| Book Review | Journal of World History, 16.3

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| Book Review | Journal of World History, 16.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Encyclopedia of Religion and War. Edited by GABRIEL PALMER-FERNANDEZ. New York: Routledge, 2004. 512 pp. $150.00 (cloth).

Encyclopedias are tricky works to plan, edit, produce, and review. In the planning, there tends to be a conflict between the desirable and the practical, the former set by bold editorial goals and the latter imposed by the exigencies of publishing ("more on Japan, an important market," "has to be fewer than 200,000 words," and so on) and by the constraints of what can be achieved: there is no point in an editor planning an article on X or reviewer regretting its absence if no one is able or willing to write the piece. The last constrains this review because, having edited a number of collective works, I know that focusing on what is not there, for example the indigenous religions in Australia, is not fair. Instead, it is appropriate to turn to what is covered, noting that the rise in religiously motivated violence makes this a particularly timely work, while the refusal of the editor to define or analyze the terms of religion and war, while understandable, is unfortunate.

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