Ruth Garrett Millikan "Language: A Biological Model "
Guiding the work of most linguists and philosophers of language today is the assumption that language is governed by prescriptive normative rules. Many believe that it is of the essence of thought itself to follow rules, rules of inference determining the intentional contents of our concepts, and that these rules originate as internalized rules of language. However, exactly what it is for there to be such things as normative rules of language remains distressingly unclear. From what source do these norms flow? What sanctions enforce them? What happens, exactly, if you don't follow the rules? How do children learn the rules? Ruth Millikan presents a radicallly different way of viewing the partial regularities that language displays, the norms and conventions of language. The central norms applying to language, like those norms of function and behavior that account for the survival and proliferation of biological traits, are non-evaluative norms. Specific linguistic forms survive and are reproduced together with co-operative hearer responses because, in a critical mass of cases, these patterns of production and response benefit both speakers and hearers. Conformity is needed only often enough to ensure that the co-operative use constituting the norm - the convention - continues to be copied and hence continues to characterize some interactions of some speaker-hearer pairs. What needs to be reproduced for discursive language forms to survive, it turns out, is not specific conceptual roles but only satisfaction conditions coupled to essential elements of hearer responses. An uncompromising rejection of conceptual analysis as a tool in philosophy results. At the same time the distinction between the propositional content and the force of a linguistic utterance comes into very sharp focus, force emerging as essential to the creation of content rather than as something added to content. The distinction between illocutionary and perlocutionary force, the distinction between linguistic meaning and speaker meaning, and the semantics/pragmatics distinction are each illuminated in new and crisper ways. On the model proposed, neither the intentionality of thought nor the intentionality of language is derived from the other. Processes involved in understanding language are not Gricean but more like direct perception of the world as mediated, for example, through the natural signs contained in the structured light that allows vision. There are also startling implications for pragmatics, and for how children learn language.

David Ritchie, Alexander E. Gates, "Encyclopedia of Earthquakes and Volcanoes"
From aa to Yellowstone, if it's got anything at all to do with earthquakes or volcanoes, you're likely to find within the pages of this updated encyclopedia from science journalist David Ritchie and Rutgers geology professor Alexander Gates.
The 1,000-plus alphabetical listings range from historical volcanoes and quakes (both famous and obscure) to entries on specific seismic phenomena (everything from parasitic cones to jökulhlaup) and general geological principles, including a few excellent in-depth discussions on topics like plate tectonics and seismic wave types. The encyclopedia also contains a lengthy bibliography, a list of Internet resources, a chronological listing of notable quakes and eruptions, and a handful of unforgettable eyewitness accounts (after the eruption of Vesuvius in A.D. 79, apparently Pliny the Elder's party went out "having pillows tied upon their heads with napkins; and this was their whole defense against the storm of stones that fell around them").
With its clear, newspaper-style entries, the Encyclopedia of Earthquakes and Volcanoes will be navigable even to geo-newbies, but its a-to-z organization makes it more useful as a reference than as a stand-alone text.

Encyclopedia of Catholicism By Frank K. Flinn
This is yet another book of the series about world religions, giving us an opportunity to get acquainted with the language and thought used in this large  field of knowledge.
Publisher: Facts on File
Number Of Pages: 670
Publication Date: 2007-04-20

Encyclopedia Of Hinduism
By Constance A. Jones, James D. Ryan

Publisher: Facts on File
Number Of Pages: 512
Publication Date: 2007-02-28

This is an immensely important book for Westerners
As a Westerner who became interested in Eastern spiritual teachings thirty years ago, I was appalled to discover then, my own ignorance and the ignorance of others in the West about Hinduism and its spinoff, Buddhism, the principal Eastern religions.
There is even today in the West, thirty years later, a vacuum of knowledge about Hinduism. The Encyclopedia of Hinduism by professors Jones and Ryan helps to fill this vacuum in a simple, straightforwsrd way.
The entries are arranged alphabetically, and one can find information on the key concepts in Hinduism along with biographical and other information about the key historical and contemporary figures in this great world religion.
Of even more importance for the Westerner, in my view, is the ten page introduction explaining Hinduism's origins, its sacred texts, its contemporary situation, and its esoteric aspects sometimes known as Vedanta or Advaita which carry their own entries and typify the thorough nature of this Encyclopedic work.
You will not regret owning this book. Highly recommended.