If you would like us to mention in this section any significant work published this year or last, please contact Anne Askwith.
Alan Heeks (1966), Natural Happiness: Use Organic Gardening Skills to Cultivate Yourself (O-Books, 2024)Bernard Wasserstein (1966), A Small Town in Ukraine: The place we came from, the place we went back to (Allen Lane, 2023)Robert Waller (1974), ‘The 1924 election’ in Iain Dale (ed.), British General Election Campaigns 1830–2019 (Biteback, 2024)
Bernard O'Keeffe (1977), The Final Round (2021), Private Lessons (2023) and Every Trick in the Book (2024), all published by Muswell Press
Nandan Kamath (2000), Boundary Lab: Inside the Global Experiment Called Sport (Penguin Viking, 2024)Sean Wyer (2010 and Lecturer in Italian) ‘Peeling Back the Artichoke Leaves: Symbolism and Origin Stories in Jewish-Roman Cuisine’, Food, Culture & Society, 2024. The article is open access, so anyone can read it without a subscription. The article analyses common origin stories about dishes in the Jewish-Roman culinary tradition, and argues that these can provide important insights into contemporary Roman and Jewish-Roman identity. This is his second publication from a project he undertook on a Rome Award from The British School at Rome. The other article – Gourmet and the Ghetto: The 'Foodification' of Rome's Historic Jewish Quarter – was published in Gastronomica last year.
Professor Richard Portes (1962), co-author, ‘When will they ever learn? The US banking crisis of 2023’, CEPR, 2023; co-author, ‘Credit Suisse: Too big to manage, too big to resolve, or simply too big?’ CEPR, 2023; lead author, ‘Crypto assets and decentralised finance’, ESRB Task Force report, May 2023.
Alex Grant (1993), Sex, Spies and Scandal: The John Vassall Affair (Biteback, 2024)
Gordon Barthos (1976), The Life of St Brendan and His Prayer, translating the Vita Sancti Brendani and the Oratio Sancti Brendani from Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Rawlinson B 485 and Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Clm 13067 (Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto, 2024).
Richard Soare (1982) et al (eds), Ices in the Solar-System: A Volatile-Driven Journey from the Inner Solar System to its Far Reaches (Elsevier, 2023)
Aileen Kavanagh (1995), The Collaborative Constitution (Cambridge University Press, 2023)
Jacob Lloyd (2014), Coleridge's Political Poetics: Radicalism and Whig Verse 1794–1802 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023)
Shamir Montazid (2018), ‘Adult stem cell activity in naked mole rats for long-term tissue maintenance’ (Nature, December 2023)
Robert Waller (1974), ‘King Stephen’ in Iain Dale (ed.), Kings and Queens (Hodder & Stoughton, 2023)
Karsten Plöger (1998), The Engadine: Biography of a Landscape (Hier und Jetzt, 2023)
Professor Sir Drummond Bone (1968, Master 2011-2018), The Cambridge Companion to Byron: Second Edition (Cambridge University Press, 2023)
David Hindley (1952), musical scores of bird-inspired works, Composers Edition, 2023
Sir Mathew Thorpe (1957), Marking Time: My Family and I (Henmarsh Farm Editions, 2023). A memoir in two parts, Marking Time tells the story of the author's forbears. From a patron of Mozart to a Russian Field Marshal and many more besides, the lives of the Thorpes, Meades, Lamberts and Donaldsons lead to a portrait of the author. From his schooling at Stowe and the beginning of his lifelong passion for horses, to his life in the law, and his present state of continuous adventure, a full and varied life is presented. To purchase a copy, please email the author at thorpe@1hc.com.
Philip Snow (1970), China and Russia: Four Centuries of Conflict and Concord (Yale University Press, 2023)
Clare Lewis (1989) and Gabriel Moshenska (eds), Life Writing in the History of Archaeology: Critical Perspectives (UCL Press, 2023)
Mia Jeronimus (2019), 'Suffering and Survival: The Experience of Dutch Women in Japanese Internment Camps in Java, 1941–45', Human Rights Quarterly, vol. 45. No. 4, November 2023
Charles Geisst (1977), Just Price in the Markets: A History (Yale University Press, 2023)
James Nye (1980), Clockmaking on Lothbury: Craft, Community and Conflict in Pre-Fire London (Antiquarian Horological Society, 2023)
Kym Bills (1981) et al: ‘Major aviation accident investigation methodologies used by ITSA members’, Safety Science, vol. 168, December 2023; ‘Barry Turner: The Under-Acknowledged Safety Pioneer’, MDPI, Safety 2023
Sean Wyer (2010 and Lecturer in Italian), ‘Gourmet and the Ghetto: The 'Foodification' of Rome's Historic Jewish Quarter’, Gastronomica: The Journal for Food Studies, 2023; with Maggie Neil, ‘ “Sicily Can Be Very Seductive”: The White Lotus and the Transnational “Making” of the Mediterranean’, The Italianist, 2023
Mirela Ivanova (2015) and Benjamin Anderson (eds), Is Byzantine Studies a Colonialist Discipline? Toward a Critical Historiography (Penn State University Press, 2023). Discount for Balliol alumni from PSU Press: 30% off using the code NR23.
Geoff Sedlezky (2017), The Significance of Doorway Positions in English Parochial Churches and Chapels (Archaeopress, 2023)
Alexander Hopkinson-Woolley (1955), What is the Gospel Truth? Is There Anything We Can Trust? (Troubadour, 2023)
John Macfarlane (1960), A Clarinet Almanac (Austin Macauley Publishers, 2023)
David Tarin (1961), Understanding Cancer: The Molecular Mechanisms, Biology, Pathology and Clinical Implications of Malignant Neoplasia (Springer Nature, 2023)
David L. d’Avray (1973), The Power of Protocol. Diplomatics and the Dynamics of Papal Government, c. 400-c.1600 (Cambridge University Press, 2023)
John Foley (1974), Checkmate!: The Wonderful World of Chess (Welbeck Children’s, 2023)
Adrian Moore (1978), The Human A Priori: Essays on How We Make Sense in Philosophy, Ethics, and Mathematics (OUP, 2023)
Penny Phillips (1979), illustrated by Clare Mallison, When Cherry Lost Terry (Old Street Publishing, 2022)
Paul Shotton (1979), Doomed to Fail: Why Government Is Incapable of Living Up to Our Hopes (Pierucci Publishing, 2023)
Matthew Saal (1988), Erik Seyen and Harish Natarajan, Fintech and the Future of Finance: Market and Policy Implications (World Bank Publications, 2023)
Matthew Parker (1989), One Fine Day: Britain’s Empire on the Brink (Abacus, 2023)
Oliver Peers (1991), The Gospel According to Tomàs (independently published, 2023)
Professor Jin-Chong Tan (Professor of Engineering Science (Nanoscale Engineering), Fellow and Tutor in Engineering Science) (ed.), Mechanical Behaviour of Metals – Organic Framework Materials (Royal Society of Chemistry, 2023)
Samuel Shem, aka Stephen Bergman (1966), Our Hospital (Berkley Books, 2023)
James Roderick Burns (1991), Crows at Dusk (Red Moon Press, 2023) - fifth short-form poetry collection.Andrew Lea (2014), Digitizing Diagnosis: Medicine, Minds, and Machines in Twentieth-Century America (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2023) - a history of early efforts to computerize medical diagnosis—and the larger debates, questions, and transformations that emerged in their wake.
William H. Dutton (Professorial Fellow and Director of the Oxford Internet Institute 2002–2014), The Fifth Estate: The Power Shift of the Digital Age (Oxford University Press, 2023)Maxine Berg (Sir Lewis Namier Junior Research Fellow 1974-1978 and Honorary Fellow) and Pat Hudson, Slavery, Capitalism and the Industrial Revolution (Polity Press, 2023)
John Davie (1972) and Harry Mount, ‘Et Tu, Brute? The Best Latin Lines Ever (Bloomsbury, 2022): a light-hearted look at the Romans in their own words.
Ian Watson (1960), The Chinese Time Machine (NewCon Press, 2023)
Keith Fisher (1985), A Pipeline Runs Through It: The Story of Oil from Ancient Times to the First World War (Allen Lane, 2022)
Jeremy Burchardt (1988), Lifescapes: The Experience of Landscape in Britain, 1870-1960 (Cambridge University Press, 2023)
Marie Guillot (2000) and Manuel García-Carpintero (eds), Self-Experience: Essays on Inner Awareness (Oxford University Press, 2023)
Georgina Sturge (2008), Bad Data: How Governments, Politicians and the Rest of Us Get Misled by Numbers (The Bridge Street Press, 2022)
Charles Conn (1983 and Professorial Fellow and Warden of Rhodes House 2014-2018) and Robert McLean, The Imperfectionists: Strategic Mindsets for Uncertain Times (Wiley 2023)
The world is changing faster than ever, with increasing uncertainty and threat of disruption in every business and non-profit segment. Conventional approaches to strategy no longer work. In this prequel to their Amazon-bestseller Bulletproof Problem Solving, Conn and McLean introduce a novel approach to strategic problem solving in times of high uncertainty. Based on a decade of research and 50 new case studies, The Imperfectionists posits a dynamic approach to developing organisational direction under uncertainty based on six reinforcing problem-solving mindsets.
Professor Nicholas Mirzoeff (1980), White Sight: Visual Politics and Practices of Whiteness (MIT Press, 2023)
Michael Reid (1970), Spain: The Trials and Triumphs of a Modern European Country (Yale Books, 2023)
Professor Riccardo Viale (1984), Nudging (MIT Press, 2023)
Danielle Clode (1990), Koala: A Natural History and Uncertain Future (W. W. Norton, 2023)
Robin Wilson (1962), John J. Watkins & David J. Parks, Graph Theory in America (Princeton University Press, 2023)
Victoria White (1999) and Farzad Sabetzadeh, ‘NextGen Higher Education: Preparing Students for the Jobs of Tomorrow that Do Not Yet Exist’, in Disentangled Vision on Higher Education: Preparing the Generation Next, edited by Francisco José Leandro, Roopinder Oberoi (Peter Lang, 2023)
Asang Wankhede (2020), Affirmative Action for Economically Weaker Sections and Upper-Castes in Indian Constitutional Law (Routledge India, 2022)
Terrell Carver (1968) and Laura Lyddon, Masculinities, Gender and International Relations, Bristol University Press, 2022James Nye (1980), Anthony Turner and Jonathan Betts (eds), A General History of Horology (OUP, 2022). A General History of Horology describes instruments used for the finding and measurement of time from Antiquity to the 21st century. In geographical scope it ranges from East Asia to the Americas. The instruments described are set in their technical and social contexts, and there is also discussion of the literature, the historiography and the collecting of the subject. The book features the use of case studies to represent larger topics that cannot be completely covered in a single book. The international body of authors have endeavoured to offer a fully world-wide survey accessible to students, historians, collectors, and the general reader, based on a firm understanding of the technical basis of the subject. At the same time as the work offers a synthesis of current knowledge of the subject, it also incorporates the results of some fundamental, new and original research.
Edward Dommen (1957), Congénies et les origines françaises du quakerisme (Éditions Ouverture, 2022): summary in English here.
