Book Reviews

Book Reviews

Experiencing Hospitality

This edited book has a great line up of international contributors renowned for their work in hospitality studies. The book provides a useful cross-disciplinary resource for students, academics and practitioners interested in understanding and theorising hospitality within a commercial context…READ MORE
Professor Alison McIntosh
School of Hospitality and Tourism
Auckland University of Technology
New Zealand

“Bill Rowson and Conrad Lashley are two authoritative voices who do not need a further presentation in the fields of hospitality. In this occasion, they present an edited book, which entitles experiencing hospitality. This editorial project, recently released by the leading publisher Nova Science, gathers 12 chapters oriented to build a bridge between theory and practice. Of course, the term hospitality not only denotes different significations – such as the dichotomy between commercial or non-commercial typologies – but also the figure of the hotel embodies ancient anthropological rites where hospitality occupies a central position, while it represents a unit for profits (for the hotel-owner). Hence, the book is a useful tool kit for social scientists and practitioners in the hospitality industry…READ MORE
Maximiliano E. Korstanje
University of Palermo
Argentina

The Next Big Thing in Education

The world changes dramatically right in front of our eyes in almost any way possible. As we witness these dramatic events we may ask ourselves – “what’s next?”. That is exactly the question we posed to leading experts, academicians, leaders, and practitioners in the field of education. And they answered. The result is this book – a collection of ideas, directions for future thought and action, from some of the leading minds in education. Contributions to this book come from various disciplines, different countries and cultures, and take varying perspectives on the seemingly simple question asked “what, in your opinion, is the next big thing in education?”. Authors noted opportunities and challenges, had words of caution as well as advice and encouragement. This book may be of interest to educational researchers, policy-makers, administrators practitioners as well as students of teaching, pedagogy and education. Readers are invited to peruse the leaves of this anthology, and gain insight, new ideas, identify trends in the making and perhaps gain a tiny glimpse of the future of things to come.

Communication and Mental Health Promotion in Early Childhood Education

This book makes a significant contribution to international literature on communication and mental health promotion in an early childhood education context. More specifically, this book presents in-depth insights into the dynamics of communication and the capacity of developing mental health promotion within the context of preschool and early childhood education. The book, although not a teacher’s guide, provides useful information that will help teachers, parents, caregivers, professionals of psychology and sociology fields as well as student teachers to better understand such issues as communication problems and mental health promotion, which, unfortunately are quite prevalent in schools, even in the early grades. The chapters offer theoretical originality along with practical ideas that help inform the careful reader. Thus, from theory to practice and back again, this book will reward readers, who will better understand the centrality of interpersonal relationships and communication through mental health promotion. Such an understanding is quite crucial in improving teaching and parenting quality in most, if not all, of their issues.

Seismology

This book offers a comprehensive physical theory of the earthquakes. The presentation level is rather mathematical, but thorough physical explanations are provided everywhere. It is an original monograph of Seismology, intended for the use of students, researchers and the public who wish to become familiar with the physics and mathematics of earthquakes. It provides the understanding of the earthquakes and specific knowledge we may have of them. The author is a scientific researcher in the Institute for Earth’s Physics at Magurele, with scientific publications on the theory of elasticity, focal mechanism of earthquakes, seismic waves and statistical analysis of seismic events.

Biochemistry and Biochemists: Who Were They and What Did They Discover?

“The authors have created an interesting blend of life stories, science and history that shape Biochemistry today. The series of questions and answers keeps the text and figures fun and accessible for all to enjoy and teaches us that the road to discovery is an exciting adventure that never ceases to amaze. Recommended to anyone who is curious about how these important pioneers over their lifetime helped uncover the molecular basis of life itself.”
Elliott Stollar
University of Liverpool
Great Britain

“Due to pressures at work, I only had time to dip into a selection of the chapters, but I found that I was hard pressed to put this book down. Apart from the obvious relevance of these amazing researchers’ work, what I also found totally absorbing were the little personal details that the authors have uncovered. I hope others get as much pleasure as I did reading this book!”
Nick Wright, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Wingate University
Wingate
USA

Fluency and Its’ Bases

“The comprehensive information contained in this book is a result of a collaboration of esteemed students and colleagues sharing years of clinical and research experience for the purpose of expanding knowledge and understanding of different facets related to speech fluency in children and adults. Culminating decades of innovative teaching and research by an acknowledged master of the profession, Dr. S.R. Savitri’s book crystallizes into a unified whole, a multidisciplinary subject of broad scope, great richness, and enormous practical importance. Each chapter in this book provides the necessary foundations for students, clinicians and researchers. Must-read primer for anyone who is interested in carrying out evidence-based practice with their clients with fluency disorders should have a copy of this book and refer to it frequently.”
Teralandur K. Parthasarathy, Ph.D.
Former Professor and Chair
Southern Illinois University
Edwardsville, IL
USA

