Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World
By Joan Marans Dim
The world was allegedly created in seven days, so why is it taking New York City so long — some 90 years, or possibly longer — to create the Second Avenue Subway? According to the MTA, proposals to build a north-south subway line along Second Avenue date back to 1929. But it wasn’t until March 2007 — 78 years later — that the first construction contract for Phase One of the Second Avenue Subway was awarded.
By G. Thomas Couser
Memoir gained sudden prominence in the mid 1990s, when a few memoirs by unheralded authors–Lucy Grealy’s Autobiography of a Face, Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes, Mary Karr’s Liars’ Club, and Susanna Kaysen’s Girl, Interrupted–had spectacular sales and favorable reviews. The memoir boom was underway.
By Jonathan Crowe
Using science to understand our world can help to improve our lives. In my last post and in this one, I want to illustrate this point with an example of how progress in science is providing hope for the future for one family, and many others like them.
This Day in World History
On February 26, 1924, Adolf Hitler and nine associates stood trial in a Munich courtroom. The charge was treason — they were accused of trying to overthrow the German republic. That day, Hitler turned the tables to accuse the German leaders who had surrendered in 1918, ending World War I, and created the republican government he so despised: “There is no such thing as high treason against the traitors of 1918,” he proclaimed.
This Day in World History
For thirty years, Joseph Stalin had ruled the Soviet Union unchallenged. Less than three years after his death, new Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev shocked the Twentieth Communist Party Congress with a long, angry speech that denounced Stalin.
We (unintentionally) started a debate about the origin of the word “buckaroo” with our quiz Can you speak American? last week. Richard Bailey, author of Speaking American, argues that it comes from the West African language Efik. Here OED editor Katrin Thier argues that the origin isn’t quite so clear.
We (unintentionally) started a debate about the origin of the word “buckaroo” with our quiz Can you speak American? last week. In an excerpt from Richard Bailey’s Speaking American, he argues that it comes from the West African language Efik. A response from OED editor Dr. Katrin Thier will follow.
In these videos, The Life of Slang author Julie Coleman tells us how — and how fast — slang can spread from one side of the globe to another, and gives us 26 ways of saying ‘groovy’.
By Frank Prochaska
What would the Founding Fathers think of the candidates in the Republican primaries? If the remaining presidential hopefuls were to be asked this question in a televised debate, the ignorant and dissembling replies would be a sorry spectacle.
Professor Louis René Beres and General John T. Chain (USAF/ret.)
In world politics, irrational does not mean “crazy.” It does mean valuing certain goals or objectives even more highly than national survival. In such rare but not unprecedented circumstances, the irrational country leadership may still maintain a distinct rank-order of preferences. Unlike trying to influence a “crazy” state, therefore, it is possible to effectively deter an irrational adversary.
By Vlatko Vedral
Most of you science buffs out there will, of course, know that science progresses in abrupt jumps, and every once in a while a new theory gets discovered that forces a radical departure from previously held views. I indeed viewed the evolution of science, through what the philosopher Karl Popper called the process of “conjectures and refutations”, as another instance of information processing. But if it’s not unlikely that quantum physics will one day be surpassed, then what confidence should you have in my main thesis? Could it be that the new theory will claim that some other entity – and not a bit of information – is yet more fundamental? In other words, will the post-quantum reality be made up of some other stuff?
By Anatoly Liberman
I borrowed the title of this post from an ad for an alcoholic beverage whose taste remains unknown to me. The picture shows two sparsely clad very young females sitting in a bar on both sides of a decently dressed but bewildered youngster. I assume their age allows all three characters to drink legally and as much as they want. My concern is not with their thirst but with the word dude. After all, this blog is about the origin of nouns, verbs, and adjectives, rather than the early stages of alcoholism.
This Day in World History
Carrying a full load of goods, including 30 tons of ginseng, and finally free of the ice that had choked the harbor for weeks, the Empress of China set out from New York on February 22, 1784 for China. Just months after the British had finally evacuated the city after the Revolutionary War, American merchants were seizing the opportunity afforded by independence to enter the China trade.
By Denis Sampson
‘Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road.’ It is one of the most celebrated of all fictional beginnings, evoking the essence and tradition of narrative itself, telling a first story to a child, and at the same time the beginning of a very sophisticated kind of biographical fiction, the childhood and youth of an artist.
On February 23rd, Oxford University Press in New York will host four poets reading together on one night. Their poems span a broad range of forms and aesthetics, from collaborative short poems and plainspoken lyrics to a sequence of post-apocalyptic epistles. A wine reception will begin the evening at 6 p.m., with readings from the poets afterward. Oxford University Press associate editor Kristin Maffei will host the event and read a selection from her own poems. If you are a poetry fan/lover please join us. To wet your appetite for the event, we have a few selections of poetry below.
By Robert Kolker
“That’s that,” quoting Ace Rothstein at the end of Casino. I didn’t end the Martin Scorsese chapter on an optimistic note in the fourth edition of A Cinema of Loneliness. There is more than a hint that the Scorsese’s creative energies might be flagging. With this in mind, I went to see Hugo with a lot of skepticism.