Simon Commander (1972) and Saul Estrin, The Connections World: The Future of Asian Capitalism (Cambridge University Press, 2022)
Martin Edwards (1974), The Life of Crime: Detecting the History of Mysteries and their Creators (Collins Crime Club, 2022)
Adrian Moore (1978), Gödel’s Theorem: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2022)
David Kinloch (1982), Greengown: New and Selected Poems (Carcanet, 2022)
Jonathan Morgan (1995), Great Debates in Tort Law (Bloomsbury, 2022)
Seán Muller (2007), The Incentivised University: Scientific Revolutions, Policies, Consequences (Springer, 2022)
Paul Shrimpton (1977), ed., Lead Kindly Light:Essays for Ian Ker (Balliol 1960), Festschrift (Gracewing, 2022)Derek Davis (1963), Pushkin’s Journey to Erzurum (Royal Asiatic Society, 2022)
Hannah Ryley (Lecturer in Old English), Re-Using Manuscripts in Late Medieval England (Boydell and Brewer, 2022)Richard Grassby (1954), Aesop Redux: Fifty Fables of the Modern Era (independently published, 2021); The Future Never Speaks: The Search for Meaning in History (independently published, 2022)Stephen Spencer (1979), Archbishop William Temple: A Study of Servant Leadership (SCM Press, 2022).Crispin Rogers (1985), Faith and Fortitude: Life and Times of John Rogers, Martyr (Grosvenor House Publishing, 2022). The author writes: 'An historical novel on the life and times of my 12x great grandfather, John Rogers the Martyr: He produced the first Bible in the English language to be authorised for use in England, by Henry VIII (completing Tyndale’s translations after he was arrested and executed in Antwerp) and published as the Thomas Matthew Bible in 1537. He was then the first Protestant Martyr to be burned at the stake under Queen Mary - facing his end bravely and with an extraordinary constancy of faith (hence the name for my book - “Faith and Fortitude”), the first of the 288 Protestant Martyrs during Mary’s reign.'
Trevor Stack (1988), ed.: Engaging Authority: Citizenship and Political Community (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022); Breaching the Civil Order: Radicalism and the Civil Sphere (Cambridge University Press, 2022)
Keon West (2006) and Caryn Franklin MBE, Skewed: Decoding Media Bias (audiobook, WFH Original, 2022)
Paul Edwards (1975), Summer Day’s Promise (Fairfield Books, 2022)
Professor Rory Putman (1968), A Biologist Abroad (Whittles Publishing, 2021) and Understanding Animal Behaviour (Whittles Publishing, 2019)
Trevor Stack (1988), Citizens against Crime and Violence: Societal Responses in Mexico (Rutgers University Press, 2022)
Martin Walker (1966), To Kill a Troubadour (The Dordogne Mysteries 15) (Quercus, 2022)
Sophie Harrison (1992), A Cure for Good Intentions (Fleet, 2021)
Brian Groom (1973), Northerners: A History, from the Ice Age to the Present Day (HarperNorth, 2022)
Alan Knight (1965), Bandits and Liberals, Rebels and Saints. Latin America Since Independence (University of Nebraska Press, 2022)
Robert M. Wallace (1965), Philosophical Mysticism in Plato, Hegel, and the Present (Bloomsbury Academic, 2022)
Philip Mansel (1970), King of the World: The Life of Louis XIV (Allen Lane, 2019)
David Lewisohn (1973): ‘Has International Copyright Law Hindered Educational Progress in the Developing World?’ (SSRN, open access, 2020)
Dilip Melon (1984): Changing Theory: Concepts from the Global South (Routledge, 2022) and Ocean as Method (Routledge, 2022)
Martin Walker (1966), Bruno’s Challenge & Other Dordogne Tales and The Coldest Case (both Quercus, 2021)
Paul Shrimpton (1977), My Campaign in Ireland Volume I (XV): Catholic University Reports and Other Papers (Newman Millennium Edition Volume XVI), (Gracewing Publishing, 2021)
Lucy Ward (1987), The Empress and the English Doctor (Oneworld, 2022)
Jonathan Bard (College Adviser to Graduates in Medical Sciences), Evolution: The Origins and Mechanisms of Variation (CRC Press, 2021)
Alexander Hopkinson-Woolley (1955), Where is the Evidence (Matador, 2022): e-book including new appendix
Malcolm Cohen (1956), Poland and Lithuania: The Parallel Histories of the Countries and Their Jewish Populations (2021)
Ian Douglas (1958), Water and the Rainforest in Malaysian Borneo (Springer, 2022)
Ben White (1965), Agrarian Change & Peasant Studies Series: Agriculture and the Generation Problem (Practical Action Publishing, 2021), open access
Halik Kochanski (1985), Resistance: The Underground War in Europe, 1939-45 (Allen Lane, 2022)
Daniel Carden (2006) with Jorge Ribeiro and Patrick Ribeiro, Econometric IFRS9 and Stress Test Models using SAS, Python and R (2022)
Robin Wilson (1962), ed.: Oxford's Savilian Professors of Geometry: The First 400 Years (OUP, 2022)
Robert Waller (1974): ‘Ramsay MacDonald’ in Iain Dale (ed.), The Prime Ministers (Hodder & Stoughton, 2020); ‘Rutherford Hayes’ in Iain Dale (ed.), The Presidents (Hodder & Stoughton, 2021)
Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy (1963): Zeus, Jupiter, Jesus and the Catholic Church: What Good Is a God? (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2021)
Macky Tall, aka Robin Edward Poulton (1969): Paroles sur les Crises au Mali et Les Limites de la Démocratie: Expériences et Analyses pour favoriser la Paix (La Sahelienne (Mali) and Amazon, 2020). This book in French describes the state of 'democracy’ in Africa and analysts the crises in Mali.
Charlotte Higgins (1990) Greek Myths: A New Retelling (Jonathan Cape, 2021)
Scott Weiner (1994): The Complete Guide to ETF Portfolio Management: The Essential Toolkit for Practitioners (McGraw Hill, 2021)
Tomila Lankina (1998): The Estate Origins of Democracy in Russia: From Imperial Bourgeoisie to Post-Communist Middle Class (Cambridge University Press, 2021)
Tomislav Vladisavljevic (2011): Predicting the T2K Neutrino Flux and Measuring Neutrino Oscillation Parameters (Springer Link, 2020); with The T2K Collaboration, ‘Constraint on the matter-antimatter symmetry-violating phase in neutrino oscillations’, Nature, April 2020
Richard Dawkins FRS (1959 and Honorary Fellow): Flights of Fancy: Defying Gravity by Design and Evolution (Apollo, 2021)
Raquel Barradas de Freitas (Research Lecturer in Law) (co-ed.), Trust Matters: Cross-Disciplinary Essays (Hart, 2021)
Lionel Scott (1948), Pytheas of Massalia: Texts, Translation and Commentary (Routledge, 2021)
Sir Mathew Thorpe (1957), A Divided Heart: Walking the Jakobsweg in Austria: The Pilgrim Paths to Santiago de Compostela (Journey Books, 2021)
Hubert Murray (1965), ‘Landscape as Resistance in the West Bank’ and ‘Dear Yasmeen’, Places Journal (University of California, Berkeley, 2021)
John Beckman (1967), Multimessenger Astronomy (Springer, 2021)
Stephanie Norgate (1979), The Conversation (Bloodaxe Books, 2021)
Danielle Clode (1990), with Gillian Dooley (ed.), First Wave: Exploring Early Coastal Contact History in Australia (Wakefield Press: 2019); In Search of the Woman who Sailed the World (Picador, 2020)
Lisa Nicholas (2000), Don’t Forget Me (Olympia Publishers, 2021)
Orlando Bird (2008) with Michael Bird, Writers' Letters (Frances Lincoln, 2021)
Peter Howell (1959): The Triumphal Arch (Unicorn, 2021)
Roy Hay (1965): Albert Pompey Austin: A Man Between Two Worlds (Sports and Editorial Services Australia, 2020). It was commended in the Victorian Premier’s Community History awards in 2021. Roy Hay is also the author of Aboriginal People and Australian Football in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2019), which was shortlisted for the Lord Aberdare Prize of the British Society of Sports History in 2020. An Australian edition was published by SESA in 2021.
Philip Kay (1968): My Hands Have Held 10,000 Hearts (2021). The book follows the path of a young boy from a small town in Dorset growing to be a man that held 10,000 hearts. The journey takes him to Balliol College, Oxford, Guy's Hospital Medical School and postgraduate training at the Brompton, National Heart and London Chest Hospitals, with a sabbatical year in Portland, Oregon. His final destination was as consultant cardiac surgeon at Leeds Infirmary, in his native Yorkshire.The road was hard and long with no doctor in the family to guide him. The surgery was relentless, but there was plenty of time for sport and travel and many adventures on the way. It is a book about life and would serve as a guide to any young person embarking on their own journey.
William A. Booth (1999): ‘Rethinking Latin America’s Cold War’ (The Historical Journal, 2020)
Alexander Woolley (1955): A New Vision (Troubador Publishing, 2021)
Nick Stoy (1964), ‘Involvement of Interleukin-1 Receptor-Associated Kinase 4 and Interferon Regulatory Factor 5 in the Immunopathogenesis of SARS-CoV-2 Infection: Implications for the Treatment of COVID-19’ (Frontiers in Immunology, 2021)
Richard Soare (1982) et al (ed), Mars Geological Enigmas: From the Late Noachian Epoch to the Present Day (Elsevier, 2021)
Carmen Bugan (2000), Poetry and the Language of Oppression (OUP, 2021)
Hephzi Pemberton (2004), The Diversity Playbook: Transforming Business with Inclusion and Innovation (Equality Group Global Ltd, 2021)
Ian Goldin (Professor of Globalisation and Development and Special Supernumerary Fellow), Rescue: From Global Crisis to a Better World (Hachette, 2021); with Robert Muggah, Terra Incognita: 100 Maps to Survive the Next 100 Years (Century, 2020)Richard Dawkins FRS (1959 and Honorary Fellow), Books Do Furnish a Life: An Electrifying Celebration of Science Writing (Bantam, 2021)
David L. Stanton (1962), pen and ink drawings ahttps://www.amazon.in/My-Campaign-Ireland-University-Millennium/dp/0852444095nd map for Rosemary J. Brown, Following Nellie Bly: Her Record-Breaking Race Around the World (Pen and Sword, 2021)Ian Prattis (1965), Past, Present, Future: Stories that Haunt (Manor House Publishing, 2021)William Outhwaite (1968), 'Identity and Europe: Integration through crisis and crises of integration', in Amanda Machin and Nadine Meidert (eds), Political Identification in Europe. Community in Crisis? Community in Crisis? (Emerald, 2021)
Paul Shrimpton (1977), My Campaign in Ireland, Part I. Catholic University Reports and other Papers of John Henry Newman (Gracewing, 2022)
Anselm Oelze (2011), Animal Minds in Medieval Latin Philosophy: A Sourcebook from Augustine to Wodeham (Springer, 2021)
Andy Buchanan (1977), ‘Domesticating Hegemony: Creating a Globalist Public, 1941-1943’, Diplomatic History, Vol. 45, No. 2 (2021)
Alan Montefiore (Emeritus Fellow) (ed. Danielle Sands), Philosophy and the Human Paradox: Essays on Reason, Truth and Identity (Routledge, 2020)
Charles Leedham-Green (1959) (translated and annotated), Isaac Newton, The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 2021)
Ben Fine (1966), O Capital de Marx: Volume 1 (Editora Contracorrente, 2021); with Kate Bayliss, A Guide to the Systems of Provision Approach: Who Gets What, How and Why (Palgrave, 2021)
Claire Foster (1984), Miles to Go Before I Sleep: Letters on Hope, Death and Learning to Live (Hodder, 2021)
Ian Mackenzie (1984), Language Structure, Variation and Change: The Case of Old Spanish Syntax (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019)
Riccardo Viale (1984), Routledge Handbook of Bounded Rationality (Routledge, 2020)
Michele Gamburd (1987), Linked Lives: Elder Care, Migration, and Kinship in Sri Lanka (Rutgers University Press, 2020)
Jane Stapleton (1981 and Emeritus Fellow), Three Essays on Torts (OUP, 2021)
John McNamara (1968) and Olaf Leimar, Game Theory in Biology: Concepts and Frontiers (OUP, 2020)
David Jones (1970) and Anne de Villars, Principles of Administrative Law, 7th edition (Thomson Reuters, 2020)
Horace and Stephen Harrison (1978), How to Be Content: An Ancient Poet's Guide for an Age of Excess (Princeton University Press, 2020)
Charles Spence (1988), Sensehacking: How to Use the Power of Your Senses for Happier, Healthier Living (Viking, 2021)
Max Kramer (2003), The Canterbury Book of New Parish Prayers: Collects for the Church and for the World (Canterbury Press Norwich, 2021)
Michel Paradis (2004), Last Mission to Tokyo: The Extraordinary Story of the Doolittle Raiders and Their Final Fight for Justice(Simon & Schuster, 2020)
Paul Crittenden (1965), Life Hereafter: The Rise and Decline of a Tradition, Palgrave Macmillan, 2021
Nick Rowan (2001), The Silk Road Revisited (Hertfordshire Press, 2020).(watch a promotional video).
