Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World
Timothy H. Parsons is Professor of African History at Washington University. His new book, The Rule of Empires: Those Who Built Them, Those Who Endured Them, and Why They Always Fail, illuminates the features common to all empires and lays bare the rationalization of imperialists and their apologists and exposes the true goals, and limits, of hard power. In the excerpt below, from the beginning of a chapter on Muslim Spain, we learn about the conquest of Spain.
A couple of weeks ago I brought you a post on the Hay Festival by OUP UK’s Head of Publicity Kate Farquhar-Thomson. Today, for those of you who couldn’t make it to the Festival (like me), here are some of Kate’s photos from the few days she spent there.
The forces of real estate development and rebranding campaigns are transforming urban landscapes around the world─and Sharon Zukin has seen much of it first hand. In the following podcast she explains what happens to the people when a city gains financial capital or decides to change its image. Zukin teaches sociology at Brooklyn College and the City University Graduate Center, and is author of this year’s Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places.
The morning of June 9th, I and about 500 NYC elementary school students gathered at the Apollo theater to dance, gawk at rap music icons, and…learn about healthy eating. Hip Hop HEALS (Healthy Eating and Living in Schools) is a program that seeks to teach young people the rules for healthy living, ways to prevent heart disease and strokes, and curb the incidences of childhood obesity.
Wednesday 16 June was Bloomsday, when fans of James Joyce’s seminal 1922 novel Ulysses celebrate the author’s work. In Ulysses, the action takes place within a single day – 16 June 1904 – in Dublin. As my own nod to Bloomsday, I’m bringing you a short excerpt from Jeri Johnson‘s Introduction to the Oxford World’s Classics edition of Ulysses, in which she talks about the novel’s formidable reputation and the intimidation readers coming to the novel for the first time might feel.
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?
Geoffrey Block, Distinguished Professor of Music History at the University of Puget Sound, is the author of Enchanted Evenings: The Broadway Musical From Show Boat to Sondheim and Lloyd Webber. The book offers theater lovers an illuminating behind-the-scenes tour of some of America’s best loved, most admired, and most enduring musicals, as well as a riveting history. In the post below we provide the answers to last week’s Tony quiz. How many did you get correct?
We’ve made it to Friday, everyone! From now on, you’ll be hearing a lot more from me as I transition into the role of Blog Editor after next week. To let you know a little about myself, Rebecca has graciously let me share some items that caught my attention this week.
Who would Fabio Capello, England manager, have picked with the whole of British history to choose from?
On this day in history, June 11, 1920, Irving Howe was born. To celebrate his birth I turned to the American National Biography which led me to an entry by Shirley Laird. The ANB offers portraits of more than 17,400 men and women – from all eras and walks of life – whose lives have shaped the nation. Learn about Irving Howe below.
Debra Satz is Marta Sutton Weeks Professor of Ethics in Society and Professor of Philosophy at Stanford University. Her new book, Why Some Things Should Not Be For Sale: The Moral Limits of Markets, is a critical look at the commodity exchanges that strike us as most problematic. What considerations, she asks, ought to guide the debates about such markets? She offers a broader and more nuanced view of markets – one that goes beyond the usual discussions of efficiency and distributional equality – to show how particular markets shape our culture, foster or thwart human development, and support or undermine structures of power. In the excerpt below, from the chapter on women’s reproductive labor, Satz begins to tackle the questions involved in pregnancy contracts.
Gordon Thompson is Professor of Music at Skidmore College. His book, Please Please Me: Sixties British Pop, Inside Out, offers an insider’s view of the British pop-music recording industry. In the post below he looks at the 10th of June, 1960. Check out Thompson’s other posts here.
Geoffrey Block, Distinguished Professor of Music History at the University of Puget Sound, is the author of Enchanted Evenings: The Broadway Musical From Show Boat to Sondheim and Lloyd Webber. The book offers theater lovers an illuminating behind-the-scenes tour of some of America’s best loved, most admired, and most enduring musicals, as well as a riveting history. In the original post Block challenges readers to test their Tony knowledge. We will post the answers next Wednesday so be sure to check back.
A few weeks ago I had the honor of attending BEA2010 (no not the BEA that happened last week) which was part of the 2010NAB conference. I was there to celebrate the launch of the BBC College of Journalism Website (COJO) a collaboration between OUP and the BBC. The site allows citizens outside of the UK access to the online learning and development materials created for BBC journalists. It is a vast resource filled to the brim with videos, audio clips, discussion pages, interactive modules and text pages covering every aspect of TV, radio, and online journalism. At the conference I had a chance to talk with Kevin Marsh, the Executive Editor of COJO, and I will be sharing clips from our conversation for the next few weeks. This week I have posted a clip in which Kevin shares why he choose journalism as a career. Read Kevin’s blog here. Watch the other videos in this series here and here.
J. C. McKeown is a Professor of Classics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. His new book, A Cabinet of Roman Curiosities: Strange Tales and Surprising Facts from the World’s Greatest Empire, is a collection carefully gleaned from the wide body of evidence left to us by the Romans themselves. Each fact or opinion highlights a curious feature of life in ancient Rome. Below we have excerpted some tidbits from the chapter on Roman toilets.
Don’t know what to read this summer? Swore off ye olde canon after high school? Associate Editor Andrew Herrmann insists that literary classics are a necessary foundation for any pop cultural enthusiast,and he has just the two for us: a bawdy ancient novel and a sweeping swashbuckling adventure. (Don’t worry, no plot spoilers here!)