Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World
In December 1940 planning began for a German invasion of the Soviet Union. By that winter, the USSR had made further gains in the west, apparently with an eye to securing a glacis against a future German attack. A war against Finland gave her important strategic areas. The Baltic republics of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia were swallowed in 1940.
By Caitlin Tyler-Richards
Dear readers, the time has come for the Oral History Review (OHR) social media team to say so long for now. We’ve had a fantastic time bringing you the latest and greatest on scholarship in oral history and its sister fields. However, all sorts of summer adventures are calling our names, so we’re taking a brief hiatus from the world wide web. In fact, as you are reading this, I am on my way to Nigeria for two months!
By Alex Sayf Cummings
Is there such a thing as a “used” MP3?
That was the question before the United States District Court for Southern New York earlier this Spring, when Capitol Records sued the tech firm ReDigi for providing consumers with an online marketplace to “sell” their unwanted audio files to other music fans.
Russell Stannard
Is there such a thing as a Higgs boson? To find out, one builds the Large Hadron Collider. That is how science normally progresses: one poses a question, and then carries out the appropriate experiment to find the answer.
By Roger S. Gottlieb
Many people think it’s a great idea: we can have all the benefits of religion…without religion! We’ll call it “spirituality” and in choosing it we will have unlimited freedom to adopt this or that ritual, these or those beliefs, to meditate or pray or do yoga, to admire (equally) inspiring Hindu gurus, breathtakingly calm Buddhist meditation teachers, selfless priests who work against gang violence, wise old rabbis, and Native American shamans—not to mention figures who belong to no faith whatsoever.
The 20th of June is International Surfing Day. I’m not sure if I have the proper street cred to write about surfing. For one thing, even though I grew up on the Mid-Atlantic coast, I can’t swim. My nephew, however, was part of a hardcore crowd who surfed regularly on the beaches near Ocean City, Maryland, and the Indian River Inlet, Delaware, in the ‘80s and ‘90s.
By Sarah Jewell, Jim Pemberton, Alessandra Faggian, and Zella King
Gone are the days when all students had to wonder about was how much – or little – effort to put into studying without compromising their chances of getting a degree and walking into a graduate job, thanks to changes in higher education funding and increasing student numbers.
By Anatoly Liberman
Petty devils are all around us. Products of so-called low mythology, they often have impenetrable names. (Higher mythology deals with gods, yet their names are often equally opaque!) Some such evil creatures have appeared, figuratively speaking, the day before yesterday, but that does not prevent them from hiding their origin with envious dexterity (after all, they are imps). A famous evader is gremlin.
By Ian Miller
Between 1909 and 1914, imprisoned militant suffragettes undertook hunger strikes across Britain and Ireland. Public distaste for the practice of forcible feeding ultimately led to the passing of the Prisoners (Temporary Discharge for Ill Health) Act, or ‘the Cat and Mouse Act’ as it was more commonly known. The 25th of April 2013 marks the 100th anniversary of this Act, passed so that prison medical officers could discharge hunger-striking suffragettes from prisons if they fell ill from hunger.
By Mark Philp & Joanna Innes
There are two different questions that might be asked about contemporary democracy: how did we get here? And where else might we have tried to get?
By Robin Rosenberg
I like Superman—as a character, as a superhero, as an embodiment of (certain) values. I looked forward to seeing Man of Steel this summer. Although I was disappointed, I’ll start with its strengths. Warning: Spoilers ahead.
By Seth Stein LeJacq
These days we generally agree that the big medical problems should be left to the professionals. We don’t see ourselves as the appropriate people and our homes as the appropriate places to deal with major injuries, severe illnesses, chronic conditions, and many other significant medical events. This wasn’t the case in seventeenth-century Britain, where domestic healing was the norm and the home was the central place where healing occurred. People prepared to deal with the very worst illnesses and injuries at home.
In the end, though the dynasty Napoleon hoped to found and the empire he set up both proved ephemeral, his work was of great importance. He unlocked reserves of energy in other countries just as the Revolution had unlocked them in France, and afterwards they could never be quite shut up again. He ensured the legacy of the Revolution its maximum effect, and this was his greatest achievement, whether he desired it or not.
Writing about the perceptions and contexts for music from the Haná region in Moravia in the most recent volume of Early Music got me thinking more broadly about the subject of ‘folk music’ or rustic music of various types, and the emphasis and value frequently placed upon it in the context of art music.
Each summer, Oxford University Press USA and Bryant Park in New York City partner for their summer reading series Word for Word Book Club. The Bryant Park Reading Room offers free copies of book club selections while supply lasts, compliments of Oxford University Press, and guest speakers lead the group in discussion. On Tuesday 18 June, author Domenica Ruta leads a discussion on The Turn of the Screw by Henry James.
By Avi Lifschitz
We might have grown skeptical about our cultural legacy, but it is quite natural for us to assume that our own cognitive theories are the latest word when compared with those of our predecessors. Yet in some areas, the questions we are now asking are not too different from those posed some two-three centuries ago, if not earlier.