John Flood (2006), Kilcash and the Butlers of Ormond: Conflict and Kinship from the Middle Ages to the Great Famine (Geography Publications, 2020)
Professor Paul Jankowski (1967), All Against All: The Long Winter of 1933 and the Origins of the Second World War (Profile, 2020)
Robert M. Wallace (1965), Philosophical Mysticism in Plato, Hegel, and the Present (Bloomsbury, 2019)
Nigel Bryant (1972), The Tournaments at Le Hem and Chauvency (Boydell & Brewer, 2020)
Michael Potter (1985), The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930: From Frege to Ramsey (Routledge, 2020)
Emily Charnock (1999), The Rise of Political Action Committees: Interest Group Electioneering and the Transformation of American Politics (OUP, 2020)
Professor Gilbert Strang (1955 and Honorary Fellow), Linear Algebra for Everyone (Wellesley-Cambridge Press, 2020)
Richard Heller (1966), The Prisoner of Rubato Towers (Xerus Publishing, 2020)
David Satter (1968), Never Speak to Strangers and Other Writing from Russia and the Soviet Union (Ibidem Press, 2020)
David Jones (1970) and Anne de Villars, Principles of Administrative Law, 7th edition (Carswell, 2020)
Sir Simon Mayall (1975), Soldier in the Sand: A Personal History of the Modern Middle East (Pen & Sword Military, 2020)
Andrew Copson (1999), The Little Book of Humanism (Piatkus, 2020)
Alison Rosenblitt (2002), The Beauty of Living: E.E. Cummings in the Great War (W.W. Norton, 2020). Recently a New York Times Editors’ Choice.
Toby Ord (2003), with Will MacAskill and Krister Bykvist, Moral Uncertainty (Oxford University Press, 2020) - Open Access PDF available on OUP website
Guy Westwood (2004), The Rhetoric of the Past in Demosthenes and Aeschines: Oratory, History, and Politics in Classical Athens (OUP, 2020)
Peter Snow (1958), with Ann MacMillan, foreword by Dan Snow (1998), Treasures of World History: The Story of Civilisation in 50 Documents (Welbeck, 2020)
James B. Bell (1961), The Colonial Records of Kings Chapel, Boston, Massachusetts, 1686-1776, 2 vols, (University of Virginia Press, 2019)
Dato’ Dr M. SHANmughalingam (1975), Marriage and Mutton Curry, UK edition (Epigram, 2020)
Professor Thomas Schwartz (1976), Henry Kissinger and American Power: A Political Biography (Hill and Wang, 2020)
Jim Berkman (1977), The Secret Ministry of Frost (2020)
Professor Richard Canning (1986), co-ed. (with Gerri Kimber), Brigid Brophy: Avant-Garde Writer, Critic, Activist (Edinburgh University Press, 2020)
Peter Howell (1959), John Francis Bentley: Architect of Westminster Cathedral (Liverpool University Press, 2020)
Kenneth Hamilton (1985), More Preludes to Chopin: Nocturnes Waltzes and Other Works (Prima Facie CD134, 2020)
Toby Ord (2003), The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity (Bloomsbury, 2020)
Robin Wilson (1962), Number Theory: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2020)
David-Antoine Williams (2003), The Life of Words: Etymology and Modern Poetry (Oxford University Press, 2020)
Martin Walker (1966), A Shooting at Chateau Rock: The Dordogne Mysteries 13 (Quercus, 2020)
Robin Edward Poulton (1969), Peace is Possible: Exchanging Weapons for Development and How we Disarmed the Khmer Rouge with Wit, Bluff - and Balloons (independently published, 2020)
John Hamwee (1963), Experiencing Acupuncture (Singing Dragon, 2020)William Outhwaite (1968), Transregional Europe (Emerald Publishing, 2020)
Robin Poulton (1969): with Ana Edwards, Sister Cities: A Story of Friendship from Virginia to Mali (Brandylane, 2019); Sunjata – Children of the Mali Empire – Then and Now: Stories about Malian Children (some of whom grow up), 2nd edition; and Paroles sur les Crises au Mali et les Limites de la Démocratie: Expériences et Analyses pour favoriser la Paix (Bamako: La Sahélienne, 2019) Stephen Saint-Leger (1974) writing as Daniel Ritter, The Failure of the Free Market and Democracy, and What to Do About It (Profile, 2020)
Stuart Weeks (1983), A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Ecclesiastes, Volume 1: Introduction and Commentary on Ecclesiastes 1.1-5.6 (T&T Clark, 2020)
David R. Watson (1953), ‘Clemenceau, vu d'Angleterre’ in La Pensée Politique de Clemenceau, eds. Sylvie Brodziak et Samuel Tomei (CNRS editions, 2020)
Emmanuel Kattan (1990), L'attrapeur d'âmes (Lémeac Éditeur, 2019)
Judith Wrubel Levy (1991) (publishing as Judith Deborah), Rosalind, Soup to Nuts, and A Falling Knife (reissue) (Plimsoll Press, 2019)
Rahul Rao (2001), Out of Time: The Queer Politics of Postcoloniality (Oxford University Press, 2020)
Andrew Whitby (2007), The Sum of the People: How the Census Has Shaped Nations, from the Ancient World to the Modern Age (Basic Books, 2020)
Sam Shem aka Stephen Bergman (1966), Man’s 4th Best Hospital (Berkley, 2019)
Emily Kesling (2011), Medical Texts in Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture (Boydell & Brewer, 2020)
Timothy Ades (1960), Alfonso Reyes: Miracle of Mexico (Shearsman Books, 2019)
Poems by Reyes with translations by Timothy Ades.
Dan Terkla (1986) and Nick Millea, eds. A Critical Companion to English Mappae Mundi of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries (Boydell Press, 2019)
Peter Anderson (1988), In a Free State: A Music (uHlanga, 2018)
Frederick Wilmot-Smith (2009), Equal Justice: Fair Legal Systems in an Unfair World (Harvard University Press, 2019)
M. Shanmughalingam (1975), Marriage and Mutton Curry (audiobook) (Storytel, 2019)
Laura Irvine (1981), The Biodynamic Field: Four Papers and a Manifesto (Kindle Direct Publishing, 2019)
Anna Alekseyeva (2011), Everyday Soviet Utopias: Planning, Design and the Aesthetics of Developed Socialism (Routledge, 2010)
Timothy Ades (1960), Alfonso Reyes, Miracle of Mexico (Shearman, 2019)
Nicholas Morris (1972), Management and Regulation of Pension Schemes: Australia a Cautionary Tale (Taylor and Francis, 2018)
Professor John Helliwell (1974), The Whats of a Scientific Life (CRC Press, 2019)
Diego Zancani (Emeritus Fellow), How We Fell in Love with Italian Food (Bodleian Library Publications, 2019)
Deepak Nayyar (1967, Honorary Fellow), Resurgent Asia: Diversity in Development (OUP, 2019); and (ed.) Asian Transformations: An Inquiry into the Development of Nations (OUP, 2019)
Sir David Keene (1959), Leaving the Arena: A Story of Bar and Bench (Bloomsbury, 2019)
The Rt. Hon. Sir David Keene has had a long and distinguished career both at the Bar and on the Bench. From being called to the Bar by the Inner Temple, taking silk and becoming chairman of the Planning Bar to the High Court and Court of Appeal, Sir David has been involved in a number of fascinating cases over the course of his career, from the Stanstead Airport inquiry to the McDonald libel appeal. In Leaving the Arena, Sir David reveals the story of his life from childhood to retirement. This memoir reveals the daily life of Keene as a law student at Oxford to working in the chambers, standing as a prospective candidate for Labour and becoming a QC before retiring after 9 years in the Court of Appeal.
Dominique Hogan-Doran SC (1994) and Justin Hogan-Doran (1998), ‘New approaches to proof of foreign law: a practitioners' assessment’ in Commercial Issues in Private International Law: A Common Law Perspective, Hart Publishing, 2019
Andrew Copson (1999), Secularism: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2019)
Professor William Outhwaite (1968), Luca Corchia, Stefan Müller-Doohm (eds), Habermas global - Wirkungsgeschichte eines Werks (Habermas Global - The Reception History of a Work) (Suhrkamp, 2019)
Jürgen Habermas' writings have found an international audience – and not only in academic circles but readers who are interested in politics. The current volume sees the international reception history of the prominent philosopher and public intellectual illuminated by more than 30 authors, who represent more than 15 language and scientific cultures. In so doing, for the first time ever this edition grants a comprehensive look at the international impact of Habermas’ thought, while simultaneously casting a new light on all of his work, which is inseparable from his concept of communicative rationality.
Carmen Bugan (2000), Lilies from America: New & Selected Poems (Shearsman, 2019)
Graeme Davison (1964), ed., Hugh Stretton: Selected Writings (La Trobe University Press, Black Inc., 2018)
Stretton, a Victorian Rhodes Scholar (1946) was a Fellow of Balliol (1948-1954), Professor of History at the University of Adelaide, and an original writer on the philosophy of the social sciences, urban planning and economics.
Ian Prattis (1965), Painting with Words: Poetry for a New Era (Manor House, 2019)
Dr Ian Prattis’s 17th book is a collection of intriguing, thought-provoking essays and poems reflecting on nature, war, the environment and our fragile planet.
Ella Robertson (2010) and Kate Robertson, How to Make a Difference: The Definitive Guide from the World’s Most Effective Activists (Cassell, 2019)
How to Make a Difference is a practical roadmap to modern-day activism created by the powerful and imaginative minds behind the world's biggest campaigns including Colin Kaepernick, Emma Watson, Sir Bob Geldof, Fatima Bhutto, Black Lives Matter, Doutzen Kroes, Yeonmi Park, Terry Crews, Cher, Matt Damon, Paul Polman and Gina Miller. Collectively they combine the latest models of thinking, their real life experiences, radical techniques and effective advice in order to help incentivise everyone and anyone who has ever wondered, how can I help?
Professor T.P. Wiseman (1957), The House of Augustus: A Historical Detective Story (Princeton University Press, 2019)
Brian Hodgkinson (1961):
How Our Economy Really Works: A Radical Reappraisal (Shepheard-Walwyn, 2019)
Why are so many trapped in poverty, when others are grossly well-off? Why are house prices continuously rising faster than inflation? Why is a multi-national coffee shop franchise not actually making its money from coffee? Recent political movements in the UK, USA and across Europe show general recognition that the system we have is not working for everyone. Much of the argument about major issues, like industrial policy, the distribution of wealth and income and government policy reverts to a polarised struggle between two antagonists, labour and capital. The third factor, land, hides in the background unacknowledged yet exerting a major influence on the outcome of the whole economic process. What needs to change, the author argues, are deeply embedded features, which have generally been established for a very long time. They are principally the taxation system, the land tenure system, and the banking system. This book lays out exactly what is needed at this crucial time.
