A: Reviews: General

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE HADITH. By John Burton. (Islamic Surveys.) Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 1994. 210 pp. £39.95 (hb); £16.95 (pb).

POLITICS, GENDER, AND THE ISLAMIC PAST: THE LEGACY OF ‘A'ISHA BINT ABI BAKR. By D. A. Spellberg. New York, Columbia University Press, 1995. 250 pp. $35.00.

MEDIEVAL ISMA'ILI HISTORY AND THOUGHT. Edited by Farhad Daftary. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996. 331 pp. £40.00

THE THRONE CARRIER OF GOD: THE LIFE AND THOUGHT OF ‘ALA’ AD‐DAWLA AS‐SIMNANI. By Jamal J. Elias. Albany, State University of New York Press, 1995. 260 pp. $16.95

OTTOMAN SEAPOWER AND LEVANTINE DIPLOMACY IN THE AGE OF DISCOVERY. By Palmira Brummett. (SUNY Series in the Social and Economic History of the Middle East.) New York, State University of New York Press, 1994. xvi, 285 pp. 2 maps, 7 plates. $19.95.

HAIFA: TRANSFORMATION OF AN ARAB SOCIETY, 1918–1939. By May Seikaly. London, I. B. Tauris, 1995. 284 pp. £39.50 (hb).

THE FORMATION OF MODERN SYRIA AND IRAQ. By Eliezer Tauber. London, Frank Cass, 1995. 427 pp. £30.00 (hb); £15.00 (pb).

IRAQ: POWER AND SOCIETY. Edited by Derek Hopwood, Habib Ishow and Thomas Koszinowski. (St Antony's Middle East monographs, 29.) Reading, Ithaca Press, 1993. viii, 400 pp. £30.00.

SECRET WAR IN THE MIDDLE EAST: THE COVERT STRUGGLE FOR SYRIA, 1949–61. By Andrew Rathmell. London and New York, I. B. Tauris, 1995. 256 pp. £39.50.

LEBANON: A SHATTERED COUNTRY. By Elizabeth Picard. Translated from the French [Liban: État de discorde] by Franklin Philip. New York and London, Holmes & Meier, 1996. xii, 202 pp. £29.95.

THE ISLAMIST DILEMMA: THE POLITICAL ROLE OF ISLAMIST MOVEMENTS IN THE CONTEMPORARY ARAB WORLD. Edited by Laura Guazzone. Reading, Ithaca Press, 1995. 390 pp. £45.00.

ISLAM AND THE MYTH OF CONFRONTATION: RELIGION AND POLITICS IN THE MIDDLE EAST. By Fred Halliday. London and New York, I. B. Tauris, 1996. 256 pp. £35.00 (hb); £12.95 (pb).

THE MIDDLE EAST IN THE NEW WORLD ORDER. Edited by Haifaa A. Jawad. Basingstoke, St Martins Press/Macmillan, 1994. viii, 154 pp. $35 (hb).

CONFIDENCE BUILDING AND VERIFICATION: PROSPECTS IN THE MIDDLE EAST. Edited by Shai Feldman. (Jaffee Centre for Strategic Studies Study, 25.) Published jointly by the Jerusalem Post and Westview Press, Boulder, 1994. 255 pp. £28.50 (hb).

CHILDREN IN THE MUSLIM MIDDLE EAST. Edited by Elizabeth Warnock Fernea. Austin, University of Texas Press, 1995. xviii, 477 pp., photographs. $22.50 (hb).

THE HISTORY OF THE MAZRU'I DYNASTY OF MOMBASA. By Al‐Amin Bin ‘Ali Al Mazru'i. Translated and annotated by J. McL. Ritchie (Union Académique Interna‐tionale/Fontes Historiae Africanae: Series Arabica XI.) Published for the British Academy by Oxford University Press, 1995. x, 182, 76 pp. £27.50 (hb).

AN INTRODUCTION TO ARAB POETICS. By Adonis. Translated from the Arabic by Catherine Cobham. London, Saqi Books, 1990. 108 pp.

