PB February 2015246 Prabuddha Bharata52 Beyond Sacred Violence: A Comparative Study of Sacrifi ce Kathryn McClymond Th e John Hopkins University Press, 2715 North Charles Street, Baltimore, Maryland 21218–4363, usa. Website: www.press.jhu.edu. 2008. xii + 216 pp. $ 57. hb. isbn 9780801887765. Imagine the face of a Westerner recoiling in re-pugnance hearing from a Hindu of a 'sacrifi ce' coming up in home. Images of gory killings and bloody entrails coming out of animals and even humans, haunts the Westerner, who does not even bother to check up the Hindu meaning of 'sacrifi ce'. Kathryn McClymond urges the reader to come out of this reductionist understanding of sacrifi ce or yajna, which has a broad meaning, widely diff erent from its Semitic concept. Comparing Vedic and Jewish sacrifi ces, she shows how yajna was synonymous with the entire life, both of the individual and of the universe. Quoting extensively from the scriptures of both the traditions, she gives an authoritative evidence of the needless Western colouring of Eastern religious practices. Th is book is also a call to situate Eastern religious traditions in their own framework, not borrowing from Western scholarly paradigms and also not being apologetic to the Western ideas of life, religion, and the beyond. Written in an engaging and informative style, this book would be interesting to both scholars and ordinary readers. PB Family Values Harry Brighthouse and Adam Swift Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540, usa. Website: www.press. princeton.edu. 2014. xx + 216 pp. $ 35. hb. isbn 9780691126913. Spare the rod and spoil the child was the old adage, but now you could end up in jail for using a rod! Increasing media intrusion and excessive unnecessary human-right championing has made us lose the domains of our families to diff erent societal agencies including law. How does a parent bring up a child in such a society? Th e authors, from backgrounds of education and political science, stress on the value of family and also the freedom of a parent in raising children. Intimate family relations can never be substituted by the protection of social agencies. Th is book is at once a work of political science and family relationships. Where and how does politics intrude the family? Investigating the changing nature of various traditional constructs of family, parent, and children, the authors have remarkably brought out a timely work questioning the resignation to collective institutional child-rearing. Th e authors defi nitely become the voice of countless parents when they say: 'Healthy family life requires parents to enjoy a good deal of discretion over their children's lives and to be experienced by their children as exercising authoritative judgments in many areas. ... But parents cannot exercise that discretion and enjoy that unmonitored interaction without being allowed the space to make mistakes ... parents have no right to abuse children-but they do have a right to the space within which abuse may occur' (120). Th is book forces us to focus on the family, so neglected today, and emphasises its role in shaping values of future generations. PB God Without Being Jean-Luc Marion Trans. Thomas A Carlson Th e University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637, usa. Website: www. press.uchicago.edu. 2012. xxx + 313 pp. ` 695. pb. isbn 9780226505657. Should God exist? Should God have a form, an icon, or an idol? Marion explores the possibility of a God who would not be, who would not have a being. He sees God in agape, Christian charity, or love and obviates the need for imagining or positing the existence or being of God. He thinks that the 'unthinkable forces us to substitute the idolatrous quotation marks around "God" with the very God that no mark of knowledge can demarcate,