On a limb
One can teach an advanced course on etymology, while climbing up the leg, ant-wise. On foot we reach the territory of Indo-European, but it is not every day that an English word finds itself in such respectable company.
12 key titles to read this Jazz Appreciation Month [reading list]
In honor of Jazz Appreciation Month (JAM), we celebrate the extraordinary history and heritage of jazz, exploring its music, culture, and people who made it thrive. We hope that this reading list of 12 stimulating and inspiring books—like the number of keys in an octave—will spark your interest and encourage your participation in this truly original American art form—to read books about it, to study the music, to play and perform, and ultimately to listen to all things jazz.
We the Men
Amidst the flurry of headlines about the Trump administration’s first weeks in power, who will notice that the federal government’s largest agency no longer celebrates Black History Month or Women’s History Month? The Department of Defense’s January 31 guidance declaring “Identity Months Dead at DoD” may have been lost in the news cycle.
At Elizabeth Peabody’s bookshop
Most histories situate the birth of feminism in the United States at the Seneca Falls Convention, held on 19-20 July 1848, in upstate New York. Yet as I researched and wrote Bright Circle: Five Extraordinary Women in the Age of Transcendentalism, I came to believe the movement had its roots almost a decade earlier and in a most unlikely place: the Boston bookshop owned and operated by Elizabeth Palmer Peabody.
Making economics more human
As the “official doctrine of neoclassical economics, enshrined in all respectable textbooks,” the esteemed game theorist Ken Binmore says, revealed preference theory “succeeds in accommodating the infinite variety of the human race within a single theory simply by denying itself the luxury of speculating about what is going on inside someone’s head. Instead, it pays attention only to what people do.”
Five inspiring biographies for Women’s History Month [reading list]
In honor of Women’s History Month, we are celebrating the lives and legacies of inspiring women throughout history that played path-breaking roles in shaping philosophy and literature. This reading list features five books that amplify the achievements of these women who were either overshadowed by men, or subject to hierarchical thinking.
A wary approach to hemlock
Today’s story is about a deadly plant or rather, about its moribund etymology. And yet, when you reach the end, the word’s origin may appear somewhat more transparent, even though the plant will remain as deadly as ever.
Half a century with OUP: remembering Bill Leuchtenburg (1922-2025)
In 2003, historian William E. Leuchtenburg signed a contract with OUP for a trade book on the executive branch. It was to be 60 to 80,000 words, 200 printed pages, due September 2005. Because he had two other large book projects underway, Bill did not make that date.
Nature’s landscape artists
Claude Monet once said, “I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.” Perhaps he should have given bees equal credit for his occupation. Without them, the dialectical coevolutionary dance with flowers that has lasted 125 million years would not have produced the colorful landscapes he so cherished. For Darwin, it was an abominable mystery; for Monet, an endless inspiration.
Fact and fiction behind American Primeval
A popular new Netflix series, American Primeval, is stirring up national interest in a long-forgotten but explosive episode in America’s past. Though the series is highly fictionalized, it is loosely based on events covered in my recent, nonfiction publication, Vengeance Is Mine: The Mountain Meadows Massacre and Its Aftermath, co-written with Richard E. Turley Jr.
The meteoric rise of Louis Armstrong [playlist]
In the five years between his first recording session as a sideman with King Oliver in April 1923 to his final date as a leader in Chicago in December 1928, Louis Armstrong changed the sound of American popular music, with both his trumpet and with his voice. He perfected the art of the improvised solo, expanded the range of the trumpet, popularized scat singing, rewrote the rules of pop singing, and perhaps most importantly, infused everything he did with the irresistible feeling of swing.
The unknown A Complete Unknown
Folk music is still and always with us. It is in the tap of the hammer to the music on the radio or, in older days, to the workers’ own singing. It is the rhythmic push of the cabinetmaker’s saw, the scan across the checkout station to the beat of songs inside the checker’s head.
Voices of change for Black History Month [reading list]
In honor of Black History Month, we celebrate the powerful voices that have shaped history and continue to inspire change in America and around the world. This reading list features eight books that amplify the diverse experiences and contributions of Black individuals. Eight unique stories of resistance, perseverance, empowerment, and transformation that deserve their place in the American narrative.
Librarian reflections: a retrospective on 2024
At OUP, we’re eager to foster discussion and reflection within the library community. So we took the opportunity to ask Eleanor Thomas, Acquisitions Coordinator for the University of Adelaide Library, to share her reflections on, and experiences, of the library sector over the past year, and her impressions of what the new year may bring.
Meditations in purple
Children may have less height, vocabulary, and power than adults do. But children’s books are not a lesser art form. Consider Crockett Johnson’s Harold and the Purple Crayon. At first glance, the book looks self-explanatory. What more can be said about a boy, a crayon, and the moon?
Some barely iconic, epic usages
As a linguist, I understand that language shifts and changes. The voiced z sound of houses is being replaced by an unvoiced s sound. The abbreviation A.I. has become a verb, as in “He A.I.ed it.” Neologisms abound, tracked by the American Dialect Society, and new words often make us think of things in new ways.