SHAKER QUARTERLY, the covenant cannot be closed because, first of all there is not just one covenant, but one for each individual family in Shakerism. The Ministry does not have the authority to close a covenant for a Shaker family without that family's consent. In spite of this, the so-called closure of the covenant in 1965, has been one of the most widely reported rumors in the Shaker world. Rumors, however, should not be reported as facts. The author then goes on to say that the newer members at Sabbathday Lake have therefore not signed the covenant. This is not true. All members at Sabbathday Lake who have been there more than 5 years have signed and this is well-known.

Many more pages could be filled, pointing out scores of misinterpretations, the reliance on questionable secondary sources, misspellings, etc. but it is sufficient to say that the reader must exercise extreme caution using this work. This is terribly ironic because the author, himself, states on page 138 that the usefulness of SHAKERISM: ITS MEANING AND MESSAGE (1905), a history written by two Shakers, "suffers from its lack of proper documentation." No truer words can be applied to the HISTORICAL DICTIONARY OF THE SHAKERS. Perhaps in the future, a usable, reliable, and factual guide will be produced that will provide researchers with information in a dictionary format on the Shakers. It is disappointing that this has yet to be done.

Stephen Paterwic, East Longmeadow, MA