Editor's Picks

What on Earth is The Wind in the Willows?

By Peter Hunt
To judge from a quick poll of friends, acquaintances, students, and the ladies in the village shop, The Wind in the Willows is fondly remembered, even by those who don’t actually remember reading it. It is a children’s book, it is about small animals – and it is somehow quintessentially English: for almost everyone I spoke to, it conjured up endless summer, boating on a quiet river, large hampers of food, a peaceful, unthreatening way of life.

While You Are/n’t Sleeping

Dr. Rosalind Cartwright has dedicated her life’s work to the study of sleep, and in her new book The Twenty-four Hour Mind: The Role of Sleep and Dreaming in Our Emotional Lives she proposes a new theory on the confluence of our dreaming and waking selves. Cartwright discussed the film Inception with us a few weeks ago, and here she answers a few more questions I had about the unconscious mind.

QUIZ: How well do you know your -nyms?

By Alexander Humez
Do you fancy yourself to be a grammarian extraordinaire? Prove it and take THIS QUIZ! Now is the opportunity to dazzle your friends and confound your enemies with a test of your –nym knowledge. The test consists of a list of ten words, each beginning with the letter k, each serving as an example of a –nym that you are asked to identify from a set of choices. Immediate feedback is provided for each choice, and you can display your final score when you’re done.

The Mysteries of Summer

By Rosemary Herbert

Henry James was a man of many words. But when it came to selecting just a pair that he would define as “the two most beautiful words in the English language,” he chose the words, “summer afternoon.” If you are an avid reader setting out for a weekend — or better yet, an extended vacation — with a stack of books or a well-loaded electronic reader in hand, you may speculate that James saw summer afternoons as beautiful because they are especially congenial times to spend reading. Voracious readers know that the prospect of extended leisure time to spend with their books is one of the great joys of summer.

The Man Who Did Not Take His Medicine

“Some memories are more vivid than others, some experiences more profound. Pedro’s story is one of those. I remember the morning Pedro told me in the stroke clinic that his greatest pain since his stroke was his physical inability to care for Lucy, his dog. I remember the noose of hopelessness dangling around his neck; the way he sat in front of me, scratching frenziedly at his paralyzed right arm, the deep excoriation marks, the trails of oozing blood from under his skin, my concerns about a drug allergy, and the way he talked about Lucy. I remember watching tears fall from his heavy eyes and the relief in my heart that he was opening up for the first time in months since his stroke. I remember not knowing what to do; a momentary lapse that seemed infinitely long.”

Military Strategy at the Battle of Bull Run

Donald Stoker is Professor of Strategy and Policy for the U.S. Naval War College‘s program at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. His most recent book is The Grand Design: Strategy and the U.S. Civil War, and in the original post below, he dismantles a common myth about the Battle of Bull Run–the first major land battle of the Civil War–which was fought 149 years ago, today.

Ethiopia Since Live Aid, Part I: An Excerpt

Kicking off three great OUPblog posts on Famine and Foreigners: Ethiopia Since Live Aid is a short excerpt from the first chapter. Come back tomorrow for an exclusive Q&A with Peter Gill, followed by an original post by him on Thursday.

Measuring Progress in Afghanistan

David Kilcullen is a former Senior Counterinsurgency Advisor to General David Patraeus in Iraq as well as a former advisor to General Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan. Kilcullen is also Adjunct Professor of Security Studies, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, a Fellow at the Center for a New American Security, and the author of The Accidental Guerrilla (2009). His new book, Counterinsurgency, is a no-nonsense picture of modern warfare informed by his experiences on the ground in some of today’s worst trouble spots–including Iraq and Afghanistan. In this excerpt, Kilcullen shares a few insights as to how progress in the Afghan campaign can be properly tracked and assessed.

The Unsung: Lost Stories of New York Urban Renewal

Samuel Zipp is Assistant Professor of American Civilization and Urban Studies at Brown University, and author of Manhattan Projects: The Rise and Fall of Urban Renewal in Cold War New York. In this original post, Zipp moves beyond the well-known personalities of Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs, profiling another cast of characters who molded and shaped the city we know today. For fun facts, media bites, and more about the evolution of New York City, check out the Manhattan Projects Facebook page.

Here’s Looking at You, New York

By Michelle Rafferty

This month Oxford celebrated the publication of the newest edition of the landmark AIA Guide to New York City with a launch party in the largest architectural exhibit in the world─The Panorama of the City of New York at the Queens Museum of Art. Where can you find an apartment for $50 in New York City? The ego of Robert Moses?

What Everyone Needs To Know About China: A Quiz

Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom is a Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine. His new book, China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know, covers everything form Confucius and Mao to Internet censorship. In the post below Wasserstrom poses some questions about China that you can find the answers to in his book. See if you can answer them in the comments. We will post the answers tomorrow. For more China questions check out another quiz by Wasserstrom that appeared on The China Beat.

Writing Emerald Cities

Joan Fitzgerald is Professor and Director of the Law, Policy and Society Program at Northeastern University. Her new book, Emerald Cities: Urban Sustainability and Economic Development, is a refreshing look at how American cities are leading the way toward greener, cleaner, and more sustainable forms of economic development. Emerald Cities is very readable and Marco Trbovich of the Huffington Post wrote, “Fitzgerald combines the academic discipline of an urban planner with the rigors of shoe-leather journalism in crafting a book that documents where real progress is being made….” In the original post below Fitzgerald shares how she found the fine balance between “academic discipline” and “shoe-leather journalism”.

The Plundered Planet Podcast Series: Day 1

Which is more important: saving the environment or fixing global poverty? Economist Paul Collier argues that we can find a middle ground and do both in his new book The Plundered Planet: Why We Must—and How We Can—Manage Nature for Global Prosperity.

Is Organic Food Healthier or Safer to Eat?

Food Politics: What Everyone Needs To Know, carefully examines and explains the most important issues on today’s global food landscape. Politics in this area have become polarized and Robert Paarlberg helps us map this contested terrain, challenging myths and critiquing more than a few of today’s fashionable beliefs about farming and food. In the excerpt below we learn about the organic food.

Several Fronts, Two Universes, One Discourse

Tariq Ramadan is a very public figure, named one of Time magazine’s most important innovators of the twenty-first century, he is among the leading Islamic thinkers in the West. But he has also been a lightening rod for controversy. In his new book, What I Believe, he attempts to set the record straight, laying out the basic ideas he stands for in clear and accessible prose.

Travel Tips

Grace Labatt helps us travel well in 2010.