The Advancement of Civilisation in the Western World, 3 vols (Shepheard-Walwyn, 2018)
A series of three books:
Professor Ben Fine (1966):
Material Cultures of Financialisation, co-edited with K. Bayliss and M. Robertson (Routledge, 2018)
Race, Class and the Post-Apartheid Democratic State, co-edited with John Reynolds and Robert van Niekerk (University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2019)
Hugh White (1977), How to Defend Australia (La Trobe University Press, 2019)
Jeffrey Gettleman (1994), Love, Africa: A Memoir of Romance, War, and Survival (Harper Paperbacks, 2018)
Professor Sir Christopher Bayly (1963 and Honorary Fellow 2014-2015), Remaking the Modern World 1900 - 2015: Global Connections and Comparisons (Wiley-Blackwell, 2018)
Published posthumously.
Kim Davies (1970),Stroud, Hegel, Heidegger: A Transcendental Argument (International Journal for the Study of Skepticism, 2018)
A new argument against scepticism concerning the existence of an 'external world'. Unrevised reprint here: Stroud, Hegel, Heidegger: a Transcendental_Argument.
Vidyan Ravinthiran (2003), The Million-petalled Flower of Being Here (Bloodaxe, 2019)
The author's second poetry collection: a book of sonnets for his wife. Poetry Book Society recommendation; shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection.
Professor Anthony Ferner (1968), Life in Translation (Holland Park Press, 2019)
Anthony Ferner's new novel is about a literary translator who finds it hard to make sense of the opaque syntax of his own life and relationships. Can a chance meeting in a Dutch town with a key figure from his past bring some much-desired clarity?
Andy Buchanan (1977), World War II in Global Perspective, 1931-1953: A Short History (Wiley, 2019)
'This [text] is [a] considerable achievement . . . Buchanan has successfully produced a "grand narrative" account of the complex, multi-faceted, and truly global period we persist in calling the "Second World War." . . . It is a master-class of information management and writing with concision and clarity.' - Ashley Jackson, Professor of Imperial and Military History, King's College London
Kate Sagovsky (2003) and Vanessa Ewan, Laban’s Efforts in Action: A Movement Handbook for Actors (Bloomsbury, 2019)
Olivia Gonzalez (2016), ‘Cracks in the Armor: Legal Approaches to Encryption’, Journal of Law, Technology & Policy (University of Illinois, 2019)
Tim Soutphommasane (2004), On Hate (Melbourne University Publishing, 2019)
How is hate shaping our society? With the troubling rise of nationalist populism and the return of race politics, it's time to question the powers at play. On Hate is an urgent call for citizens to defend democracy against extremism.
Roy Hay (1965), Aboriginal People and Australian Football in the Nineteenth Century: They Did Not Come from Nowhere (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2019)
This book collects new evidence to show how Aboriginal people saw the cricket and football played by those who had taken their land and resources and forced their way into them in the missions and stations around the peripheries of Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia. They learned the game and brought their own skills to it, eventually winning local leagues and earning the respect of their contemporaries. They were prevented from reaching higher levels by the gatekeepers of the domestic game until late in the 20th century.
Nicholas Shrimpton (1966) (ed.), William Blake: Selected Poems (OUP, 2019)
A new selection of the poetry of William Blake, who was largely ignored in his lifetime, but now recognised as a unique and haunting lyricist, and one of the key voices of the Romantic Age. It arranges Blake's poems by genre, looking at his lyrics, short epics, sublime epics, and satirical and discursive works in turn. Nicholas Shrimpton's introduction and explanatory notes consider modern Blake scholarship, his position as one of the defining English poets, his juvenilia, and the distinct genres of his work. The book Includes an up-to-date bibliography, a chronology, and a substantial ‘note on the text’.
Charles Conn (1983 and Professorial Fellow 2013-2018) and Rob McLean (eds), Bulletproof Problem Solving: The Only Skill you Really Need, McLean (Wiley, 2019)
Complex problem solving is the core skill for the 21st century, the only way to keep up with rapid change. Great organisations now rely on nimble, iterative problem solving, rather than traditional planning processes. The book covers the seven-step systematic approach to creative problem solving, developed in leading consulting firms, that works across fields. It employs a highly visual, logic-tree method that can be applied to almost any problem, from strategic business decisions to global social challenges. Conn and McLean, with decades of experience at McKinsey, start-up companies, and environment-focused foundations, provide a toolkit with 30 detailed, real-world examples, so you can see exactly how the technique works in action. Charles is now the CEO of Oxford Sciences Innovation, the venture company set up in partnership with Oxford University to develop the University’s advanced science ideas.
Timothy Allsop (2000) and Christopher Adams, ‘Open’, in Plays from the Vault 4 (Nick Hern Books, 2019)
‘Open’ is a frank, refreshing romance that draws on interviews, conversation and private correspondence to explore the authors' real-life open marriage.
Ali Chetwynd (2001), Joanna Freer, and Georgios Maragos (eds), Thomas Pynchon, Sex, and Gender (University of Georgia Press, 2018)
Angela Daly (2003), S. Kate Devitt and Monique Mann (ed), Good Data (Amsterdam Institute of Network Cultures, 2019)
An open access book on data ethics/ethical data: free e-version here.
Gilbert Strang (1955, Honorary Fellow), Linear Algebra and Learning from Data (Wellesley-Cambridge Press, 2019)
This is a textbook to help readers understand the steps that lead to deep learning. Linear algebra comes first especially singular values, least squares, and matrix factorisations. Often the goal is a low rank approximation A = CR (column-row) to a large matrix of data to see its most important part. This uses the full array of applied linear algebra, including randomization for very large matrices. Then deep learning creates a large-scale optimization problem for the weights solved by gradient descent or better stochastic gradient descent. Finally, the book develops the architectures of fully connected neural nets and of Convolutional Neural Nets (CNNs) to find patterns in data. Audience: This book is for anyone who wants to learn how data is reduced and interpreted by and understand matrix methods. Based on the second linear algebra course taught by Professor Strang, whose lectures on the training data are widely known, it starts from scratch (the four fundamental subspaces) and is fully accessible without the first text.
Mark Glouberman (1966), "I AM": Monotheism and the Philosophy of the Bible (University of Toronto Press, 2019)
For whom was the Hebrew Bible written? How much truth does it contain? What, according to the Bible, is the place of men and women in the world? What connection is there between the Bible and morality? In "I AM" Mark Glouberman supplies new answers to these old questions. He does this by establishing that the foundational scripture of the West is, first and foremost, a philosophical document, not a theological tract, nor yet the religious history of a nation.
David Williams (1969) and Cris Shore (eds), The Shapeshifting Crown: Locating the State in Post-Colonial New Zealand, Australia, Canada and the UK (CUP, 2019)
The Crown stands at the heart of the New Zealand, British, Australian andCanadian constitutions as the ultimate source of legal authority and embodiment of state power. A familiar icon of the Westminster model of government, it is also an enigma. Even constitutional experts struggle to define its attributes and boundaries: who or what is the Crown and how is it embodied? Is it the Queen,the state, the government, a corporation sole or aggregate, a relic of feudal England, a metaphor, or a mask for the operation of executive power? How are its powers exercised? How have the Crowns of different Commonwealth countries developed? The Shapeshifting Crown combines legal and anthropological perspectives to provide novel insights into the Crown’s changing nature and its multiple, ambiguous and contradictory meanings. It sheds new light on to the development of the state in postcolonial societies and constitutional monarchy as a cultural system.
Alison Rosenblitt (1996), Rome after Sulla, Bloomsbury Academic (Bloomsbury, 2019)
Rome after Sulla offers a new perspective on the damaged, volatile, and conflictual political culture of the late Roman republic. The book begins with a narrative of the years immediately following the dictatorship of Sulla (80-77 BC), providing both a new reconstruction of events and original analysis of key sources including Cicero's pro Roscio, Appian, the Livian tradition, and Sallust's Historiae. Arguing that Sulla's settlement was never stable, Rome after Sulla emphasises the uncertainty and fear felt by contemporaries and the problems caused in Rome by consciousness of the injustices of the Sullan settlement and its lack of moral legitimacy.
George Levy (1977), Computational Finance Using C and C#: Derivatives and Valuation (2016) and Energy Power Risk: Derivatives, Computation and Optimization (2019)
Iain Mackenzie-Blair (1965) (aka Ian Mertling-Blake), Guardians (Amolibros, 2018)
1930: Salter’s Creek, former trading-post, an isolated settlement in NW Canada long-fallen into decline after rumours of a gold strike turned out to be false, serves scattered outlying homesteads hacked out of the surrounding forest by immigrant Scottish families dispossessed of their Highland birthright by the Clearances. It is necessary to decide who should be responsible for the welfare of Kip Harrison, orphaned aged eight by a car accident and adopted by his elderly great aunt who dies shortly before his eleventh birthday. Should his guardian be the austere Minister and his wife, or the amiable schoolmaster whom Kip himself prefers? Nobody except the reader is aware of the boy’s accidental encounter with the fanatical old itinerant preacher ‘Pope’ Potter with which the story opens and is to have such far- reaching consequences. In an exceptionally dry summer, the threat of forest fires in everyone’s mind, a worrying pattern of small conflagrations and the bizarre desecration of the church increases tension as The Great Blaze eats its way towards Salter’s Creek.
Paul Shrimpton (1977), ed., Inklings of Truth: Essays to Mark the Anniversaries of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien (Grandpont House Papers series, 2018)
Anne Chapman (1982), Community Energy in the UK (Green European Foundation, 2018)
Phil Clark (2001), Distant Justice: The Impact of the International Criminal Court on Africa Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2018)
Edward Dommen (1957), Aimer la création comme soi-même (éditions Nicolas Junod, 2018), and Poudre d’Or, réflexions sur les noms de lieu de l’Île Maurice (limited edition, 2018)
Aimer la création comme soi-même is an essay on the spiritual underpinnings of international environmental norms, exuberantly illustrated by Jane Le Besque. Poudre d’Or, réflexions sur les noms de lieu de l’Île Maurice is illustrated by Dode Lambert.
Dafydd ap Ffransis-Meilir (1959) (aka The Revd David Miles Board), Bring Back the Hour: The Book of Recollections, ‘Oxford University and Balliol College 57–63’, Triscel, 2018
Dafydd's memories of his Balliol years as an open scholar reading history in the 1960s are available on the website of Triscel, a multimedia labyrinth of prose, poetry, images and film.
Christopher Jones (1959) and John Martin, Honey and Thistles (Agriculture and Theology Project, 2018)
The book looks at the way which agriculture is practised globally and the ways in which it is viewed and treated by politicians and commercial interest. There are issues of practicality, sustainability and justice. The authors review all these matters in the light of Christian perspective. The introduction and contents sections is designed to enable people to start from the point to which they can most easily relate. It is written as part of the Agriculture and Theology Project.
Martin Edwards (1974), The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books (British Library, 2017) – non-fiction; Gallows Court (Head of Zeus, 2018) – fiction
The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books was the winner of the Macavity Award from Mystery Readers International, and nominated for four other awards. More details about Martin Edwards’ books at www.martinedwardsbooks.com.
Adrian Moore (1978), The Infinite (3rd edition), Routledge, 2018
Professor Moore writes: This third edition includes two new chapters and a new appendix. Episodes of my BBC Radio 4 series A History of the Infinite can be heard here.
Sarah Loving (1980), writing as S.L. Powell, Visible Ink (Curlicue Books, 2018)
Sarah Loving’s second children’s novel is a subtle take on bullying, aimed at 8-11-year-olds.
