To mark the 50th anniversary in 2012 of the rebuilding of Coventry Cathedral after its destruction by incendiary bombs in November 1940, this lavishly illustrated volume celebrates a unique church with a unique mission. The decision to rebuild the Cathedral was taken the morning after the bombing - not as an act of defiance, but one of faith, trust and hope for the future of the world. Reconciling People tells the story of every aspect the Cathedral's life: its architecture in war and in peace, its theology, worship and spirituality, music and the arts, its mission and ministry, its place in the life of the city, the Cathedral as a place of reconciliation, its people over the decades and its life today. Co-published with the Friends of Coventry Cathedral, this celebratory volume is a record of a how a 900-year old cathedral rose from the ashes of violent destruction to become a symbol of reconciliation and to develop a unique mission among Britain's churches.

This volume examines the multifarious dimensions that constitute the workings of the Hindu temple as an architectural and urban built form. Eleven chapters reflect on Hindu temples from multiple standpoints - tracing their elusive evolution from wayside shrines as well as canonization into classical objects; questioning the role of treatises containing their building rules; analyzing their prescribed proportions and orders; examining their presence in, and as, larger sacred habitats and ritualistic settings; and affirming their influential role in the contemporary Indian metropolis.Going beyond stereotypical presentations of Hindu temples dominated by chronological and stylistic themes, this study, addressed to architects, urbanists, and builders, combines historic scholarship, documentation, personal observations and fieldwork to expand the idea of the Hindu temple as a complex and contradictory cultural entity, that is both formal and informal, monumental and modest, historic and modern, and deserving of a far broader and deeper understanding.