Booknotes

“Virgil Recomposed: The Mythological and Secular Virgilian Centos in Antiquity”
Scott McGill, assistant professor of classics
Published by Oxford University Press

The Virgilian centos anticipate the avant-garde and smash the image of a staid, sober and centered classical world. This book examines the 12 mythological and secular Virgilian centos that survive from antiquity. The centos, in which authors take nonconsecutive lines or segments of lines from the Eclogues, Georgics and Aeneid and reconnect them to produce new poems, have received limited attention. No other book-length study exists of all the centos, which date from 200 to 530 A.D.

The centos are literary games, and they have a playful shock value that feels very modern. Yet the texts also demand to be taken seriously for what they disclose about late antique literary culture, Virgil’s reception several important topics in Latin literature and literary studies generally. As radically intertextual works, the centos are particularly valuable sites for pursuing inquiry into allusion and scrutinizing the peculiarities of the texts’ allusive engagements with Virgil requires clarification of the roles of the author and the reader in allusion, the criteria for determining what constitutes an allusion, and the different functions allusion can have. By investigating the centos from these different perspectives and asking what they reveal about a wide range of weighty subjects, this book touches on major topics in Latin literature.

“Contemporary Muslim Apocalyptic Literature”
David Cook, assistant professor of religious studies
Published by Syracuse University Press

Through a combination of wide-ranging primary sources and detailed textual analysis, Cook examines Muslim apocalyptic writings and their significance in current events.

Although apocalyptic visions and predictions have long been part of classical and contemporary Islam, this book is the first scholarly work to cover this disparate but influential body of writing. Cook puts the literature into context by examining not only the ideological concerns prompting apocalyptic material, but also its interconnection with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Arab relations with the U.S. and other Western nations and violence in the Middle East.

Cook suggests that Islam began as an apocalyptic movement and has retained a strong apocalyptic and messianic trend. One of his most striking discoveries is the influence of non-Islamic sources on contemporary Muslim apocalyptic beliefs. He trenchantly discusses the influence of non-Islamic sources on contemporary Muslim apocalyptic writing, tracing anti-Semitic strains in Islamist thought in part to Western texts and traditions. The importance of this work, which includes primary Arabic texts never before studied, lies in its political content. Through a meticulous reading of current documents, incorporating everything from exegesis of holy texts to supernatural phenomena, Cook shows how radical Muslims, including members of al-Qaida, may have applied these ideas to their own agendas.

By exposing the undergrowth of popular beliefs contributing to religion-driven terrorism, this book casts new light on today’s political conflicts. As a result, it will be useful to a variety of audiences — not only to scholars in religion, Middle East studies and political science, but also to policymakers and general readers.

“Principles of Robot Motion: Theory, Algorithms and Implementations”

Lydia E. Kavraki, the Noah Harding Professor of Computer Science and professor of bioengineering
Published by the MIT Press

Robot motion planning has become a major focus of robotics research.

These findings can be applied not only to robotics but to planning routes on circuit boards, directing digital actors in computer graphics, robot-assisted surgery and medicine and in novel areas like drug design and protein folding.

This text reflects the great advances that have taken place in the last 10 years, including sensor-based planning, probabalistic planning, localization and mapping and motion planning for dynamic and nonholonomic systems.

The book’s presentation makes the mathematical underpinnings of robot motion accessible to students of computer science and engineering, relating low-level implementation details to high-level algorithmic concepts.

“Making Innovation Work”
Marc Epstein, distinguished research professor of management at the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management
Published by Wharton School Publishing

To compete effectively, businesses must innovate not just once, but consistently, in all products, services and business functions. But profitable innovation doesn’t just happen. It must be managed, measured and executed on — and few companies do that well. “Making Innovation Work” offers the first real solution: a start-to-finish process for driving growth from innovation.

The authors draw on unsurpassed innovation, consulting experience and a thorough review of innovation research. Their techniques have been proven at top companies ranging from Apple and GE to Toyota. In this book, they demonstrate what works, what doesn’t and how to use management tools to maximize the value of innovation investments.

Readers will learn how to define effective strategies and organizational structures for innovation, manage innovation more successfully and excite teams to deliver and infuse metrics throughout every phase of the innovation process. This book is intended to take the mystery out of profitable innovation, showing readers how to lead it, track it, induce it and get more of it.

—information taken from publishers