A Few Questions for Geneive Abdo
OUP talks with author Geneive Abdo about her new book Mecca and Mainstreet.
September 2006
Constitution Day
OUP presents an excerpt from Richard Labunski’s James Madison and the Struggle for the Bill of Rights to celebrate Constitution Day.
Sloth: a lifestyle
It’s Friday so we thought we would lighten things up and give our loyal readers something fun to kick-off the weekend with (not that our other posts aren’t fun!). So today Oxford University Press challenges you to be slothful, to lean back, sink into your couch and to remain there for 48-hours.
Protected: Oxford Companion To Italian Food Audio
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
Avoiding Toxic Leaders
Some advice for navigating the perils of voting.
This Day in History: The Battle of Chapultepec
This Day in History and the Mexican War.
The long arm of etymology, or, longing for word origins
Only children and foreigners express their surprise when they discover that the verb long does not mean “lengthen” or that belong has nothing to do with longing. When we grow up, we stop noticing how confusing such similarities of form coupled with differences in meaning are.
Who is Erin McKean?
Totally weird words from Oxford’s word mistress.
Greetings From A Vanished World, During a 500 Mile Trek
Chris Lowney reports on his travels.
Protected: Faith In The Halls of Power Audio
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
You Are What You Eat: The All-American Breakfast
Cereal commercials, nutritionists, and your mother all agree—breakfast is the most important meal of the day. That’s why Congress has declared September to be "All American Breakfast Month!" That begs the question: what is the all-American breakfast, anyway? The answer to that question has changed over the years. A cowboy in the 1880s may have […]
Not A Suicide Pact
Richard Posner’s new book and the headlines.
Women and literature: the dual tradition of African American fiction
The prevailing wisdom of most African Americanists, is that due to the distinctive history and acculturation of Africans in the British colonies in North America, African-American literature is most meaningfully assessed in the context of multiple geographical, oral, and literary heritages.
Monthly gleanings
On August 23, I appeared on the “Midmorning” show on Minnesota Public Radio. Many of you called in with questions, to some of which I could give immediate answers. But, the origin of several words I did not remember offhand and I promised to look them up in my database. Here are my responses.
The Death of Crazy Horse
On this date in 1877, Chief Crazy Horse rode into Fort Robinson in what is now Nebraska. Although he had been a major force in the resistance to the white man, he had finally surrended the previous May and was trying to adapt to life on the reservation. Unfortunately he had enemies within the Lakota […]
Interview with Terence Tao
“At age two I tried teaching other kids to count using number blocks” Terrence Tao, recent Fields Medal winner, is also the author of Solving Mathematical Problems, which will be published by Oxford University Press in September. Tao’s Medal was in “honor of his contributions to partial differential equations, combinatorics, harmonic analysis and additive number […]