Claire Foster-Gilbert (1984), ed. The Power of Politicians, The Power of Civil Servants, The Power of Judges and The Power of Journalists (including article by Gary Gibbon (1984), all in the Haus Curiosity series, 2018
Peter Sarris (1990) and David J.D. Miller, The Novels of Justinian: A Complete Annotated English Translation (2 vols, Cambridge University Press, 2018)
John Ford (1954), Rudolph Ackermann & the Regency World (Warnham Books, 2018)
An authoritative biography of German émigré Rudolph Ackermann, revealing the remarkable range of his influence as designer, inventor, publisher, and promoter of style and fashion in the Regency period, and his unique role as a cultural conduit between England and both Germany and the newly independent countries of Latin America. Drawing for the first time on Ackermann's private letters, journal and bank account and on German and Spanish sources, it throws new light on his relationship with the royal families and statesmen of Britain and Germany, and the significance of his Masonic connections.
Ben Fine (1966), K. Bayliss and Mary Robertson (2003), eds, Material Cultures of Financialisation (Routledge, 2018)
This collection of chapters (originally published in a special issue of New Political Economy) offers path-breaking framing of the material culture of financialisation.
Peter J. Yearwood (1968), Nigeria and the Death of Liberal England: Palm Nuts and Prime Ministers, 1914-1916 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018)
The book explores the role of Nigeria-British trade in the political crisis which brought down the Liberal-dominated Asquith coalition and replaced it with the Conservative-dominated Lloyd George coalition; it explains why the Nigerian palm kernel trade had far-reaching political repercussions in Great Britain during the First World War; and it offers the first detailed history of the palm kernel industry and export economy in Nigeria
David Gilmour (1971): The British in India: Three Centuries of Ambition and Experience (Penguin/Allen Lane, 2018)
This book explores the lives of the many different sorts of Briton who went to India: viceroys and offcials, soldiers and missionaries, planters and foresters, merchants, engineers, teachers and doctors. It evokes the three and a half centuries of their ambitions and experiences, together with the lives of their families, recording the diversity of their work and their leisure, and the complexity of their relationships with the peoples of India. It also describes the lives of many who did not fit in with the usual image of the Raj: the tramps and rascals, the men who 'went native', the women who scorned the role of the traditional memsahib.David Gilmour has spent decades researching in archives, studying the papers of many people whohave never been written about before, to create a magnificent tapestry of British life in India.
Thomas Maloney (1999), Learning to Die (Scribe, 2018)
Thomas Maloney's second novel was described by Julie Myerson as 'startling and sad but also sly, punchy and full of heart,' and by Richard Beard as 'a novel replete with formal virtues.'
Jasper Tomlinson (1947), ‘Nigerian Briefing: How Engineers Can Help Secure a Sustainable Economy’, in the Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers (Energy) (The Institution of Civil Engineers, 2018)
Jasper Tomlinson writes: The paper (which should be in the print edition in late summer) has already had some good responses. Sir Partha Dasgupta thanked me for it as ‘quite excellent’, noting that it fits into the context of his coming book on the population-consumption-environment nexus (actually, in my terms, that signifies it is about a world fit for all our grandchildren) as in this paper of mine those very issues are raised in an applied, Nigerian context. I am hoping to get the Institution [of Civil Engineers] in London to arrange a meeting for anyone interested to join a discussion of these challenges.
Peter Buckman (1959), A Genial Senior’s Companion to Ageing (Head of Zeus, 2018)
Peter Buckman writes: Head of Zeus, run by Anthony Cheetham (1960), will be publishing my A Genial Senior’s Companion to Ageing in August. My eighth book, it contains some wit, some wisdom, and a fair amount of cobblers.
Bridget Fox (1983), Rising to the Challenge (Campaign for Better Transport, 2017) and Roads and the Environment (Campaign for Better Transport, 2018)
Robyn Williams (Visiting Fellow 1995-1996), Turmoil: Letters from the Brink (New South Publishing, 2018)
The presenter of the Science Show on ABC Radio gives a searingly honest and often blackly funny reflection on his life, friends, the people he loves and loathes, and a multi-faceted career that includes over forty years on radio. Robyn writes frankly about everything, from performing with Monty Python, his impressions of fellow scientists Richard Dawkins and David Attenborough, and his unique insighs on climate change and the recent devaluing of science to frugality and being treated for bowel cancer. There is also, he says, 'lots about Balliol'.
Geoff Mulgan (1979), Big Mind: How Collective Intelligence Can Change Our World (Princeton University Press, 2017)
A new field of collective intelligence has emerged in the last few years, prompted by a wave of digital technologies that make it possible for organisations and societies to think at large scale. This 'bigger mind' - human and machine capabilities working together - has the potential to solve the great challenges of our time. So why do smart technologies not automatically lead to smart results? Gathering insights from diverse fields, including philosophy, computer science, and biology, Big Mind reveals how collective intelligence can guide corporations, governments, universities, and societies to make the most of human brains and digital technologies. Geoff Mulgan is chief executive of Nesta, the UK’s National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, and a senior visiting scholar at Harvard University’s Ash Center.
David Kinloch (1982), In Search of Dustie-Fute (Carcanet, 2017)
David Kinloch's sixth poetry collection, shortlisted for the 2017 Saltire Society Poetry Book of the Year Award. Who is Dustie-Fute? Many are, and many have been. A fellowship of strangers across time: free spirits, survivors. Kinloch’s bestiary of forgotten voices spans apocalypse and salvage, elegy and humour. Mythic and erotic, his poems engage ecological disaster, LGBT art and politics, and that great resistance movement, love.
Anthony Ferner (1968), Inside the Bone Box (Fairlight Books, 2018)
Inside the Bone Box, the second novel by Anthony Ferner, tells the story of Nick Anderton, an obese neurosurgeon whose life - both professional and personal - is falling apart.
Lucy Loh (née Blackadder) (1982) and Patrick Hoverstadt, Patterns of Strategy (Routledge, 2017)
Patterns of Strategy is a revolutionary approach which provides a completely new framework for understanding and developing business strategy. It shows how the dynamics of the strategic fit between organisations drive their strategic direction, and a way to develop strategy as a series of manoeuvres to improve strategic outcomes. Patrick Hoverstadt and Lucy Loh describe strategy as an emergent process that influences and is influenced by the business ecosystem to which an organisation belongs. It is a systemic approach to strategy that focuses on the relationships between organisations, rather than just the organisation in its own right. As well as a new language of strategy and an explanation of what drives emergent strategy, the authors offer 80 'patterns’ of strategy which organisations can use to understand the relationship that their business and their strategy have to the actors around it. These patterns provide a toolkit for designing different ways to collaborate, and also offer alternative types and approaches of competition. A practical and authoritative guide, this book can be used to plan and navigate your way through your strategic landscape.
Jonathan Totman (2005), Explosives Licence (Templar Poetry, 2018)
Explosives Licence is Jonathan’s debut poetry pamphlet and a winner of the 2018 IOTA Shot Pamphlet Awards. These poems explore our responses to profound disruptions in our lives: the ghosts that inhabit our surroundings and relationships; the licences we give ourselves to talk and stay silent; the rituals drawing us closer and compulsions driving us apart.
Featured in May 2018
Gareth Williams (1963), Ask The Fellows Who Cut The Coal: George Ewart Evans of Abercynon 1909-1988 (Seer Design, 2017)
Martin Walker (1966), The Templars’ Last Secret (Quercus, 2017) and A Taste for Vengeance (Quercus, 2018)
Both books are in his ‘Bruno, chief of Police’ series and are published in the UK and the US. His novels have now sold over 3 million copies and are published in 17 languages.
Christopher Lord (1977) and Olga Strietska-Ilina (eds), Parallel Cultures: Majority/Minority Relations in the Countries of the Former Eastern Bloc, 2nd edition (Routledge, 2017)
Christopher Lord writes: The ‘Parallel Cultures’ project was a research project funded by George Soros’ Open Society Fund, involving young scholars brought up in the former USSR and Eastern Bloc, and organized by me at Charles University and a Russian friend and colleague, Olga Strietska-Ilina, from the Central European University, both in Prague. We were all people of compromised nationality in one way or another, and the other essays consist of people writing about the minority population they themselves belong to. Half the book is a long essay by me, which discusses inter alia the naïve anthropological hypothesis of nationalism and its historical background, and offers an alternative view based on the coexistence of moral communities. The other essays are serious-minded sociological and anthropological surveys which present what is now a valuable historical picture of the situation of minority populations in the Eastern Bloc in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War. First published by Ashgate in 2001, it has now been re-published by Routledge in a series it describes as ‘restoring to print books by some of the most influential academic scholars of the last 120 years’, with a foreword by Sir Peter Ustinov.
Jonathan Ostry (1981), Atish Ghosh and Mahvash Qureshi, Taming the Tide of Capital Flows (MIT Press, 2018)
A comprehensive examination of policy measures intended to help emerging markets contend with large and volatile capital flows.
Jonathan Ostry is also the co-editor of Capital Controls (Elgar, 2015).
James B. Bell (1961), Anglicans, Dissenters and Radical Change in Early New England, 1686-1786 (Palgrave, 2017)
This book explores the development of the Anglican Church in Puritan New England and the support it received both from London officials and those born in early America. Building upon his extensive research on the Anglican Church in colonial America, Bell considers the political and religious tensions represented by the Church and the challenge it posed to the Puritan tradition.
Ronald Beiner (1975), Dangerous Minds: Nietzsche, Heidegger, and the Return of the Far Right (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018)
Following the fall of the Berlin Wall and demise of the Soviet Union, prominent Western thinkers began to suggest that liberal democracy had triumphed decisively on the world stage. Having banished fascism in the Second World War, liberalism had now buried communism, and the result would be an end of major ideological conflicts, as liberal norms and institutions spread to every corner of the globe.
With the Brexit vote in Great Britain, the resurgence of right-wing populist parties across the European continent, and the surprising ascent of Donald Trump to the American presidency, such hopes have begun to seem hopelessly naïve. The far right is back, and serious rethinking is in order.
In Dangerous Minds, Ronald Beiner traces the deepest philosophical roots of such right-wing ideologues as Richard Spencer, Aleksandr Dugin, and Steve Bannon to the writings of Nietzsche and Heidegger — and specifically to the aspects of their thought that express revulsion for the liberal-democratic view of life.
Chandrika Kaul (1988) et al (eds.), Media and the Portuguese Empire (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017)
This volume offers a new and innovative understanding of the role of the media in the Portuguese Empire during the 19th and 20th centuries. It sheds light on the interactions between communications, government policy, economics, society and culture. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, the book focuses on varied themes including the expansion of printing, the development of newspapers and radio, state propaganda in metropolitan Portugal and within her colonies, censorship, the use of media by opposition and nationalist groups, and comparative developments within Britain and her empire. The book aims to encourage an understanding of the articulations and tensions between the different groups that participated, willingly or not, in the establishment, maintenance and overthrow of the Portuguese Empire in Angola, Mozambique, São Tomé e Príncipe, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, India, and East Timor.
Anselm Oelze (2011), Animal Rationality: Later Medieval Theories 1250–1350 (Brill, 2018)
Anselm Oelze offers the first comprehensive and systematic exploration of theories of animal rationality in the later Middle Ages. Traditionally, it was held that medieval thinkers ascribed rationality to humans while denying it to nonhuman animals. As Oelze shows, this narrative fails to capture the depth and diversity of the medieval debate. Although many thinkers, from Albert the Great to John Buridan, did indeed hold that nonhuman animals lack rational faculties, some granted them the ability to engage in certain rational processes such as judging, reasoning, or employing prudence. There is thus a whole spectrum of positions to be discovered, many of which show interesting parallels with contemporary theories of animal rationality.
