Best international law books of 2013
We invited our authors and editors to share their picks for the best books in international law in 2013. Here are their choices.
AHA 2014: You’ve been to Washington before, but…
The American Historical Association’s 128th Annual Meeting is being held in Washington, D.C., 2-5 January 2014. For those of you attending, we’ve gathered advice about what to see and do in the Capital from author and DC resident Don Ritchie as well as members of Oxford University Press staff. And be sure to stop by Oxford’s booth #901-907.
A Nelson Mandela reading list
Here we celebrate the life and legacy of Nelson Mandela. From his early days as an activist, to his trial and imprisonment, to his presidency, this reading list covers all aspects of his life, and looks beyond the work he did to see how he influenced South Africa and the world.
Between ‘warfare’ and ‘lawfare’
By Carsten Stahn
The Syria crisis has challenged the boundaries of international law. The concept of the ‘red line’ was used to justify military intervention in response to the use of chemical weapons. This phenomenon reflects a trend to use law as a strategic asset or instrument of warfare (‘lawfare’).
Helping smokers quit during Lung Cancer Awareness Month
Smoking causes the majority of lung cancers – both in smokers and in people exposed to secondhand smoke. To mark Lung Cancer Awareness Month, Nicotine & Tobacco Research Editor David J. K. Balfour, D.Sc., has selected a few related articles, which can be read in full and for free on the journal’s website. He also invited Elyse R. Park, PhD, MPH, to share what really helps smokers quit.
Getting and keeping the vote
By Jean Baker
Organizing for the women’s suffrage parade planned for 23 October 1915 in New York had taken months. By this time leaders of the New York movement were practiced at arranging such popular spectacles in a state that would be a significant prize, with parades its most effective, opinion–changing tactic. Finally–nearly seventy years after the Seneca Falls Convention and its call for women’s suffrage– the momentum seemed to be shifting.
Letters from Heaven
By Martyn Lyons
While researching in the Archive of Everyday Writings (Archivo de las Escrituras Cotidianas) in Alcalá de Henares, I came across a very curious manuscript. It was the copy of a letter from God which, it claimed, had descended to earth during a Mass held in St. Peter’s in Rome. It had been picked up by a deaf-mute boy called Angel, who miraculously began to read it aloud.
Lady Chatterley’s Lover and the politics of “variable obscenity”
By Christopher Hilliard
It’s the most famous own goal in English legal history. In London’s Old Bailey, late in 1960, Penguin Books is being prosecuted for publishing an obscene book – an unexpurgated edition of D. H. Lawrence’s novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover. The prosecution asks the jury whether Lady Chatterley’s Lover was “a book that you would even wish your wife or your servants to read.”
US Independence Day author Q&A: part three
In honor of Independence Day in the United States, we asked some of our influential American history and politics VSI authors to ask each other some pointed questions related to significant matters in America. Their passionate responses have inspired a four day series leading up to America’s 237th birthday.
Happy birthday Mr. Orwell
By Robert Colls
Sorry to bother you with serious thoughts on your birthday George, but you’ve become quite a famous chap down here. To your certain horror you’ve even become slightly fashionable and it’s only a matter of time before some lithe young man calling himself ‘Orwell’ comes sashaying down the catwalk in bags and cords, thin tash and Tin Tin hair.
Forcible feeding and the Cat and Mouse Act: one hundred years on
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.
What’s the future of seamount ecosystems?
Philip Mladenov
Seamounts are distinctive and dramatic features of ocean basins. They are typically extinct volcanoes that rise abruptly above the surrounding deep-ocean floor but do not reach the surface of the ocean. The Global Ocean contains some 100,000 or so seamounts that rise at least 1,000 metres above the ocean floor.
Why is Emily Wilding Davison remembered as the first suffragette martyr?
By Elizabeth Crawford
“She paid ‘the price of freedom’. Glad to pay it – glad though it brought her to death (..) the first woman martyr who has gone to death for this cause.” In the context of the women’s suffrage campaign who do you think was the subject of this eulogy? Was it Emily Wilding Davison, the centenary of whose death is being honoured this June?
Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey
15 April 2013 marked the fifth Jackie Robinson Day, commemorating the 66th anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers, an event which broke baseball’s racial barrier. In each game that is now played on 15 April, all players wear Jackie Robinson’s iconic #42 (also the title of a new film on Robinson). Thirty years ago, historian and ardent baseball fan Jules Tygiel proposed the first scholarly study of integration in baseball, shepherded by esteemed Oxford editor, Sheldon Meyer: Baseball’s Great Experiment.
Border Control in America before Ellis Island
By Hidetaka Hirota
On the seventeenth of April 1907, 11,747 immigrants arrived in the Ellis Island landing station in New York, marking a record high in terms of the number of people processed on a single day at the station, where 17 million newcomers landed between 1892 and 1954. This arrival was part of a broader landmark immigration wave.
The Mashapaug Project
By Caitlin Tyler-Richards
Continuing our celebration of the release of 40.1, today we’re excited to share a conversation between managing editor Troy Reeves and contributors Anne Valk and Holly Ewald. Valk and Ewald are the authors of, “Bringing a Hidden Pond to Public Attention: Increasing Impact through Digital Tools,” which describes the origins and methods of the Mashapaug Project, a collaborative community arts and oral history project on a pond in Providence, Rhode Island.