Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World
Many of our readers will have first acquainted themselves with an Oxford World’s Classic as a child. In these videos, Peter Hunt, who was responsible for setting up the first course in children’s literature in the UK, reintroduces us to The Secret Garden, The Wind in the Willows, and Treasure Island.
Think you know your country music? While “Crazy” was made famous by Patsy Cline, it was composed by Willie Nelson. And that brings us to Level 3: Crazy — the last stage in our three-part country music quiz, compiled by the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, Michael McCall, John Rumble, and Paul Kingsbury — authors of The Encyclopedia of Country Music. Tonight is the 47th Annual Academy of Country Music Awards. Are you ready?
Let’s test your knowledge from honky tonk to hillbilly blues. Here’s the second of a three-part quiz on the twang of guitars and accents, compiled by the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, Michael McCall, John Rumble, and Paul Kingsbury — authors of The Encyclopedia of Country Music. You can still go back and take “Quiz on country media, Level 1: Walk the line.” All this is running up to the 47th Annual Academy of Country Music Awards is this Sunday, April 1st. Can you pass all three levels of our a country music knowledge challenge?
The 47th Annual Academy of Country Music Awards is this Sunday, April 1st, so we thought it was time to pull together a country music knowledge challenge. Compiled by the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, Michael McCall, John Rumble and Paul Kingsbury — authors of The Encyclopedia of Country Music — we begin the first of a three-part quiz on the twang of guitars and accents today. How much do you know about the music of “three chords and the truth”?
By Desmond Clarke
When searchable editions of classic philosophical texts became available in the 1980s, one proud publisher advertised the benefits of this new technology at an APA meeting by inviting participants to do a sample search of Locke’s Essay concerning Human Understanding.
Is staggering population growth and intensifying effects of climate change driving the oasis-based society of the American Southwest close to the brink of a Dust-Bowl-scale catastrophe? Today is International World Water Day. Held annually on 22 March, it focuses attention on the importance of freshwater and advocating for the sustainable management of freshwater resources. We sat down with William deBuys, author of A Great Aridness: Climate Change and the Future of the American Southwest, to discuss what lies ahead for Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas and Utah.
While Irish eyes are smiling on St. Patrick’s Day, many Finns are already celebrating St. Urho’s Day. The holiday was first celebrated in Minnesota on March 16th, which happens to be just before St. Patrick’s Day.
We challenged author Peter Bentley to name the most important and unknown people in the history of computer science in under three minutes. Which famous computer scientist had a passion for unicycles and juggling?
Imagine luxury hotels during the bygone days when explorers, travelers, and foreign occupying forces mingled. Walk into the lavish lobbies and moonlit terraces of these “gilded refuges.” Mix with delighted high-society, dining and dancing while “wintering on the Nile.” Journalist, editor, and author Andrew Humphreys recreates this world with well-documented accounts, extracts, and anecdotes; vintage photography; and full-color illustrations of travel posters, luggage labels, postcards, decorated letterheads, menus, and invitations in Grand Hotels of Egypt: In the Golden Age of Travel. We sat down with Andrew Humphreys to discuss the glamorous guests, glorious architecture, and regrettable colonialism.
In Waking the Giant, Bill McGuire argues that now that human activities are driving climate change as rapidly as anything seen in post-glacial times, the sleeping giant beneath our feet is stirring once again. The close of the last Ice Age saw not only a huge temperature hike but also the Earth’s crust bouncing and bending in response to the melting of the great ice sheets and the filling of the ocean basins — dramatic geophysical events that triggered earthquakes, spawned tsunamis, and provoked a series of eruptions from the world’s volcanoes.
In these videos, The Life of Slang author Julie Coleman tells us how — and how fast — slang can spread from one side of the globe to another, and gives us 26 ways of saying ‘groovy’.
It’s Mardi Gras today and revellers may recognize skull and skeleton decorations also used on the Day of the Dead. Santa Muerte is the skeleton saint whose cult has attracted millions of devotees over the past decade. We wanted to ask R. Andrew Chestnut about this folk saint’s impact today.
By Andrew Zurcher
The “Februarie” eclogue of Edmund Spenser’s pastoral collection, The Shepheardes Calender, was first published in 1579. It presents a conversation between two shepherds, a brash “Heardmans boye” called Cuddie and an old stick-in-the-mud named Thenot.
By Sydney Beveridge
Cupid scours a trove of demographic data to guide his arrows. This Valentine’s Day, let Social Explorer help you map your way to love.
By Emily Ardizzone and Anna Wright
2012 will be a momentous year for the UK capital, and the new collections presented in London in this week will no doubt add to the growing feeling of excitement in the run up to the Olympic Games. London’s Fashion Royalty will all be present, from established design houses such as Aquascutum and Paul Smith, to new and emerging talent in the form of the Central St Martins’ Graduate show.
“The text that scholars read matters everything to them because all their interpretations are based on what’s in the text. And so if the text is defective, the interpretations are going to be affected.”