Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World

  • Multimedia

Book thumbnail image

How Himmler’s personality shaped the SS

As head of the SS, chief of police, ‘Reichskommissar for the Consolidation of Germanness’, and Reich Interior Minister, Heinrich Himmler enjoyed a position of almost unparalleled power and responsibility in Nazi Germany. Perhaps more than any other single Nazi leader aside from Hitler, his name has become a byword for the terror, persecution, and destruction that characterized the Third Reich.

Read More
Book thumbnail image

What makes an image an icon?

Image, branding, and logos are obsessions of our age. Iconic images dominate the media. In his new book, Christ to Coke, art historian Professor Martin Kemp examines eleven mega-famous examples of icons, including the American flag, the image of Christ’s face, the double helix of DNA, and the heart.

Read More
Book thumbnail image

The Battle of Midway: a narrated slideshow

There are few moments in American history in which the course of events tipped so suddenly and so dramatically as at the Battle of Midway. At dawn of June 4, 1942, a rampaging Japanese navy ruled the Pacific. By sunset, their vaunted carrier force (the Kido Butai) had been sunk and their grip on the Pacific had been loosened forever.

Read More

Actor, receptor, witness

We all play three roles in every moment of our lives. As actors we move, speak, push and pull, make decisions, and otherwise engage in any number of activities animated by our goals and desires. As receptors we use our senses to listen, smell, touch, get pushed and pulled, and react emotionally to other people. As witnesses we observe everything going on around us, analyzing, synthesizing, describing, explaining, and understanding the world in which we live.

Read More
Book thumbnail image

A concise overview of the Press

We, the editors of OUPblog, field a lot of questions about “the Press.” Sometimes, these questions aren’t even questions, just statements of misinformation or confusion such as:

I thought you just published textbooks…

But Oxford University Press is in Oxford…

OUPblog is amazing! (Oops, how’d that one slip in there…)

Read More
Book thumbnail image

Yeats, faeries, and the Irish occult tradition

W. B. Yeats is usually seen as a great innovator who put his stamp so decisively on modern Irish literature that most of his successors worked in his shadow. R. F. Foster’s new book, Words Alone: Yeats and his Inheritances, weaves together literature and history to present an alternative perspective.

Read More
Book thumbnail image

From First Impressions to Pride and Prejudice

Pride and Prejudice has delighted generations of readers with its unforgettable cast of characters, carefully choreographed plot, and a hugely entertaining view of the world and its absurdities. With the arrival of eligible young men in their neighbourhood, the lives of Mr and Mrs Bennet and their five daughters are turned inside out and upside down.

Read More
Book thumbnail image

Back to school special part 1: education data today

With the new school year approaching, Social Explorer is taking a closer look at education data today and over the years. The most recent available data (from the 2009 American Community Survey) reveal education levels and distinctions among groups, as well as the correlations between educational attainment, income and employment.
The most recent available data (from the 2009 American Community Survey) reveal education levels and distinctions among groups, as well as the correlations between educational attainment, income and employment.

Read More
Book thumbnail image

Nazis on the run

Gerald Steinacher is the first person to uncover the full extent of the secret escape routes and hiding places ‘ratlines’ that smuggled Nazis out of Europe, through South Tyrol, across the Alps into Italy, and onward to Argentina and elsewhere. His ground-breaking research in the archives of the ICRC in Geneva brought to light the fact that the Red Cross supplied travel papers to war criminals – amongst them Adolf Eichmann and Josef Mengele.

Read More
Book thumbnail image

A Merciless Place

A Merciless Place is a story lost to history for over two hundred years; a dirty secret of failure, fatal misjudgement and desperate measures which the British Empire chose to forget almost as soon as it was over.

Read More
Book thumbnail image

The gods are on Twitter

I’ve been seeing gods everywhere lately. Not gods like Thor, Ganesha, and God. My cinnamon rolls have been deity-free, if not gluten-free. It’s lexical gods I can’t seem to escape. Everywhere I look someone is thanking, cursing, or begging some specific group of supreme beings. For example, I’ve recently spotted the following religious invocations: • […]

Read More