ANTHOLOGY OF MODERN PALESTINIAN LITERATURE. Edited by Salma Khadra Jayyusi. New York, Columbia University Press, 1992. 744 pp. $34.95.

THE EYE OF THE MIRROR. By Liana Badr. Translated by Samira Kawar. (Arab Women Writers.) Reading, Garnet Publishing, 1995. 264 pp. £8.95 (pb).

THE GOLDEN CHARIOT. By Salwa Bakr. Translated by Dinah Manisty. (Arab Women Writers.) Reading, Garnet Publishing, 1995. 193 pp. £ 8.95 (pb).

THE STONE OF LAUGHTER. By Hoda Barakat. Translated by Sophie Bennett. (Arab Women Writers.) Reading, Garnet Publishing, 1995. 231 pp. £ 8.95 (pb).

AL‐KITAAB FII TA'ALLUM AL‐'ARABIYYA (A TEXTBOOK FOR BEGINNING ARABIC). By Kristen Brustad, Mahmoud Al‐Batal and Abbas Al‐Tonsi. Washington, DC, Georgetown University Press, 1995. Introduction 224 pp., textbook 480 pp., videotapes, cassettes.

DAS MUTAFI‐LAZISCHE. Edited by Silvia Kutscher, Johanna Mattissen and Anke Wodarg. (Arbeitspapier, Nr. 24, Neue Folge.) Köln, Institut für Sprachwissenschaft Universität zu Köln, 1995. 136 pp.

GRAMATIKA JEZYKA KRYMSKOTATARSKIEGO. By Henryk Jankowski. (Seria Jezykoznawstwo, Nr. 15.) Poznań, Uniwersytet Im. Adama Mickiewicza, 1992. xviii, 455 pp.

CULINARY CULTURES OF THE MIDDLE EAST. Edited by Richard Tapper and Sami Zubaida. London, New York, I. B. Tauris, 1994. 302 pp. £34.50 (hb).     

Book reviews

Robert Service, Lenin: A Political Life. Vol. 3: The Iron Ring. Basingstoke and London: Macmillan, 1995, xxi + 393 pp., £45.00.

Stephen Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization. London: University of California Press, 1995, xxv + 639 pp., £45.00.

Yilmaz Akyüz, Detlef Kotte, Andràs Köves & László Szamuely (eds), Privatization in the Transition Process. Recent Experiences in Eastern Europe. Geneva: United Nations, 1994, x + 418 pp.

Jerzy Hausner, Bob Jessop & Klaus Nielsen (eds), Strategic Choice and Path‐dependency in Post‐Socialism. Cheltenham, Edward Elgar, 1995, xiii + 330 pp. £49.95.

Wladimir Andreff (ed.), Le Secteur Public à I'Est. Restmcturation Industrielle et Financière. Paris: L'Harmattan, Collection ‘Pays de I'Est’, 1995, 238 pp.

Jonathan Klavens & Anthony Zamparutti, Foreign Direct Investments and Environment in Central and Eastern Europe: A Survey. Washington DC: The World Bank, 1995. x + 44 pp., $7.95.

Valdas Samonis, Foreign Investment in the East. New York: Nova Science Publishers, Inc., 1995, 77 pp., £22.50.

Taras Kuzio, Ukrainian Security Policy. Washington DC: Praeger, 1995, xiv + 168 pp., £13.50.

Anssi Paasi, Territories, Boundaries and Consciousness: The Changing Geographies of the Finnish‐Russian Border. Chichester: John Wiley, 1996. xxi + 353 pp., £45.00.

Tuomo Polvinen, Imperial Borderland, Bobrikov and the Attempted Russification of Finland, 1898–1904. London: Hurst, 1995, x + 342 pp. £32.50.

Hugh Poulton, Who are the Macedonians? London: Hurst, 1995, xvii + 218 pp., £12.50.

Jacob M. Landau, Pan‐Turkism. From Irredentism to Cooperation. London: Hurst, 1995, viii + 275 pp., £14.95.

