Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World

February 2011

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Is Biography Proper History?

By Jonathan Steinberg
When I began my career in academic life as an historian, the answer was a loud No. Biography fell into the category of ‘unserious’ stuff, written by amateurs. Not any more. Big biographies of Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Churchill, Lyndon Johnson and many others pour from the pens of the most distinguished academic historians.

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The Beatles at the Cavern Club, 9 February 1961

By Gordon Thompson

Fifty years ago, one of the great stories in pop music began when the Beatles debuted in a dank arched subterranean Liverpool club dedicated to music. Located in the narrow lane called Mathew Street, just of North John Street, the Cavern Club had opened as a jazz haven that enfolded blues and skiffle, which was how the Quarry Men, John Lennon’s precursor to the Beatles, had first descended the steps and climbed the tiny stage in August 1957. Three-and-a-half years later, the Beatles had evolved into a

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The Short and the Long of it

By Anatoly Liberman

There are two questions here. First, why does again rhyme with den, fen, ten rather than gain? Second, where did -t in against come from? I’ll begin with against.

Old English had a ramified system of endings. The most common ending of the genitive was -s, which also occurred as a suffix of adverbs, or in words that, by definition, had no case forms at all (adverbs are not declined!). It is easy to detect the traces of the adverbial -s in such modern words as

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Ali, Aliens, and Athena

By C. W. Marshall
Working in popular culture as an academic can mean turning one’s guilty pleasures into an object of study. So it was for me when I read the 2010 re-release of DC’s 1978 comic, Superman vs. Muhammad Ali (written by Dennis O’Neil and Neal Adams). Along with the Rumble in the Jungle (his 1974 fight against George Foreman in Kinshasa, Zaire, in which he regained the Heavyweight title) and the Thrilla in Manilla (his 1975 fight against in the Philippines against Joe Frazier), Muhammad Ali’s fight against Superman would surely rank as a highpoint in his 1970s boxing career. I wasn’t reading this for its classical content.

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How Publius Might Counsel Egypt

By Elvin Lim

As the situation continues to unfold in Egypt, and as the White House continues to walk a fine line between support for democracy and support for a new regime which may not be as pro-American as Hosni Mubarak‘s was, Publius, the author of the Federalist Papers may lend us some wisdom.

It may surprise some people, but Publius was no fan of democracy. “Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention,” Publius wrote in Number 10. The mob cannot rule, though the mob may

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The Nine Lives of Ronald Reagan

By Gil Troy

As we mark the centennial (Feb. 6th, 2011) of Ronald Reagan’s birth, the tug of war over his legacy continues. Reagan’s popular image – and popularity — have fluctuated as wildly as the stock market. One way to make sense of this is to think of Ronald Reagan as having nine public lives.

Central to the Reagan legend is this conservative Republican president’s origins as a Hollywood Democrat. Ronald Reagan was a New Deal Democrat who by the 1950s felt that the Democratic Party had lost its way. He always insisted: “Maybe my party changed. I didn’t.” And yes, Reagan was an actor.

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Legislators’ Pension Spikes as Broken Windows: The Connecticut Example

By Edward Zelinsky

Connecticut’s new governor, Dannel P. Malloy, has appointed six sitting members of the Nutmeg State’s General Assembly to positions in the executive branch. These gubernatorial appointments have engendered a fair amount of discussion since special elections will be required to fill the legislative vacancies resulting from these appointments.

There has, however, been no public discussion of the pension implications of these appointments. Under Connecticut’s retirement plans for government employees, relatively brief service in executive positions results in significant spikes in legislators’ state pensions.

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Phone-hacking: The law may be difficult to understand but that’s no excuse

By Simon McKay
In 1928 the iconic United States Supreme Court Justices Holmes and Brandeis dissented in a judgment that ruled the product of telephone conversations derived from “wiretapping” admissible. With characteristic eloquence, Mr Justice Brandeis held that “the confined criminal is as much entitled to redress as his most virtuous fellow citizen; no record of crime, however long, makes one an outlaw”. The judges could be forgiven for thinking that, at least in terms of the English law, eighty years on, things haven’t changed much.

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The View from Cairo

We are all fine. Many dramatic events over the last few days. Particularly disturbing was the battle for the Interior Ministry just up the road from my house, which went on for eight hours on Saturday: we heard and watched the police firing tear gas and live fire (including automatic weapons) and the protesters ducking into back alleys to make and throw Molotov cocktails. Also very disturbing the violent clashes that are happening right now on Tahrir Square, while the army stand and watch.

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A post-racial NFL?

With Mike Tomlin on his way to his second Super Bowl in three years and with Black History Month upon us, this is an ideal time to examine the movement that broke down the color barrier at the top of National Football League’s coaching hierarchy and transformed the NFL into an unlikely equal opportunity trailblazer. Moreover, as American institutions of all sorts, from the Association of Art Museum Directors to the National Urban League, contemplate the merits of emulating the NFL’s Rooney Rule, it is important to

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Happy 100th Birthday, Ronald Reagan!

During his eight years as president, and especially after, supporters praised Reagan as a transformative leader who, like Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt, used his power to alter fundamentally the nation’s direction. Even many Americans who disliked Reagan’s policies agreed that he might well be the most influential president since Roosevelt, turning the nation away from many of the “big government” programs initiated during the New Deal. Reagan received widespread praise for restoring national pride and an unembarrassed muscular patriotism that had lapsed after the debacles of the Vietnam War, the Watergate Scandals, and the economic reversals of the 1970s.

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The Oxford Comment Archive

In Spring 2010, Lauren and Michelle decided it was time Oxford University Press got a podcast, and by September, The Oxford Comment was born. Reporting at special events, live on the street, and from the “studio,” each episode features commentary from Oxford authors and friends of the Press.

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Why we all love Mrs Beeton

By Nicola Humble
BBC 2 has rediscovered Mrs Beeton, with Sophie Dahl tramping the streets of Cheapside and Epsom looking for the real woman behind Household Management. It is worth the shoe leather – Mrs Beeton’s is certainly a story well worth telling. The author of the most famous cook book ever published began work on it at the age of twenty-one and finished it at four years later. Her book was first published in volume form in 1861 and has never been out of print since. Isabella herself died seven years after its publication of puerperal fever, contracted during the birth of her fourth child. She was 28.

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