Katherine Cross (2005), Heirs of the Vikings: History and Identity in Normandy and England, c.950-c.1015http://boydellandbrewer.com/heirs-of-the-vikings-hb.html (Boydell & Brewer, 2018)
Viking settlers and their descendants inhabited both England and Normandy in the 10th century, but narratives discussing their origins diverged significantly. This comparative study explores the depictions of Scandinavia and the events of the Viking Age in genealogies, origin myths, hagiographies, and charters from the two regions. Analysis of this literary evidence reveals the strategic use of Scandinavian identity by Norman and Anglo-Saxon elites. Countering interpretations which see claims of Viking identity as expressions of contact with Scandinavia, the comparison demonstrates the local, political significance of these claims. In doing so, the book reveals the earliest origins of familiar legends which at once demonize and romanticize the Vikings - and which have their roots in both Anglo-Saxon and Norman traditions.
Barry Day (1953) (ed.), Coward Plays: Nine (Methuen Drama, 2018)
A selection of Noël Coward's lesser-known works: Salute to the Brave/Time Remembered; Long Island Sound; Volcano; Age Cannot Wither; Design for Rehearsing - introduced by Coward expert and scholar Barry Day.
Paul Shrimpton (1977), Conscience Before Conformity: Hans and Sophie Scholl and the White Rose Resistance in Nazi Germany (Gracewing, 2018)
Conscience Before Conformity tells the story of German students who dared to speak out against Hitler and the Third Reich, and died for their beliefs. Operating under the name of the White Rose, they printed and distributed leaflets condemning Nazism and urging Germans to offer non-violent resistance to the ‘atheistic war machine’. By looking at the cultural and religious journey of the protagonists, Hans and Sophie Scholl, we can see what made them change from active participants in the Hitler Youth to leaders of the White Rose resistance. These modern-day heroes were deeply influenced by intellectuals they met in secret, and by the writings of great Christian thinkers such as St Augustine, Pascal, Georges Bernanos, and Bl. John Henry Newman. What they learnt gave them the strength to put their consciences before conformity to the Nazi lie.
Jonathan Michie (1976), Advanced Introduction to Globalisation (Elgar, 2017); The Oxford Handbook of Co-operative, Mutual, & Co-owned Business (ed., with Joseph Blasi and Carlo Borzaga (OUP, 2017); Globalisation and Democracy (3-volume reader), (Elgar, 2017)
Find out more about all three books here.
Roopa Unnikrishnan (1995), The Career Catapult: Shake-Up the Status Quo and Boost Your Professional Trajectory, New Page Books, 2017
We live in an evolving economic environment, one in which job security and career certainty are distant memories. The old rules for navigating the turbulent waters of employment just don't apply anymore. In the face of these ongoing changes, it is easy to become fearful and discouraged. In The Career Catapult, career consultant Roopa Unnikrishnan shows you how to gaze into this uncertain future and shape it to your advantage regardless of your current position in the job hierarchy.
Ian Park (2008), The Right to Life in Armed Conflict, Oxford Monographs in International Humanitarian & Criminal Law (OUP, 2018)
This monograph examines substantive and procedural right to life obligations of states during armed conflict, analyses a variety of conflicts to examine how the right to life creates obligations in practice, examines what the effect of derogation by a state in respect of their right to life obligations would be, and considers the duty of states to investigate alleged violations of the right to life.
Graham Nesbitt (1958), The Roads Less Travelled (Aylen, 2017)
Illustrated hardcover account of several solo expeditions across the Sahara, through Iran and Afghanistan, and other remote places, as well as journeys in the Himalayas.
Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy (1963), An Introduction to English Morphology: Words and Their Structure (2nd ed.), Edinburgh University Press, 2018
Bestselling introduction to English morphology, now revised and updated. What exactly are words? Are they the things that get listed in dictionaries, or are they the basic units of sentence structure? Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy explores the implications of these different approaches to words in English. He explains the various ways in which words are related to one another, and shows how the history of the English language has affected word structure.
Paul Williamson (1985), Six London Preludes (Festival O/Modernt, Cambridge and Stockholm, 2017)
Contains 317 photos by artist Debbie Loftus and six short narratives by writer Paul Williamson created in response to the contemporary London scene. Words and pictures tell the same stories in different ways, mixing genres, tones of voice, viewpoints and frames of reference. The design by James Lunn showcases and complements the content by including a range of Fedrigoni papers and page sizes, and using assertive typography to achieve a provocative urban feel characterised by edgy glamour. The result is a graphic novel that’s also an artist’s sketchbook, a luxury brochure and an unorthodox city guide.
Wayne Myers (1990) with Fit and the Conniptions, Old Blue Witch (Fit Records, 2017)
'Bluesy folk rock': songs written and produeced by Wayne Myers. Available for streaming, download, or on CD.
Hayley Hooper (2008) and Veronika Fikfak, Parliament's Secret War (Hart Publishing, 2018)
A critical inquiry into Parliament's role in the war prerogative since the beginning of the 20th century, evaluating whether the UK's decisions to engage in conflict meet the recognised standards of good governance: accountability, transparency and participation, revealing a number of persistent problems in the decision-making process and solutions to to reinvigorate parliamentary discourse and to address government withholding of classified information. .
William Outhwaite (1968) (ed.), Brexit: Sociological Responses, Anthem Press, 2017
A study of the inmplications of the UK's projected withdrawal from the EU, placing short-term political fluctuations in a broader historical and social context of the transformation of European and global society.
Richard Healey (1969), The Quantum Revolution in Philosophy (OUP, 2017)
Quantum theory launched a revolution in physics, but we have yet to understand the revolution's significance for philosophy. Richard Healey opens a path to such understanding, exploring the radical consequences of quantum theory for how we understand the world.
Featured in January 2018
Steve Wakefield (1974): The True Adventures of Gines de Pasamonte (independently published, 2017)
A rewriting of a literary classic in which Ginés Pasamonte, a true historical figure who is twice satirised by Cervantes, claims to be the true author of Don Quixote, and that his manuscript has been stolen by Cervantes. It is also an enquiry into why we write, and ultimately a wistful paean to the power of literature to create alternative worlds.
Steve Wakefield (1974): Harlots, Pimps & Wily Slaves: The Picaresque World of Roman Comedy (Amazon Digital Services LLC), 2017
An innovative study that uses the concept of the 'picaresque' drawn from Spanish Golden Age literature to take a fresh look at characters, scenarios and themes in the comedies of the Latin playwrights Plautus and Terence.
Christopher Catherwood (1973), Churchill: the Greatest Briton (Andre Deutsch, 2017)
A photographic biography of Winston Churchill, reissued to coincide with the release of a new film on Churchill.
Valentina Gosetti (2007), ed. with Andrea Bedeschi and Adriano Marchetti, Donne: Poeti di Francia e oltre: Dal Romanticismo a oggi (Women: Poets from France and Beyond: From Romanticism to Today) (Giuliano Ladolfi Editore, 2017)
A bilingual anthology (French-Italian) of French-speaking women poets from Romanticism to today. Original translations by Andrea Bedeschi, Valentina Gosetti, and Adriano Marchetti.
John Cooper (1955), The British Welfare Revolution 1906-14 (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017)
The Welfare Revolution of the early 20th century did not start with Clement Attlee's Labour governments of 1945 to 1951 but had its origins in the Liberal government of 40 years earlier. This book offers a fresh perspective on the social reforms introduced by these Liberal governments in the years 1906 to 1914. Reforms conceived during this time created the foundations of the Welfare State and transformed modern Britain; they touched every major area of social policy, from school meals to pensions, the minimum wage to the health service.
John Hamwee (1963):
Intuitive Acupuncture (Singing Dragon, 2017)
The role of intuition is seldom identified in acupuncture training as one of the keys to effective practice. John Hamwee here explores its paramount importance in diagnosis and treatment, showing how development of the intuitive sense, and its appropriate use in the treatment room, is vital to building the most effective individual practice.
The Spirit of the Organs (Singing Dragon, 2017)
In the Chinese medicine tradition, understanding and resonating with the spirit of the organs leads to better diagnosis and more effective, powerful treatment. Through the stories of 12 people that embody the unique spirit of each organ, John Hamwee shows the physical, emotional and spiritual nature of each, and their related tendencies and possibilities for improved wellbeing.
John Gledhill (1967), La cara oculta de la inseguridad en Mexico (Paidos, 2017)
This book places Mexico's acute contemporary problems of violence and insecurity in a global and historical context, tracing their evolution from the counter-insurgency wars of the 20th century through a succession of transformations in the national state and patterns of US hegemony, capitalist development and transnational networks of migration and illegal activity. Based on 30 years of ethnographic research, it also offers a view from below of the impacts of these processes on ordinary citizens and their individual and collective responses to everyday security dilemmas in the states of Chiapas, Guerrero and Michoacán. Arguing that the transformation of social and political problems into questions of security exacerbates social injustice, the analysis shows that the real problem is not the complete absence of the state from citizens' lives but the ever more perverse nature of its presence.
Professor William Outhwaite (1968) (ed), Brexit: Sociological Responses (Anthem Press, 2017
This book traces the implications of the UK’s projected withdrawal from the EU, placing short-term political fluctuations in a broader historical and social context of the transformation of European and global society. It provides a forum for leading Eurosociologists (broadly defined), working inside and outside the UK, to rethink their analyses of the European project and its prospects, as well as to reflect on the likely implications for the UK.
Kathryn Brown (1988), Matisse's Poets, Critical Performance in the Artist's Book (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017)
Throughout his career, Henri Matisse used imagery as a means of engaging critically with poetry and prose by a diverse range of authors. Kathryn Brown offers a groundbreaking account of Matisse's position in the literary cross-currents of 20th-century France and explores ways in which reading influenced the artist's work in a range of media.
Christopher Catherwood (1973), Churchill and Tito: Soe, Bletchley Park and Supporting the Yugoslav Communists in World War II, Frontline Books, 2017
Dr Catherwood writes: It is a book on how Winston Churchill, in 1943, decided to back the Communist Partisans of Tito, better to fight the German occupiers, than the guerrillas of the official opposition, the Cetniks, led by General Milosevic. For years right-wing historians insist that everything that happened was the result of a Communist conspiracy, led by SOE in Cairo (a group including Christopher Hill!) and hoodwinking Churchill into supporting Communists instead of the Serb nationalist Cetnik guerrillas. But recently released archives show that all this is rubbish! (And even Christopher Hill might be innocent!!) It was in fact all MI3 - later absorbed into MI6 but still independent in 1943) and also the Ultra-decoders of Bletchley Park. It was MI3 and GCHQ that changed Churchill's mind, since, as he told Sir Fitzroy Maclean, his delegate to Tito behind enemy lines, that the Partisans were killing more Germans than anyone else.
Featured in September 2017
Richard Whitaker (1971), The Odyssey of Homer: A Southern African Translation (African Sun Press, 2017)
Emeritus Professor of Classics at the University of Cape Town Richard Whitaker has translated Homer's epic poem with 'generous African texturing', according to his publisher.
Ben White (1965), From Crisis to Crisis: Indonesia’s Experience of Recession During the 20th Century (in Indonesian) (Gadjah Mada University Press, 2017)
Saam Trivedi (1991), Imagination, Music, and the Emotions: A Philosophical Study (State University of New York Press, 2017)
Both musicians and laypersons can perceive purely instrumental music without words or an associated story or programme as expressing emotions such as happiness and sadness. But how? In this book, Saam Trivedi discusses and critiques the leading philosophical approaches to this question, including formalism, metaphorism, expression theories, arousalism, resemblance theories, and persona theories. Finding these to be inadequate, he advocates an 'imaginationist' solution, by which absolute music is not really or literally sad but is only imagined to be so in a variety of ways. In particular, he argues that we as listeners animate the music ourselves, imaginatively projecting life and mental states onto it. Bolstering his argument with empirical data from studies in neuroscience, psychology, and cognitive science, Trivedi also addresses and explores larger philosophical questions such as the nature of emotions, metaphors, and imagination.
