Book reviews

^cAbd al‐Malik b. Habib. Kitāb al‐Ta'rij (La historia). Edición y estudio por Jorge Aguadé. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas & Instituto de Cooperación con el Mundo Arabe, 1991 (Fuentes Arabico‐Hispanas, 1). 163 + 224 pp. [Arabic title: Kltāb al‐Ta'tikh]

Kedar, Benjamin Z., ed. The Horns of Hattin. Jerusalem and London: Yad Izhak Ben‐Zvi, Israel Exploration Society and Variorum 1992. 368 pp., 12 plates; $74.75 (cloth).

Köprülü, Mehmed Fuad. The Seljuks of Anatolia: Their History and Culture According to Local Muslim Sources. Translated and edited by Gary Leiser. Salt Lake City: University of Utah, 1992. xi +101 pp., $22.00 (cloth).

Cameron, Averil and Conrad, Lawrence I., eds. The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East: Problems in the Literary Source Material (Papers in the First Workshop on Late Antiquity and Early Islam). Princeton: The Darwin Press, 1992. xiv + 428pp., 12 plates; $29.25 (cloth).

Vereno, Ingolf. Studien zum ältesten alchemistischen Schrifttum. Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 1992 (Islamkundliche Untersuchungen, 155). 414pp.

Tolan, John. Petrus Alfonsi and his Medieval Readers. Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida, 1993. xv + 288pp., $34.95 (cloth), $16.95 (paper).

Lassner, Jacob. Demonizing the Queen of Sheba: Boundaries of Gender and Culture in Postbiblical Judaism and Medieval Islam. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1994. 281 pp., $19.95 (paper), $49.95 (cloth).

Menocal, María Rosa. Shards of Love: Exile and the Origins of the Lyric. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1994. xv + 295pp., $34.95 (cloth), $14.95 (paper).

Massignon, Louis. The Passion of al‐Hallāj, Mystic and Martyr of Islam. Translated and edited by Herbert Mason. Abridged edition, Bollingen Series XCVIII. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994. xxxi + 293pp.

Viguera Molins, Maria Jesús. El Islam en Aragón. Saragossa: Caja de Ahorros de la Inmaculada, 1995 (Colección “Mariano de Pano y Ruata”, 9), 174 pp., 182 ills. in colour, maps, diagrams, charts etc No price stated.     

Dial the Difference—How and Why BBC Local Radio and Independent Local Radio Developed Different News Services

This article is principally concerned with how and why these 2 types of radio news developed. It discusses the culture, ethos and practices of the 2 services and, in particular, if and how each was influenced by the other. Much of the article is concerned about how the new commercial stations developed practices and styles that were consciously different from, and in some cases in direct opposition to, those at the BBC, both nationally and locally. The article argues that it was the BBC which adopted and integrated commercial radio’s style and practices, rather than, as is often supposed, the other way around.     

Historical Inquiry in an Informal Fan Community: Online Source Usage and the TV Show The Tudors

This article examines an informal online community dedicated to The Tudors, a historical television show, and the ways in which its members engaged with a variety of sources in their discussions of the drama’s real-life past. Data were collected over a 5-month period. The analysis included the types of sources used in conversation; members’ purpose for invoking and reaction to sources; as well as topic, participation, and response patterns in the discussion forum. The community is a space in which popular culture and the discipline of history meet. Members come together because of a fictional depiction of the past, yet a desire to corroborate, clarify, contextualize, or uncover what really happened leads users to participate in detective-like inquiry work and the learning of new topics they had not previously considered. Members also challenge and critique one another’s positions and the sources other members invoke in multiple ways, including by using more formal disciplinary heuristics in this informal setting. Key differences emerge in members’ purpose for invoking sources, with popular media used more frequently for illustrating a point or asking a question and nonfiction works most invoked to support and argue historical claims.