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How well do you know Mary Shelley? [Quiz]
How well do you know Mary Shelley? Take this short quiz to find out and put your knowledge to the test.
Five books to celebrate British Science Week
To celebrate British Science Week, join in the conversation and keep abreast of the latest in science by delving into our reading list. It contains five of our latest books on evolutionary biology, the magic of mathematics, artificial intelligence, and more.
The VSI podcast season three: ageing, Pakistan, slang, psychopathy, and more
Listen to season three of The VSI Podcast for concise and original introductions to a selection of our VSI titles from the authors themselves.
Engineering a new capitalism for the 21st century
Former Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney has observed that society has, unfortunately, come to embody Oscar Wilde’s old aphorism: “knowing the price of everything but the value of nothing”.
The VSI podcast season two: Homer, film music, consciousness, samurai, and more
Listen to season two of The VSI Podcast for concise and original introductions to a selection of our VSI titles from the authors themselves.
“The Real America”: immigration and American identity
A new, in both tone and aspirations, presidential administration has taken office in the United States, and the prospect for significant change in the approach to immigration, one of the hot button issues advanced by President Donald Trump, is present at its inception.
25 years of Very Short Introductions: listen to the anniversary podcast series
In 2020 we are proud to be celebrating the 25th anniversary of our Very Short Introductions. Listen to concise and original podcast episodes by our Very Short Introductions authors on a variety of dynamic topics for wherever your curiosity may take you.
A change in Brazil’s national populist government
As we approach 15 November, a national holiday marking the end of the Brazilian Empire and proclamation of the Brazilian Republic in 1889, and also a day of municipal elections, many Brazilians may be contemplating what has happened to their country and where it might be heading.
The history of Canada Day
Because they raise difficult questions about who we are and who we want to be, national holidays are contested. Can a single day ever contain the diversity and the contradictions inherent in a nation? Is there even a “we” and an “us”? Canada Day is no exception. Celebrated on 1 July, it marks the anniversary […]
Re-reading Camus’s The Plague in pandemic times
Sometime in the 1940s in the sleepy colonial city of Oran, in French occupied Algeria, there was an outbreak of plague. First rats died, then people. Within days, the entire city was quarantined: it was impossible to get out, and no one could get in. This is the fictional setting for Albert Camus’s second most famous novel, The Plague (1947). And yes, there are some similarities to our current situation with the coronavirus. First, […]
The impeachment illusion
The best barometer of political anger is how often the word “impeachment” appears in news stories, editorials, and Congressional rhetoric. These days, the references have grown exponentially, despite the House Speaker’s efforts to keep her members focused on legislation. The constitutional definition of “high crimes and misdemeanors” is vague enough to have encouraged members of […]
The ethics of the climate emergency
During the last few days of February we experienced the warmest Winter day since records began, with a high of 20.6 degrees (Celsius) at Trawscoed in mid-Wales. As if that was not enough, the record was broken again the next day with 21.2 degrees at Kew Gardens.
The continuing life of science fiction
In 1998 Thomas M. Disch boldly declared in The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of: How Science Fiction Conquered the World that science fiction had become the main kind of fiction which was commenting on contemporary social reality. As a professional writer, we could object that Disch had a vested interest in making this assertion, but virtually every day news items confirm his argument that SF connects with an amazingly broad range of public issues.
Plato’s mistake
It started innocently enough at a lunch-time event with some friends at the Randolph Hotel in the centre of Oxford. ‘The trouble with Islam …’ began some self-opinioned pundit, and I knew where he was going. Simple. Islam lends itself to fanaticism, and that is why Muslims perpetrate so much violence in the name of religion. The pundit saw himself as Christian, and therefore a man of peace, so I had my cue. ‘Look out of the window. Over there in the fork of the road you see the Martyr’s Memorial. In 1555 the Wars of Religion were in full spate, Catholics were burning Protestants at the stake, Protestants were no less fanatical when their turn came, and things got even worse with the Civil War. So why are Muslims any worse?’
The history of The Declaration of the Rights of the Child
Virtually every news cycle seems to feature children as victims of military actions, gun violence, economic injustice, racism, sexism, sexual abuse, hunger, underfunded schools, unbridled commercialism—the list is endless. Each violates our sense of what childhood ought to be and challenges what we believe childhood has always been. But the ideas that shape our notions of childhood emerged less than a century ago. Reformers and policy-makers had struggled toward creating a modern childhood since the 1830s.
The ever-evolving US Supreme Court
Justice Byron R. White, who served on the Supreme Court for 31 years (1962-1993), once observed that every time a new justice joins the court, it’s a new court. His observation may sound counter-intuitive: after all, a new justice joins eight incumbents. Can a single new member make such a difference?