2013 Oxford University Press Spring Sale

Oxford University Press is having its 2013 Spring Sale through July 11– and has an absolutely terrible website presentation of it.

I’ve received two sets through this sale – both at 65% off and I am delighted with both of them (reviews to follow in due course):

• Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary [Edited by Christian Kay, Jane Roberts, Michael Samuels, and Irené Wotherspoon] (sale price $173, regular price $495)
• The History of Western Philosophy of Religion [Edited by Graham Oppy and Nick Trakakis] (sale price $145, regular price $415)

Today I placed an order for 18 individual volumes – more on that in a future post.  (But, as readers of this blog might suspect, I did not hesitate at the chance to pick up Aristotle as Poet:  Song for Hermias and Its Contexts [Andrew L. Ford, hardcover, sale price $23].)

I usually hate thesauruses (they are far too imprecise to be useful, and seem to lead readers into making serious mistakes), but I love the Historical Thesaurus.  It really should be on the desk of every translator.  The first volume is thematically organized with synonymous words (the Historical Thesaurus takes a much stricter view of what a synonym is than a typical thesaurus) grouped; and within each group, the words are listed in order of introduction to English.  This allows translators such as  Andrew Hurley to ensure that words are not anachronistic in use.  It also would be a great aid to any writer of historical fiction, to ensure that characters do not speak words that were not yet invented.  But most of all, it is simply fascinating to scan through – to watch a summary of the the English language’s evolution of vocabulary.  (It is also quite easy to use as a thesaurus, if one wishes – the second volume contains a listing of the words in OED indexed into the first volume.)  Oxford claims that this is the first (only?) historical thesaurus in any language – and I am unaware of any similar volume for English, at least.

The History of Western Philosophy of Religion appears to be a great narrative history (I cannot claim to have read all 1600 pages yet).  It is modeled after Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy (which I can strongly recommend) but is multi-authored – each chapter being written by a separate author.  This type of historical presentation is more pedagogically sound, I believe, than a more traditional thematic introduction (although it is inferior to reading the actual original writings.) 

Note:  By the way, Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy is due out as an unabridged audiobook from Naxos later this year.

Here are some other volumes on religion that looked interesting:

Greco-Roman religion:

• Curse Tablets and Binding Spells from the Ancient World [Edited by John G. Gager] (paperback, sale price $14)
• The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome [Editor-in-Chief: Michael Gagarin] (multi-volume hardcover, sale price $366)

Judaism:

• Mendelssohn:  A Life in Music [R. Larry Todd] (paperback, sale price $12)
• The Oxford Dictionary of the Jewish Religion, Second Edition [Editor-in-Chief: Adele Berlin and Editorial board member: Maxine Grossman] (hardcover, sale price $68)
• The Oxford Handbook of Judaism and Economics [Aaron Levine] (hardcover, sale price $53)

Christianity:

• Architects of Piety:  The Cappadocian Fathers and the Cult of the Martyrs [Vasiliki M. Limberis] (hardcover, sale price $26)
• Coptic Christianity in Ottoman Egypt [Febe Armanios] (hardcover, sale price $26)
• Desert Christians:  An Introduction to the Literature of Early Monasticism [William Harmless] (paperback, sale price $14)
• The Resurrection of the Messiah [Christopher Bryan] (hardcover, sale price $14)

Hinduism/Buddhism/Asian:

• Classic Asian Philosophy:  A Guide to the Essential Texts, Second Edition [Joel J. Kupperman] (paperback, sale price $11)
• Strong Arms and Drinking Strength:  Masculinity, Violence, and the Body in Ancient India [Jarrod L. Whitaker] (hardcover, sale price $26)
• Twelve Examples of Illusion [Jan Westerhoff] (hardcover, $11)
• Yongming Yanshou’s Conception of Chan in the Zongjing lu;  A Special Transmission Within the Scriptures [Albert Welter] (hardcover, $26)

Deism/Atheism/Philosophy/etc:

• Hating God:  The Untold Story of Misotheism [Bernard Schweizer] (hardcover, sale price $11)
• The Oxford Handbook of Skepticism [Edited by John Greco] (hardcover, sale price $53)
• The Oxford Handbook of Transcendentalism [Edited by Joel Myerson, Sandra Harbert Petrulionis, and Laura Dassow ] (hardcover, sale price $53)