Kenneth Lieberthal, Governing China: From Revolution through Reform. New York: W. W. Norton and Company Inc., 1995, xxii + 498 pp., £22.00.

Robert Benewick & Paul Wingrove (eds), China in the 1990s., Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1995, x + 272 pp., £11.99.

A. James Gregor, Marxism, China and Development. New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1995, xi + 283 pp., £34.95.

David G. Marr, Vietnam 1945: The Quest for Power. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1995, xxviii + 602 pp., $50.00.

Janet W. Salaff, Working Daughters of Hong Kong: Filial Piety or Power in the Family. New York: Columbia University Press, 1995, xxxvi + 317 pp., $17.50.

Irene Bloom (ed.), Knowledge Painfully Acquired. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996, ix + 226 pp., £14.95.

Walter Laqueur, The Dream that Failed: Reflections on the Soviet Union. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994, ix + 231 pp., £18.99.

David Iosifovich Ortenberg. Stalin, Shcherbakov, Mekhlis, i drugie. Moscow: MP ‘Kodeks’, Ob"edinennaya redaktsiya MVD Rossii, 1995, 208 pp.

Lewis H. Siegelbaum & Ronald Grigor Suny (eds), Making Workers Soviet: Power, Class and Identity. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994, xiii + 399 pp., £41.50 h/b, £16.50 p/b.

Walter S. Dunn, Jr, The Soviet Economy and the Red Army, 1930–1945. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1995, ix + 256 pp., £53.95.

A. J. Heywood & I. D. C. Button, Russian Locomotive Types, The Union Legacy. Malmo: Frank Stenvalls Forlag, 1995, vi + 175 pp. Obtainable in UK from Luddenden Press, 19 Goitside, Booth, Halifax HX2 6SY, £14.45.

George Orwell, Animal Farm. London: Seeker and Warburg 1995, 180 pp.     

Inequality and fertility

This article focuses on the relationship between inequality and fertility, with empirical analysis only of direct influences. Whereas much of the literature seems to be based on 0-order correlations, the present study uses multiple regression analysis to test the strength of the evidence for a relationship between inequality and fertility when competing hypotheses are also considered. In addition, this study attempts to clarify some of the issues surrounding the measurement of inequality and to show how these may affect empirical results. It appears from the results presented here that research into the relative status of women as an influence on fertility holds considerable promise. In particular, it is interesting that a measure of the relative status of women (ratio of female school enrollment to male school enrollment) that is highly correlated with absolute educational status of people in the nation in general, and even more highly correlated with absolute educational status of women, emerges as one of 3 important predictors of fertility. The other measure of the relative educational status of women (female school enrollment ratio minus male school enrollment ratio), which has lower correlations with absolute educational status both of women and people in general, does not appear important, although it should be an equally valid indicator of women's status. It also has lower correlations with total fertility rates. 1 focus of further research should be an attempt to disentangle the effects of the relative status of women from absolute status of women and absolute status of people in the nation as a whole. Less promising is the prospect of future work on the relationship between income inequaltiy and fertility. The results are unencouraging with respect to both sampling problems and the actual magnitude of the effect of inequality on fertility. Overall, it appears that the importance of income inequality as an influence on fertility may have been overstated in the past.     

Book reviews

The Imaginary War: Understanding the East‐West Conflict By Mary Kaldor. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. 1990. 290 pp. £19.95.

The Nonsuperpowers and South Africa ‐ Implications for U.S. Policy. By Richard J. Payne. Indiana University Press. 336 pp. $35.00.

Elites and the Idea of Equality: A Comparison of Japan, Sweden, and the United States. By Sidney Verba, Steven Kelman, Gary R. Orten, Ichiro Miyake, Joji Watonuki, Ikuo Kabashima, G. Donald Ferreer, Jr. Harvard University Press. 276 pp. £10.25.

Controlling the Sword: The Democratic Governance of National Security By Bruce Russett. 261 pp. £17.95.

America's Germany: John J. McCloy and the Federal Republic of Germany By Thomas Alan Schwartz. Harvard University Press: 1991. 404 pp. £23.95.