Professor Nicholas Tyacke (1959), ‘From Studium Generale to Modern Research University: Eight Hundred Years of Oxford History’, in History of Universities, XXX/1-2, ed. Mordechai Feingold, (OUP, 2017), 205-25
An essay review of Laurence W.B. Brockliss, The University of Oxford: A History (OUP, 2016), a one-volume distillation of the eight-volume History of the University of Oxford, with Balliol people providing one of the building blocks of Professor Tyacke's revisionist case.
Featured in August 2017
Jason Lawrence (1988), Tasso’s Art and Afterlives: The ‘Gerusalemme liberata’ in England (Manchester University Press, 2017)
This interdisciplinary study examines the literary, artistic and biographical afterlives in England of the great 16th-century Italian poet Torquato Tasso, from before his death to the end of the 19th century. Focusing on the lasting impact of his once famous poem ‘Gerusalemme liberata’ across a spectrum of arts, it traces and analyses the influence of Tasso’s poem in the literary works of Spenser, Milton, Shakespeare and Daniel, and considers also to its impact on the visual and musical arts in England, in works by Van Dyck, Poussin and Handel. A second strand focuses on English responses to Tasso’s troubled life in the 18th and 19th centuries, exemplified in Byron’s memorable impersonation of the poet’s voice in The Lament of Tasso.
Nicholas Tate (1961), The Conservative Case for Education: Against the Current (Routledge 2017)
This book argues that educational thinking in English-speaking countries over the last fifty years has been massively influenced by a dominant liberal ideology based on unchallenged assumptions. Conservative voices pushing against the current of this ideology have been few, but powerful and drawn from across the political spectrum. The book shows how these 20th-century voices remain highly relevant today, using them to make a conservative case for education.
David Waller (1981) and Rupert Young, The Reputation Game: The Art of Changing How People See You (Oneworld, 2017)
A good reputation helps us to find a soulmate, sell a table on eBay, rent out a room on Airbnb, get invited to parties or secure a new promotion. Through pioneering research and interviews with a host of major figures ranging from Jay-Z and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman to Bernie Madoff and Man Booker Prize-winner Hilary Mantel, the authors reveal the key mechanisms that make and remake our reputations, providing the essential guide to the most important game in business and in life.
Featured in July 2017
Paul Fremantle (1987), Boris Adryan and Dominik Obermaier, The Technical Foundations of IoT (Artech, 2017)
Summary: The Technical Foundations of IoT is a serious textbook looking at all aspects of the Internet of Things, from basic physics and chemistry through to protocols, analytics and security. Dr Fremantle contributed the section on security and privacy of IoT.Professor Charles Spence (1988), Gastrophysics: The New Science of Eating (Penguin, 2017)
Summary: 'Gastrophysics' is the new field of knowledge pioneered by Professor Spence, combining the disciplines of neuroscience, psychology and design. Exploring the extraordinary connections between our senses, he shows how we can create more tasty, exciting, healthy and memorable eating experiences. Above all, to get the most out of every meal, we need to think about not only what's in the mouth, but also what's in the mind. Whether you are at home or in a restaurant, eating alone or with friends, Gastrophysics uncovers the hidden ingredients that can change the way we eat and the way we live.
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Professor Nik Chmiel (1980), Franco Fraccaroli, Magnus Sverke, eds., An Introduction to Work and Organizational Psychology: An International Perspective (Chicester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2017)
Summary: The latest edition of this classic text provides a comprehensive and internationally relevant introduction to work and organizational psychology, exploring the depth and diversity of the field in an accessible way without obscuring the complexities of the subject. It utilises an innovative new six part structure with two–colour presentation, which focuses the core material around issues that are either Job–Focused, Organization–Focused, or People–Focused.
Claire Foster-Gilbert (1984), The Moral Heart of Public Service (Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2017)
Claire Foster-Gilbert writes: Now more than ever, public servants must understand how to keep moral courage in public life alive. Claire Foster-Gilbert (Westminster Abbey Institute) gathers a series of essays investigating morality in today's public service, and how it can be rekindled in practice. The book is founded on traditional values of honesty and generosity, and discusses how to champion stability, peace and community in contemporary public life. Eminent figures such as Mary McAleese (the former President of Ireland), Peter Hennessy, William Hague (former First Secretary of State) and Rowan Williams (former Archbishop of Canterbury) have contributed to this timeless and timely work.
Christopher Brickhill (1972), Risk Traffickers (Amazon, 2016)
Summary: Risk Traffickers explores the fall-out from the 2007/8 financial crisis, exploring inequality, bankers’ compensation, and malfeasance. It examines the causes of the crisis, tracing the roots of it from the embryonic banking in the US through the Great Depression, and the rise of the shadow banking system and exotics. It also discusses the decline of regulatory control, bank failures, rating agencies, and the pitfalls of risk management.
Christopher Brickhill (1972), Singapore's Avaricious Oligarchy(Amazon, 2016)
Summary: Singapore's Avaricious Oligarchy explores the political, financial, and legal infrastructures which have shaped Singapore to be the country it is today. Though its Gini index is one of the highest in the developed world, and its prime minister one of the most respected, further investigation suggests that there may be more than what initially appears.
Robert Crocker (1979), Somebody Else's Problem: Consumerism, Sustainability and Design(Greenleaf UK, 2016)
Robert Crocker writes: Somebody Else's Problem was something of an experiment. Five years ago I became increasingly concerned that the media presentation of our environmental crisis had detracted attention from the effects of everyday 'high carbon' systems and the products we now depend upon, which are ultimately responsible for the wastes, pollution, and emissions behind Climate Change. My intention was to show clearly that individualising our problem is neither fair nor useful, and to focus attention on the legacy effects of sixty years of 'high carbon' development. It has recently won the Axiom Best Business Books (Gold) award in the sustainability category.
Jeffrey Gettleman (1994), Love, Africa: A Memoir of Romance, War, and Survival (Harper, 2017)
Summary: A seasoned war correspondent, Gettleman has covered every major conflict over the past twenty years, from Afghanistan to Iraq to the Congo. For the past decade, he has served as the East Africa bureau chief for the New York Times, fulfilling a teenage dream. Love, Africa is a sensually rendered coming-of-age story in the tradition of Barbarian Days, a tale of passion, violence, far-flung adventure, tortuous long-distance relationships, making mistakes, forgiveness, parenthood, and happiness that explores the power of finding yourself in the most unexpected of places.
Professor Peter Jones (1970), Agricultural Enlightenment: Knowledge, Technology, and Nature, 1750-1840 (OUP Oxford, 2016)
Summary: Agricultural Enlightenment explores the modernisation of Europe's countryside using the Enlightenment as a lens. It focuses on the second half of the eighteenth century and emphasises the role of useful knowledge in the process of agrarian change and development. It invites economic historians to look beyond quantitative data and evaluate the argument that cultural factors may have altered the trajectory of European agriculture. The evidence in support of this helps us to understand the evolution of the rural economy is drawn from many countries in Europe. In 2017 it won the British Agricultural History Society the Joan Thirsk Prize.
Philippa Sheppard (1989), Devouring Time: Nostalgia in Contemporary Shakespearean Screen Adaptation(McGill Queen's University Press, 2017)
Philippa Sheppard writes: Devouring Time: Nostalgia in Contemporary Shakespearean Screen Adaptations analyzes twenty-seven films based on Shakespeare’s works, from Kenneth Branagh’s ground-breaking Henry V to Justin Kurzel’s haunting Macbeth, investigating the filmmakers’ nostalgia for the art of the past. The translation from Renaissance plays to modern cinema sheds light on Western concepts of gender, identity and colonialism.
Featured in April 2017
Timothy Adès (1960), Loving by Will (Dempsey and Windle, 2016)Timothy Adès writes: Known as a fantastic playwright with a tally of around 36 surviving dramas, ‘Will’ of Stratford-on-Avon is also famous for writing 154 short sparkling sunbursts about his amorous affairs. But it’s all just too difficult to follow – or it was until now! This book sorts it out with skilful translations by wordsmith Timothy A. And you’ll find no omission of any consonant! Nor of A, I, O, or U. Timothy A is an award-winning rhyming translator.
Timothy Allsop (2000), The Smog (Amper & Sand Publishing, 2017)Timothy Allsop writes: I began work on The Smog as part of my MA under the supervision of former Poet Laureate Andrew Motion. For me the drive to write this story came out of my grandmother's experiences as a woman in the fifties as well as my love of history, which was encouraged by degree at Balliol. Both Martin Conway and Lesley Abrams have been very supportive of my work as an actor and writer. In this particular story I wanted to explore gender and sexuality in the fifties and to examine how siblings can misread one another. I also thought the smog allowed for an exciting setting for a mystery-thriller. It will be released in paperback later this year.
Professor Stephen Clark (1964), Plotinus: Myth, Metaphor and Philosophical Practice (University of Chicago Press, 2016)Professor Clark writes: Plotinus, the Roman philosopher (c.204 – 270 CE) who is widely regarded as the founder of Neoplatonism, was also the creator of numerous myths, images, and metaphors. They have influenced both secular philosophers and Christian and Muslim theologians, but have frequently been dismissed by modern scholars as merely ornamental. In this book, distinguished philosopher Stephen R.L. Clark shows that they form a vital set of spiritual exercises by which individuals can achieve one of Plotinus's most important goals: self-transformation through contemplation. Clark examines a variety of Plotinus's myths and metaphors within the cultural and philosophical context of his time, asking probing questions about their contemplative effects. What is it, for example, to 'think away the spatiality' of material things? What state of mind is Plotinus recommending when he speaks of love, or drunkenness, or nakedness? What star-like consciousness is intended when he declares that we were once stars or are stars eternally? What does it mean to say that the soul goes around God? And how are we supposed to 'bring the god in us back to the god in all'? Through these rich images and structures, Clark casts Plotinus as a philosopher deeply concerned with philosophy as a way of life.
Professor Charles Geisst (1977), Loan Sharks: The Birth of Predatory Lending (Brookings Institution, 2017)Professor Geisst writes: This book came about after the events of 2008 unfolded in the US. As banks raised their credit card rates etc. to compensate for their 'additional risks' as interest rates collapsed, it became clear that the move was counterintuitive. The study of loan sharking in the US until 1933 proves that this is a standard response, among others, and that it is counterproductive economically.
Omkar Goswami (1979), Goras and Desis: Managing Agencies and the Making of Corporate India (Portfolio-Penguin Random House, 2016)From Portfolio-Penguin Random House website: The story of corporate India is linked to managing agencies, an organizational form dominant in the subcontinent from 1875 until its abolition in 1970 that allowed entrepreneurs to promote diverse companies while exercising disproportionate control over cash flows. This is the definitive economic history of Indian companies through the lens of managing agencies, whether controlled by goras or desis.
Richard Grassby (1954), Deviant Cinema: The History of Sexual Dominance and Submission in the Movies (Amazon, 2016)Richard Grassby writes: The public spankings of Kathryn Grayson in Kiss Me Kate or of Maureen O’Hara in McLintock are iconic, but the emotions and conflicts that they address are common preoccupations and recur continuously as themes in the global cinema. Buried in the vast inventory of movies released over the last century are almost 2,500 that partly or fully portray sexual dominance and submission of both genders, mental and physical, heavy and light, erotic as well as pornographic, documentary as well as fiction. Some are third-rate productions or crude attempts to exploit sex, but many do meet the fantasies and needs of a wide audience and they also occur as music videos, commercial advertisements, documentaries and game and talk shows on television. This impressive volume of movies from every country and period is largely unknown to the great majority of people, but most of the productions can be located and viewed with the help of this book.
