Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World
By Ashok Bardhan
Five years after the onset of the global financial crisis and the recession that followed, jobless growth seems to be the buzz-phrase for describing the economic landscape today; and even that ambiguously happy phrase refers to those economies that are growing.
By Barry S. Levy and Victor W. Sidel
We live in the richest nation on earth. Yet 15% of the US population (about 46 million people) live below the poverty line — about $23,000 for a family of four. Almost 25% of children live in poverty. The number of American households living on $2 or less grew by 130% between 1996 and 2011.
By Caitlin Tyler-Richards
In celebration of Veterans Day, we’re pleased to share a conversation between OHR managing editor Troy Reeves and Dr. Robert P. Wettemann Jr., director of the U.S. Air Force Academy Center for Oral History.
By Mary A. M. Rogers
Sometimes I think that Click and Clack – you know, the Car Talk™ experts – could give us a lesson on repair. They are pretty good at diagnosis; have plenty of experience in knowing how to test things out; are great listeners to the concerns of people who have a problem; and they really know subtyping – the characteristics specific to certain makes and models of different cars.
By Sarah Thomson
In 2012, 45 US states, as well as the District of Columbia, adopted and began implementing the new Common Core State Standards in K-12 public schools. In history and social studies classes, the Common Core Standards emphasize critical thinking and analytical reading and writing skills.
By Paul Cartledge
In 2006 the Frank Miller-Zack Snyder bluescreen epic ‘300’ was a box office smash. The Battle of Thermopylae – fought between a massive Persian invading army and a very much smaller Greek force led by King Leonidas and his 300 Spartans in a narrow pass at the height of summer 480 BC – had never been visualised quite like that before.
By Tim Allen
Albert Camus, author of those high school World Literature course staples The Stranger and The Myth of Sisyphus, would have been 100 years old today.
By Nick Wilson
As a musician myself I have certainly received my fair share of warranted (and un-warranted) criticism over the years. There is nowhere to hide on the concert platform. Performing music necessarily requires being open to others, exposing more of the self than is demanded in most other walks of life. It is perhaps only natural, therefore, that the controversial subject of authenticity should remain so stubbornly relevant to our understanding and pleasure of (musical) performance.
By Arpan K Banerjee
Does history matter? Professional historians will not hesitate to answer in the affirmative for a multitude of reasons. I am sure many professionals in technical and scientific fields, however, may have asked themselves the first question in a reflective moment without necessarily the same positive responses attributed to professional historians.
By John van Wyhe
The year 2013 is the centenary of the death of the Victorian naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, best-known as the man who formulated the theory of evolution by natural selection independently of Charles Darwin.
By Anatoly Liberman
Words, as I have noted more than once, live up to their sense. For instance, in searching for the origin of amaze, one encounters numerous truly amazing reefs. This is the story. Old English had the verb amasian “confuse, surprise.”
By Istvan Hargittai
The Los Alamos National Laboratory came to life in 1943 as the concluding segment of the Manhattan Project to produce the atomic bombs for the US Army. In August 1945, these bombs were dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
By Richard S. Grossman
In the early 1600s, the King of Sweden declared that copper, along with silver, would serve as money. He did this because he owned lots of copper mines and thought that this policy would increase the public’s demand for copper—and also its price, making him much wealthier.
By Yair Amichai-Hamburger
I believe that the Internet has special characteristics which together create an exceptional environment for the user. To start with, many websites allow you to maintain your anonymity. You may do this by assuming a pseudonym, using your initials or just “leaving the space blank”. This characteristic frees people from many of the issues that constrict them in their day to day offline lives.
By Richard Moe
Barack Obama earlier this year became the first president in recent memory to propose limiting the powers of his office when he called for reigning in the use of drones. “Unless we discipline our thinking, our definitions, our actions,” he said on 23 May 2013.
This mesmerizing video has received over 21 million views, and is spreading rapidly through social media. The baby is 10 month-old Mary Lynne Leroux, who weeps as her mother Amanda sings My Heart Can’t Tell You No, a song most recently popularized by Sara Evans.