Since, 1990, Louise Glück has been exploring a form that is, according to poet Robert Hass, her invention. Vita Nova -- like its immediate predecessors, a book-length sequence -- combines the ecstatic utterance of The Wild Iris with the worldly dramas elaborated in Meadowlands. Vita Nova is a book that exists in the long moment of spring, a book of deaths and beginnings, resignation and hope, brutal, luminous, and farseeing. Like late Yeats, Vita Nova dares large statement. By turns stern interlocutor and ardent novitiate, Glück compasses the essential human paradox, a terrifying act of perspective that brings into resolution the smallest human hope and the vast forces that shape and thwart it.

The state of health care is reflected by perinatal and neonatal morbidity and mortality as well as by the frequencies of long-term neurologic and developmental disorders. Many factors, some without immediately rec ognizable significance to childbearing and many still unknown, undoubt edly contribute beneficially or adversely to the outcome of pregnancy. Knowledge concerning the impact of such factors on the fetus and sur viving infant is critical. Confounding analyses of pregnancy outcome, especially these past two or three decades, are the effects of newly un dertaken invasive or inactive therapeutic approaches coupled with the advent of high technology. Many innovations have been introduced with out serious efforts to evaluate their impact prospectively and objectively. The consequences of therapeutic misadventures characterized the past; it seems they have been replaced to a degree by some of the complications of applied technology. Examples abound: after overuse of oxygen was recognized to cause retrolental fibroplasia, its restriction led to an in crease in both neonatal death rates and neurologic damage in surviving infants. Administration of vitamin K to prevent neonatal hemorrhagic disease, particularly when given in what we now know as excessive dos age, occasionally resulted in kernicterus. Prophylactic sulfonamide use had a similar end result. More recent is the observation of bronchopul monary dysplasia as a complication of respirator therapy for hyaline membrane disease."

The question of the relationship between mind and body as posed by Descartes, Spinoza, and others remains a fundamental debate for philosophers. In "Damasio's Error and Descartes' Truth," Andrew Gluck constructs a pluralistic response to the work of neurologist Antonio Damasio. Gluck critiques the neutral monistic assertions found in "Descartes' Error "and "Looking for Spinoza" from a philosophical perspective, advocating an adaptive theory--physical monism in the natural sciences, dualism in the social sciences, and neutral monism in aesthetics. Gluck's work is a significant and refreshing take on a historical debate.

In "Religion, Fundamentalism, and Violence", Andrew L. Gluck brings together distinguished scholars to address a fiercely debated topic: the intersection of religion and violence. Among the contributions is an anthropological analysis of the violence associated with the Abrahamic monotheistic religions of the Middle East, a compelling essay accounting for the violence in Hindu religious traditions, an informative look at the Israeli-Palestinian tensions of more recent times, and an essay on the Catholic just war theory. Each chapter is followed by a commentary and reply, making this volume indispensable for students and scholars of the history of religions.