August 2020
Alumni have been authoring books ranging from philosophical interpretations to pandemic-inspired poetry and we have selected another four for the bookshelf.
1.
| Author |
James Giles |
| Degree | PhD Philosophy |
| Book |
The Way of Awareness in Daoist Philosophy |
This reader-friendly book explores ancient Daoist philosophy and argues against interpretations that paint the early Daoist philosophers as mystics or cosmologists. It is argued that the Dao is best understood as awareness and that the Daoist concerns are primarily with the nature of human experience, meditation, and our relation to the world. The book starts by placing Daoist philosophy within the context of ancient Chinese thought. It then proceeds by critically engaging each of the major Daoist thinkers, works, or schools: Laozi, Yang Zhu, Zhuangzi, the Inward Training, Liezi, and Neo-Daoism, showing further Daoism’s relation to Zen Buddhism. It concludes by pointing to ways in which Daoist philosophy can offer insights into contemporary Western philosophy. Throughout the book, comparisons are drawn with Western thinkers such as Descartes, Locke, Hume, Kierkegaard, Sartre, ancient Greek and Roman philosophers, and with modern psychological research and Buddhist philosophy. The Way of Awareness in Daoist Philosophy is thus both a scholarly work in Chinese and cross-cultural philosophy, but also an original book on metaphysics and the nature of awareness.
The Way of Awareness in Daoist Philosophy
2.
| Author | Shana Hirsch |
| Degree |
Global Environment, Politics, and Society |
| Books |
Anticipating Future Environments: Climate Change, Adaptive Restoration, and the Columbia River Basin |
Drought. Wildfire. Extreme flooding. How does climate change affect the daily work of scientists? Ecological restoration is often premised on the idea of returning a region to an earlier, healthier state. Yet the effects of climate change undercut that premise and challenge the ways scientists can work, destabilizing the idea of “normalcy” and revealing the politics that shape what scientists can do. How can the practice of ecological restoration shift to anticipate an increasingly dynamic future? And how does a scientific field itself adapt to climate change?
Restoration efforts in the Columbia River Basin—a vast and diverse landscape experiencing warming waters, less snowpack, and greater fluctuations in precipitation—may offer answers to some of these questions. Shana Hirsch tells the story of restoration science in the basin, surveying its past and detailing the work of today’s salmon habitat restoration efforts. Her analysis offers critical insight into scientific practices, emerging approaches and ways of thinking, the incorporation of future climate change scenarios into planning, and the ultimate transformation—or adaptation—of the science of ecological restoration. For scientists and environmental managers around the globe, Anticipating Future Environments will shed light on how to more effectively cope with climate change.
Anticipating Future Environments: Climate Change, Adaptive Restoration, and the Columbia River Basin
3.
| Author |
Tuhinul Islam |
| Degree | PhD Social Work and Social Policy |
| Book |
Residential Child and Youth care in a Developing World - three volumes |
Volume 1: Global perspectives
Volume 2: European perspectives
Volume 3: Middle East and Asia Perspectives
4.
| Author |
Robert Alan Jamieson |
| Degree | English Literature |
| Book |
Plague Clothes |
Originally written as a series of Facebook status updates during the recovery from Covid-19, Robert Alan Jamieson’s Plague Clothes is an immediate and intimate account of one person’s battle with the virus that emphasises the universality of our struggle during the pandemic. Moving seamlessly between sharp satire, confessional and philosophical enquiry, Jamieson takes aim at Western government, laments the current ecological crisis, and challenges our treatment of the so-called ‘old and vulnerable’, carried all the way by a rare voice of wisdom and protest at a time when ageism in society risks reducing an entire generation to statistics. Published in beautiful hardback with seventeen black and white photographs.
Read about the founding of Taproot Press by Scottish Literature students
Submit your book
If you are a member of the alumni community and have recently published a book, we would be delighted to include it in the Alumni Bookshelf. Email the editor, Brian Campbell, with the following information:
- your name
- degree details
- book details, including a link for further information
Please note
Books are added to the bookshelf in order of submission. All of the further information links listed are the external websites of the book publisher, the author, or the bookseller. The University of Edinburgh is not responsible for the content and functionality of these sites. We reserve the right to not publish all submissions we receive.