Fluency and Its’ Bases is written by Dr. S. R. Savithri, a highly accomplished and multi award winning researcher, clinician and educator in the area of Speech sciences and Speech pathology. Stuttering is a complex speech disorder, and, to appreciate the complexities of this disorder, one must have a good understanding of fluency. In this book, Fluency and Its Bases, Dr. Savithri has done an excellent job in analyzing fluency from a multidimensional perspective. This is the first comprehensive book to analyze and summarize the body of work done on fluency both nationally (within India) and internationally. This comprehensive book on fluency and its disorders is an essential reading for students, teachers and researchers in the field of communication disorders. This book, organized into eight main chapters and a summary in chapter nine, provides a comprehensive coverage of fluency. Starting with a clear explanation of fluency and its development, the reader is then guided through various bases of fluency including relevant theories and literature. These chapters elucidate bases of fluency including anatomical and physiological, acoustic, genetic, linguistic, psychological, and prosodic bases. Readers will appreciate the history of research as well as the current state of the art research regarding the various dimensions of fluency.”
Sreedevi Aithal, PhD, MSc., MPH., M(Aud)SA
Consultant Audiologist
Adjunct lecturer- James Cook University
Adjunct lecturer – University of Queensland
Department of Audiology
Townsville University Hospital
Australia

Preeminence of Myth and the Decline of Instrumental Reason

“No reader will be bored by this text. Myth is made worldly and relevant, as the authors address everyday concerns, particularly the fragmentation that is now experienced practically everywhere. The chapters are united by the work of Jean Gebser and particularly the emerging “integral” reality. Most important, like Gebser, the authors go beyond current calls for holism to reveal a more dynamic, inclusionary moment—a place, as some Latin American scholars say, where everyone fits with dignity.”
John W. Murphy
Professor of Sociology
University of Miami
Florida
USA

“Pandemic and political chaos are the dramatic image that Culture sees when it looks in the mirror today. Jean Gebser explicates that mirror for us as the enduring contest (agon) between Myth and Reason in the forgetfulness (mermera) of the human mind. The mind’s “inner voice” (mythos) envelopes the embodied “outer voice” (lógos) as the search for the awareness of, for the compassionate fairness of, reasonableness (eulógos). These collected essays are the “must have” insightful guidebook for using Gebser’s mirror of Culture.”
Richard L. Lanigan
Director and Laureate Fellow
International Communicology Institute
Washington, D.C.
Fellow, Polish Academy of Science

This collection of essays, each rigorously attuned to the work of Jean Gebser, attend to a fractured and fragmented world in crisis. Gebser’s philosophical thought offers hope for a future that invites inclusion, empathy, and social justice—where communities enjoin human worth. Gebser reveals regions of human awareness that naturally disclose the co-presence of mythos in all experiences. Each chapter opens the mythic in instructive ways. An integral consciousness counters instrumental reason and opens opportunities for the integral to illuminate and guide human action.”
Annette M. Holba
Professor of Rhetoric
Plymouth State University
New Hampshire
USA

An Introduction to Contact Resistance

As transistors become smaller and smaller, device performance is dominated by parasitics, especially contact resistance. In the last decade, FinFETs lead semiconductor technology. Its 3D structure brings unique opportunities for engineering the contact. This book introduces transistor electronics, contact physics, test structures, and measurements of contact resistance. In technology, process material and integration for resistance reduction are discussed. This book can serve as a reference for semiconductor professionals and students in electrical engineering and material science.

Differences in the City: Postmetropolitan Heterotopias as Liberal Utopian Dreams

An essential book in order to understand the return of a concept (“heterotopia”) that never left.”
Luis Arenas
Former President of the Academic Society of Philosophy (Sociedad Académica de Filosofía)
Spain

This indispensable book carefully assesses the emancipatory potential of the polysemic Foucaldian term of “heterotopia” when used to analyse and evaluate various geopolitical and ideological urban contexts, besides and beyond Western-centered “topoi”. Timely and deeply original, the book will prove fundamental both for architects and urban planners on one hand, and social scientists on the other hand – anyone interested in understanding metropolitan processes of social resistance and minority empowerment.”
Magali Bessone
Institute of Legal and Philosophical Sciences (Institut des Sciences Juridique et Philosophique)
University of Paris 1- Panthéon-Sorbonne
France

“Aggressive, militant, controversial, incorrect… An appealing book that does not walk around the beaten tracks. An excellent collective work that wakes you up from neoliberal urban dreams.”
Ignacio Borrego
Institute of Architecture (Institut für Architektur)
University of Technology
Berlin, Germany

Anger: From Primordial Rage to the Politics of Hatred and Resentment

This work explores and analyzes anger. We examine anger as a single emotion and as it occurs in combination with other emotions in complex social relationships that typically involve power dynamics. We utilize Robert Plutchik’s primary-emotions classification to hierarchically categorize anger and other basic and complex emotions, and we compare constructivist and basic-emotion theories of emotion. We conceptualize the primary emotions––including anger––as prototypical adaptive reactions to key existential problems: temporality, social identity, exchange, and hierarchy. Anger is uniquely reactive to positive and negative experiences of social power, elicited by a perceived threat to the self or to the self’s project to preserve or attain valued status, resources, or goals. Anger triggers activate a three-stage sociocognitive appraisal process in which the self: (i) perceives its social position or valued resource is at stake; (ii) endeavors to modify another actor’s social intentions concerning norms of social sharing and social cohesion; and (iii) develops an intentional act. We identify two complex emotions––hatred and resentment––-as essential political emotions. Both share anger as a key component, and also include contempt. Hatred can be harnessed for pernicious ends, becoming an expression or instrument of power; resentment is more typically an emotion of the powerless, arising as a reaction to unjustified suffering. We examine the place of anger, hatred, resentment, and other emotions of power and powerlessness in contemporary United States politics, particularly to competing political ideologies of globalism–neoliberalism, democratic socialism, and nationalism–populism.