August 2012

The difficulty of insider book theft

By Travis McDade
On Sunday, the New York Times reported on the wholesale looting of the prestigious Girolamini Library in Naples, Italy, by its director, Marino Massimo de Caro. He seems to have treated the place as his own personal collection, stealing and selling hundreds — maybe thousands — of rare and antiquarian books during his 11 month tenure. This has provoked the normal amount of head-shaking and hand-wringing. But what is most striking — aside from the embarrassing appointment of the unqualified de Caro to the job in the first place — is how terrible a thief he was.

Shark sensory mechanisms

By Ivan R. Schwab M.D. F.A.C.S.
Sharks always draw a crowd. We have a macabre fascination with these creatures because of their commanding presence and predatory lifestyle. Such a lifestyle demands high quality sensory systems, something sharks have had millions of years to develop.

Knockoff fashion, trend-setting, and the creative economy

Conventional wisdom holds that copying kills creativity, and that laws that protect against copies are essential to innovation and economic success. But are copyrights and patents always necessary? Kal Raustiala and Christopher Sprigman approach the question of incentives and innovation in a wholly new way in The Knockoff Economy — by exploring creative fields where copying is generally legal, such as fashion, food, and even professional football. The University of Virginia spoke with author Christopher Sprigman about the role of knockoffs in the fashion industry and their impact on the creative economy.

Did we really want a National Health Service?

By Nick Hayes
For most today, it’s difficult to imagine a British hospital system where treatment is not ‘free’ at the point of delivery, paid for out of national taxation, because in our imagination, the alternatives conjure pejorative images of the Americanisation of health. Those today opposed to decentralisation also echo the concerns of earlier health reformers like Dr Stark Murray, who thought the pre-nationalised hospital system simply disparate and chaotic.

A British ante-invasion: “Telstar,” 17 August 1962

By Gordon R. Thompson

Many describe the 1964 arrival of the Beatles in New York as the beginning of the “British Invasion,” but UK rock and pop had begun culturally infiltrating our consciousness much earlier. Indeed, a London instrumental group topped American charts in the fall of 1962 with a recording that celebrated the first telecommunications satellite. Launched from Cape Canaveral on 10 July,

The Demise of the Toff

By William Doyle
Born to tenants of a country squire in Yorkshire, I knew about what my grandmother called ‘toffs’ at an early age. The squire was a toff. As a child I scarcely realised that the squire and his lifestyle were already relics of a fast-disappearing pattern of society.

Even more facts about the Silk Road

By Valerie Hansen
The “Silk Road” was a stretch of shifting, unmarked paths across massive expanses of deserts and mountains — not a real road at any point or time. I previously examined the historical documents and evidence of the silk road, but here are a few more facts from camels to Marco Polo on this mysterious route. The peak years of the Silk Road trade were between 500 and 800 C.E., after the fall of the Han dynasty and Constantinople replaced Rome as the center of the Roman empire.

A double life: Leading flute historian and history editor Nancy Toff

By Alyssa Bender
One of our history editors here at Oxford University Press (OUP) has a unique second life. She is the author of two of our best-selling flute books on our music list, The Monarch of the Flute, recently released in paperback, and The Flute Book, a staple in the field and now out in its third edition. This editor is our very own Nancy Toff, and to celebrate these releases — as well as her receiving the National Flute Association’s 2012 National Service Award at the annual convention this past weekend — we sat down with Nancy for a Q&A.

Bereavement: the elephant in the room

By Christine Young and Tracy Dowling
For most of us the death of a child is unimaginable and when it happens to someone close to us, or in our community, we may have no idea of how to respond.  If you’re a grandparent or close family member you may well be dealing with your own sense of loss as well as thinking about how to support the bereaved family and it’s the latter that people typically struggle with.

Frank Close and Peter Higgs at the Edinburgh International Book Festival

As you may know, our author Frank Close spoke with Peter Higgs on Monday. We put out a call for questions earlier on the blog, but didn’t anticipate the warm enthusiasm of the crowd over Twitter (follow Frank Close on Twitter at @CloseFrank). Thank you for all your updates, pictures, encouraging comments. Here’s a quick recap.

I been, I seen, I done

By Anatoly Liberman
The forms in the title are substandard but ubiquitous in conversational English, and the universally understood reference to the genre called whodunit (it originated about seventy years ago) testifies to its partial victory. I have often heard the question about their origin and will try to answer it, though my information is scanty and to the best of my knowledge, a convincing theory of whodunit (the construction, not the genre) is lacking, which does not augur well for a detective story.

Julia Child at 100

One hundred years ago today, a legendary and influential American chef was born: Julia Child. From the introduction of fine cooking into every American home with books and television appearances, her unpretentious and enthusiastic attitude welcomed many to the best food can offer. We’re celebrating Julia Child’s life and work with an extract by Lynne Sampson from The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink.

Edgar Allan Poe and terror at sea

The wife of Edgar Allan Poe, Virginia Clemm Poe, was born 15 August 1822. She lived a brief life, marrying Poe at 13 (he was 27) and dying of tuberculosis at 24. Poe worked hard to support their marriage and in 1838, three years into their marriage, Poe wrote his only novel: The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. While many of Poe’s works after his wife’s death were marked by the deaths of young women, terror clearly fascinated him from an early stage. Here Arthur Gordon Pym recounts a frightening incident at sea.

15 August 1040: Macbeth kills King Duncan I of Scotland

By Daniel Swift
Susan Sontag wrote that having a photograph of Shakespeare would be like having a piece of the True Cross. We don’t have a photograph, of course, and even the portraits that we do have are unreliable, but in his plays he left snapshots of a different kind.

10 questions for Suzzy Roche

Each summer, Oxford University Press USA and Bryant Park in New York City partner for their summer reading series Word for Word Book Club. The Bryant Park Reading Room offers free copies of book club selection while supply lasts, compliments of Oxford University Press, and guest speakers lead the group in discussion. On Tuesday 21 August, Suzzy Roche leads a discussion on The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton, and will perform it at the end.

The great silence: Afghanistan in the presidential campaigns

By Andrew J. Polsky
From time to time, political commentators bemoan the fact that we don’t debate the war in Afghanistan in our political campaigns. Back in 2010, Tom Brokaw complained that in the heated mid-term elections neither party showed any interest in arguing about the best course to pursue in the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. He chalked this up to the fact that most Americans could opt out of military service, so the wars touched few families.