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James McDonald is a mathematician and non-fiction writer. He was educated at University College, Oxford. He holds an MA from Oxford University and an MSc from Sussex University in the UK, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in London in 1990. He is a life member of the British Humanist Association. He has travelled extensively in Central Asia and Southern Asia, researching Zoroastrianism and other religions. According to his publishers his book ''Beyond Belief'' took over 20 years of research, including an overland expedition from Europe to South and Central Asia, retracing journeys of Alexander the Great, Robert Byron and Eric Newby. This research took him to sites including Medjugorje in Herzegovina; traditional Bogomil sites in the Balkans, early Christian sites across Turkey, the Mountains of Ararat near the border with Iran, Zoroastrian Towers of Silence, Chak Chak and other Zoroastrian centres in Iran, Christian churches in Pakistan, Parsee temples in Mumbi, the Syrian Churches of Kerala, the Roza Bal shrine at Srinagar in Kashmir; Lumbini in the Rupandehi district of Nepal; early Buddhist sites along the Karakorum Highway, and historic religious sites of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. He writes extensively on a range of topics including Gnostic Dualism, the Cathars of the Languedoc, the Counts of Toulouse, Occitania, Medieval warfare and the Medieval Inquisition. His work is characterised by combining serious scholarship with an entertaining style.〔"combines scholarship with entertaining writing", von Schon, Catherine V.; Fletcher, Janet; Fialkoff, Francine; Schwarzer, Anneliese; Sutton, Judith; Cameron, Janet // Library Journal; 4 January 1985, Vol. 110 Issue 6, p142 ()〕〔"lively and readable" Kingsley Amis, Literary Review, January 1985〕 For several years he wrote a weekly column on English word origins for the Sunday Express, a national newspaper in the UK.〔''Sunday Express'', passim 1984, 1985, 1986〕 He is the châtelain of a late Medieval castle in the South of France, listed as a Monument Historique by the French Government. == Publications == * ''Wordly Wise'', on comparative philology, published by Constable (now Constable & Robinson) (UK) and Franklin Watts (USA),〔cited by Oxford Journals, Humanities, Year's Work in English Studies, Volume 65, Issue 1Pp. 24–66.〕〔cited by Journal of Reading, Vol. 29, No. 6 (Mar. 1986), pp. 562–567 retrieved 10 June 2012〕〔National Library of Australia's online catalogue retrieved 10 June 2012〕〔Reviewed by Fred F. Holley, Los Angeles Times , retrieved 10 June 2012, Orlando sentinel (retrieved 10 June 2012) & Chicago Tribune, 4 September 1985, New York Times News Service.〕 * ''A Dictionary of Obscenity and Taboo'', on etymology, published by Sphere (Little, Brown and Company) and reprinted by Wordsworth (UK & USA)〔cited by Timothy Jay, The Utility and Ubiquity of Taboo Words, ''Perspectives on Psychological Science'' March 2009 vol. 4 no. 2 153–161〕〔cited by Kerry Linfoot-Ham, The Linguistics of Euphemism: A Diachronic Study of Euphemism Formation, ''Journal of Language and Linguistics'', Vol. 4 No. 2, 2005, ISSN 1475 – 8989. Kerry Linfoot-Ham University of Florida, USA〕 * ''Solving Business Problems using Simulation'', published by McGraw Hill (UK & USA)〔ACM Digital Library retrieved 10 June 2012〕〔cited by Ruth M. Davies , Robert M. O'Keefe , Huw T. O. Davies, Simplifying the modeling of multiple activities, multiple queuing, and interruptions: a new low-level data structure, ACM Transactions on Modeling and Computer Simulation (TOMACS), v.3 n.4, p.332-346, Oct. 1993〕〔cited by Mike Pidd, Model development and HCI, Proceedings of the 28th conference on Winter simulation, p.681-686, 8–11 December 1996, Coronado, California, United States〕〔cited by Vlatko Čeric, Hierarchical abilities of diagrammatic representations of discrete event simulation models, Proceedings of the 26th conference on Winter simulation, p.589-594, 11–14 December 1994, Orlando, Florida, United States〕〔cited by Michael Pidd, An introduction to computer simulation, Proceedings of the 26th conference on Winter simulation, p.7-14, 11–14 December 1994, Orlando, Florida, United States〕〔cited by Yogesh L. Deshpande , Roger Jenkins , Simon Taylor, Use of simulation to test client-server models, Proceedings of the 28th conference on Winter simulation, p.1210-1217, 8–11 December 1996, Coronado, California, United States〕〔cited by Stewart Robinson, Three sources of simulation inaccuracy (and how to overcome them), Proceedings of the 31st conference on Winter simulation: Simulation—a bridge to the future, p.1701-1708, 5–8 December 1999, Phoenix, Arizona, United States〕 * ''Beyond Belief'', on the History of Christianity, Published by Garnet Publishers〔 retrieved 10 June 2012〕〔Eller, Jack David, Review of Beyond Belief. Anthropology Review Database 27 January 2012. , accessed 10 June 2012.〕 * ''On The Crusade against the people of the Languedoc'', a translation of Voltaire's ''Essai sur les moeurs et l'esprit des nations'', ch LXII, (1756)〔:fr:Essai sur les mœurs et l'esprit des nations, retrieved 10 June 2012.〕〔 retrieved 10 June 2012〕〔 retrieved 4 December 2014〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「James McDonald (writer)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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