Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World

Book thumbnail image

Ulster since 1600: politics, economy, and society

By Philip Ollerenshaw
For many people the terms Ulster, Northern Ireland, ‘the North’, conjure up images of communal conflict, sectarianism, and peace processes of indefinite duration. More than 3,500 people were killed in the national, communal and sectarian conflict that engulfed Northern Ireland between 1969 and Easter 1998 when the Good Friday Agreement was signed. Tens of thousands were injured or maimed, while sporadic acts of political violence persist to this day.

Read More
Book thumbnail image

Reflections on the shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School

By Kathleen M. Heide, Ph.D.
The mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut is a tragic event that is particularly painful as it comes at a time when people across the world are trying to focus on the upcoming holidays as the season of peace bringing good tidings of great joy. Three factors about the Newtown school shooting are noteworthy. First, it was a mass murder. Second, it appears to have been precipitated by the killing of a parent (parricide). Third, it was committed by a 20-year old man. All of these factors are relevant in making sense of what appears to be inexplicable violence.

Read More
Book thumbnail image

Some warning behaviors for targeted violence

By J. Reid Meloy, Ph.D.
As the debate concerning public and social policy surrounding gun control intensifies, I would like to offer some comments on the identification of individuals who concern us as potential perpetrators of planned killing(s). These thoughts are from the trenches of threat assessment, and do not address or offer opinions concerning the larger policy issues we face as a country regarding firearms and public mental health care — one of which is highly emotionally charged and the other sorely neglected.

Read More
Book thumbnail image

The Naming of Hobbits

By Michael Adams
It will be interesting to see how much of J. R. R. Tolkien’s several invented languages will appear in Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit. In a letter to his American publisher, dated 30 June 1955, Tolkien suspected there were limits to how much invented language readers would ‘stomach’, to use his term. There are certainly limits to how much can be included in a film. American audiences, anyway, are subtitle averse.

Read More
Book thumbnail image

Christmas dinner with the Cratchits

“There never was such a goose. Bob said he didn’t believe there ever was such a goose cooked. Its tenderness and flavour, size and cheapness, were the themes of universal admiration. Eked out by apple-sauce and mashed potatoes, it was a sufficient dinner for the whole family; indeed, as Mrs Cratchit said with great delight (surveying one small atom of bone upon the dish), they hadn’t ate it all particular, were steeped in sage and onion to the eyebrows!”

Read More
Book thumbnail image

Top ten Christmas carols of 2012

Christmas is the busiest time of year for the Oxford University Press Music Hire Library. With everyone wanting to include festive music in their December concerts the three Library worker elves are kept scurrying around the mile-long stretch of music shelves from September to December, busily packing up orders in time for Christmas concert rehearsals.

Read More
Book thumbnail image

How to help your children cope with unexpected tragedy

By Brenda Bursch
Children look to their parents to help them understand the inexplicable. They look to their parents to assuage worries and fears. They depend on their parents to protect them. What can parents do to help their children cope with mass tragedy, such as occurred this week with the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut?

Read More
Book thumbnail image

How many more children have to die?

By Rochelle Caplan, MD
Surely the time has finally come to put our heads together and focus on three seldom connected variables regarding mass murders in the United States: the lack of comprehensive psychiatric care for individuals with mental illness, poor public recognition of the red flags that an individual might harm others, and easy access to firearms.

Read More
Book thumbnail image

Ganja administration

By James H. Mills
It was announced 10 December as an outcome of the recent Commission into cannabis that the UK Government has decided to reorganise its ‘ganja administration’ with the objective of taxing sales of the drug in order to generate revenues and to control the price in order to discourage excessive consumption. The Government will work with partners from the private sector to ensure that products of a consistent quality are available to consumers.

Read More
Book thumbnail image

Roast Goose, the Mrs Beeton way

With Christmas approaching, we are looking towards the food we’ll share on the day itself. If you’re looking for ideas, who better to consult that Mrs Isabella Beeton herself, who authored the seminal Household Management at just 22 years old. Below is her sage advice on that classic Christmas meat, roast goose.

Read More
Book thumbnail image

Killing journalists in wartime: a legal analysis

By Sandesh Sivakumaran
The last couple of years have been bad for journalists. I’m not referring to phone-hacking, payments to police, and the like, which have occupied much attention in the United Kingdom these last months. Rather, I’m referring to the number of journalists who have been killed in wartime. These last two years alone have seen eminent journalists such as Marie Colvin and Tim Hetherington killed while reporting on armed conflicts.

Read More
Book thumbnail image

The ageing brain

By
As our bodies start to show the signs of ageing, our brain is naturally ageing too. But some older people can become forgetful and have trouble remembering common words or organising daily activities more than others. There are few proven interventions to prevent this kind of cognitive decline in older adults, although treating modifiable risk factors for vascular disease and stroke, such as cholesterol and body mass index, has been suggested as a promising approach to preventing or delaying cognitive impairment for a growing UK population of older adults. So is there a link between high blood pressure and forgetfulness?

Read More
Book thumbnail image

Don’t bank on it

By Beverley Hunt
With just over a week to go until Christmas, many of us are no doubt looking forward to the holidays and a few days off work. For those working on the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, however, writing the history of the language sometimes took precedence over a Christmas break.

Read More
Book thumbnail image

The life of J.R.R. Tolkien

Published in 1937 The Hobbit was Tolkien’s first published work of fiction, though he had been writing on legends since at least 1915. His creation — a mythological race of ‘hobbits’, in which Bilbo Baggins takes the lead — had originally been intended for children. But from the outset Tolkien’s saga also proved popular with adults, perhaps appreciative of the hobbits’ curiously English blend of resourcefulness and respectability.

Read More
Book thumbnail image

Oral history in disaster zones

By Caitlin Tyler-Richards
When Superstorm Sandy hit the United States’ east coast in late October, I was struck by the way in which oral historians and other like-minded academics responded to the ensuing chaos. This was not the first time I had seen oral history interact with natural disaster; one of the first articles I prepped for our Twitter feed was KUT News’ “Forged in Flames: An Oral History of the Labor Day Wildfires,” a multi-media documentation of the wildfires that overtook Texas in September 2011.

Read More
Book thumbnail image

Hanukkah and Christmas: a spiritual interpretation

By Roger S. Gottlieb
Ahhh…the joys of the holiday season in America! A frightening degree of crass commercialism, public rages about the ‘war on Christmas,’ emotionally draining family events or a soul-graying loneliness when you have no place to go. Food in abundance, but often consumed with a sense that it’s way off of one’s (more healthy) diet; or perhaps a nagging guilt that we in the middle/upper classes have so much more than the approximately 1 billion people who lack access to clean water, adequate food, and health services.

Read More