Richard Grassby (1954), Money to Burn: Lifestyles of the Business Community of Early Modern Britain (Amazon, 2016)Richard Grassby writes: Cultural historians have made the study of material culture and consumption a subject in its own right and a necessary precondition of industrialisation. The culture of the bourgeoisie has, however, engaged historians and ideologues for some two centuries without any consensus as to when the middle class emerged or how it should be defined. This study, the last of three volumes on the English business community, fills this vacuum by exploring empirically how far and when it adopted an alternative lifestyle. It demonstrates how business families spent their money and asks whether their life styles and the possessions that they chose to acquire, constituted a new culture with shared values. It assembles from artefacts as well as from documents and literary sources, a three-dimensional image of the physical and spatial environment in which merchants pursued their daily routines. It then reconstructs their thoughts and feelings to determine whether their world view changed and, if so, in which directions.
Richard Grassby (1954), Rhetoric and Reality: Culture and Society in Early Modern Britain (Amazon, 2016)Richard Grassby writes: Rhetoric and Reality appraises the value of culture as a mode of explanation in history. It re-examines the role of facts, which impatient theorists have chosen to ignore or manipulate, rethinks what validates theory, determines which questions historians should ask, and which methods are likely to produce the best answers. It investigates representation and reality though six topics in British history (1550–1750) – the role of visual and word images, the emergence of a market culture, living with contradictions, the emergence of alternative cultures, the friction between the Natural World and Culture, and the reality of change.
Richard Grassby (1954), A Scholar’s Tale: Reminiscences of a Peripatetic Historian (Amazon, 2017)Richard Grassby writes: Born in Darjeeling under the Raj, the author (and subject) moves to England and then Wales during World War II, to Oxford and the north of Scotland in adult life, and to New York City and Washington DC in middle age. Educated at a boarding school and at Balliol College, Oxford, he pursues an academic career in England before branching into business in the United States. His story, with pauses for reflection, is recollected here purely from memory, without the aid of documents. It is an oral history by someone who explains how and why he became a professional historian. The primary objective is to demonstrate the utility and satisfaction of a life of scholarship, both as a tutorial Fellow of an Oxford College and as an independent scholar living in metropolitan New York. But additional preoccupations and activities receive their due – journalism, dealing in art and antiques, cattle farming, trading on Wall Street, training dogs and hawks. His researches and hunting interests take him all over Europe, North America and the Near East. He alternates between country pursuits and life in a big city, both of which are described in detail. An extensive tour of the whole United States in the summer of 1960 not only captures the country at a turning point, but exposes many hilarious and bizarre incidents. A long spell in hospital leads to psychotic delirium and reveals the narrow line between creative art and madness.
Clive Bate (1955), Music in Western Europe before AD1600 (Upfront Publishing, 2016)
Clive Bate writes: Having covered music after 1600 in his succinct review In Search of Real Music, Clive Bate now turns his attention to the story of how music developed in previous centuries. After a brief survey of music in the Ancient World, Bate describes the rise of plainchant in the Christian Church, the troubadours, the medieval chansons, the great age of polyphonic Masses and motets, and the growth of wordless instrumental composition. He provides a short introduction to the political and artistic developments of four periods of history since the time of Christ and explains the ecclesiastical and social contexts in which musicians worked. He describes the technical changes in music without overloading the detail, and gives a bird’s eye view of the way in which instruments developed. He also provides summary notes on the lives and achievements of over 150 composers. Of particular interest are the last two chapters, which review the changing attitudes towards early music since 1600, and interpret the whole story as a study in evolution. This book is designed to whet the reader’s appetite to hear this music and also to understand how the basic tools of music were discovered or created before 1600, for example the language of the modes, musical notation based on the stave, the keyboard, and how music first came to be printed. It is a complete and readable guide to a fascinating aspect of our cultural heritage.
Carmen Bugan (2000), Releasing the Porcelain Birds (Shearsman Books, 2016)
Excerpt from Shearsman Books: In 1989 the five members of the Bugan family were allowed to leave Ceauşescu’s Romania with one suitcase each and death-threats in their wake. In 2010 the poet Carmen Bugan took possession of 1,500 pages of Securitate files on her father and in 2013 a further 3,000 pages of secret files on her mother, sister, brother and herself. Releasing the Porcelain Birds is about the transformation of that extraordinary history of Cold War Europe into poetry; it is about writing the self free and how poetry drawn in a new and tender narrative can do this. In this manner Releasing the Porcelain Birds is one continuous poem which faces down dispossession and reaches towards exuberance.
Lucy Crehan (2005), Cleverlands: The Secrets Behind the Success of the World's Education Superpowers (Random House, 2016)
Excerpt from Random House: As a teacher in an inner-city school, Lucy Crehan was exasperated with ever-changing government policy claiming to be based on lessons from ‘top-performing’ education systems. She became curious about what was really going on in classrooms of the countries whose teenagers ranked top in the world in reading, maths and science. Determined to dig deeper, Lucy set off on a personal educational odyssey through Finland, Japan, Singapore, Shanghai and Canada, teaching in schools, immersing herself in their very different cultures and discovering the surprising truths about school life that don’t appear in the charts and graphs. Cleverlands documents her journey, weaving together her experiences with research on policy, history, psychology and culture to offer extensive new insights and provide answers to three fundamental questions: How do these countries achieve their high scores? What can others learn from them? And what is the price of this success?
Nicholas Shrimpton (1966) ed., Disraeli’s Sybil:or The Two Nations (Oxford World’s Classics, 2017)
Excerpt from OUP: Sybil, or The Two Nations is one of the finest novels to depict the social problems of class-ridden Victorian England. The book's publication in 1845 created a sensation, for its immediacy and readability brought the plight of the working classes sharply to the attention of the reading public. The "two nations" of the alternative title are the rich and poor, so disparate in their opportunities and living conditions, and so hostile to each other, that they seem almost to belong to different countries. The gulf between them is given a poignant focus by the central romantic plot concerning the love of Charles Egremont, a member of the landlord class, for Sybil, the poor daughter of a militant Chartist leader.
David Waller (1981), Iron Men: How One London Factory Powered the Industrial Revolution and Shaped the Modern World (Anthem Press, 2016)
David Waller writes: David Waller has written his third book about the lives of obscure Victorians, in this case Henry Maudslay, the man who invented precision engineering in a factory in Lambeth, south London, and his followers. Maudslay was not technically a Victorian, as he died in 1831, but many great Victorian engineers started out in his factory, including Joseph Whitworth, the man who won more medals for mechanical engineering excellence than anyone else at the 1851 Great Exhibition.
Professor Robin Wilson (1962), Jack Copeland, Jonathan Bowen and Mark Sprevak, eds., The Turing Guide (OUP, 2017)
Excerpt from OUP: Alan Turing has long proved a subject of fascination, but following the centenary of his birth in 2012, the code-breaker, computer pioneer, mathematician (and much more) has become even more celebrated with much media coverage, and several meetings, conferences and books raising public awareness of Turing's life and work. This volume will bring together contributions from some of the leading experts on Alan Turing to create a comprehensive guide to Turing that will serve as a useful resource for researchers in the area as well as the increasingly interested general reader. The book will cover aspects of Turing's life and the wide range of his intellectual activities, including mathematics, code-breaking, computer science, logic, artificial intelligence and mathematical biology, as well as his subsequent influence.
Professor John Helliwell (1974), Perspectives in Crystallography (CRC Press, 2015)
Professor Helliwell writes: Perspectives in Crystallography offers a threefold look into the past, present and future of crystal structure analysis. Crystallography is one of the most multidisciplinary sciences, with roots in fields as varied as mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, materials science, computation and earth and planetary science. The structural knowledge gained from crystallography has been instrumental in acquiring new levels of understanding in numerous scientific areas. This book resonates with the 2014 United Nations and UNESCO International Year of Crystallography, a celebration of its achievements and importance, undertaken with the International Union of Crystallography.
Professor John Helliwell (1974), Skills for a Scientific Life (CRC Press, 2016)
Professor Helliwell writes: “Skills for a Scientific Life” is a very general ‘skills and career’ book for all scientists, especially those in early and mid-career. It has received favourable comments and including in THES, which I quote:-
‘A "semi-retired" scientist stirs more than a dash of memoir into 34 limpid chapters of intentionally "first principles" focused, career-spanning advice, neatly bookended by an introduction aimed at schoolchildren, "How do you know you are suited to be a scientist", and a conclusion giving pointers on explaining the scientific method to a new generation of pupils. In between: sage words on mentoring and research collaborations, time management and chairing meetings, refereeing and reviewing, impact and patents, social media and gender equality.’
– Times Higher Education Supplement (THES) ‘New and noteworthy’ books January 26th 2017.
Sir James Mallinson Bt (1995) trans., Roots of Yoga (Penguin Classics, 2017)
Excerpt from Penguin Publishing: 'Yoga is to be known through yoga. Yoga arises from yoga. One who is vigilant by means of yoga delights in yoga for a long time.' Yoga is hugely popular around the world today, yet until now little has been known of its roots. This book collects, for the first time, core teachings of yoga in their original form, translated and edited by two of the world's foremost scholars of the subject. It includes a wide range of texts from different schools of yoga, languages and eras: among others, key passages from the early Upanisads and the Mahabharata, and from the Tantric, Buddhist and Jaina traditions, with many pieces in scholarly translation for the first time. Covering yoga's varying definitions across systems, models of the esoteric and physical bodies, and its most important practices, such as posture, breath control, sensory withdrawal and meditation, Roots of Yoga is a unique and essential source of knowledge.
Professor Richard Rubenstein (1959), Resolving Structural Conflicts: How Violent Systems can be Transformed (Routledge, 2017)
Professor Rubenstein writes: This book analyses structural or system-generated conflicts and poses the fundamental question: 'If there are social or political systems generating this conflict, how can they be changed?' Showing how systems established to maintain order sometimes end by generating serious violence, the author discusses how to envision and implement new methods of transforming violence-prone systems.
Professor Peter Spargo (1984), “A Remarkable Vision - Brewster's 1822 Proposal for a 'National Burning Apparatus’”, in Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa, 71(1), pp.89 - 95 (2015)
Professor Spargo writes: In 1822 the Scottish physicist Sir David Brewster suggested that burning glasses, normally solid, might be made lighter by constructing them of segmented annular glass rings. He also proposed the construction of a 'National Burning Apparatus', with segments contributed by various scientific institutions. Although this never came into being it was - a remarkably prescient vision of the need for and value of national research facilities.
Aelwen Wetherby (2007), Private Aid, Political Activism: American Medical Relief to Spain and China, 1936-1949 (University of Missouri Press, 2017)
Excerpt from The University of Missouri Press: This book explores American medical relief to Spain and China in the 1930s and 1940s as responses to the Spanish Civil War and the Second Sino-Japanese War. Although serving vastly different peoples in strikingly distant landscapes, the three aid organizations focused on here illustrate a transition in how Americans responded to foreign conflict and how humanitarian aid was used as a political tool. The story of these small and relatively unknown organizations can help refine historical understanding of the development of humanitarianism and the evolution of global citizenship in the twentieth century.
Andrew Buchanan (1977), “‘I Felt Like a Tourist Instead of a Soldier’: The Occupying Gaze—War and Tourism in Italy, 1943-1945”, in American Quarterly, Volume 68, pp. 81 – 131 (2016)
Andrew Buchanan writes: Drawing on letters, memoirs, photograph collections and newspapers, this article examines the tourist experiences of American soldiers in wartime Italy. In particular, I am interested in the ways in which tourism "softened" the work of military governance both for the soldiers who were involved in it and for a broader audience back home in the States. The article appeared in American Quarterly, the prestigious journal of the American Studies Association.
John Mallet (1950), “The Travels of Tschirnhaus and the Re-invention of Hard-Paste Porcelain in Europe”, in The French Porcelain Society Journal, Vol. VI, pp. 37-73 (2016)
John Mallet writes: One might summarise it by saying it re-examines the pre-history of the manufacture of European hard-paste porcelain similar to that of China. This is usually said to have been invented by Johann Friedrich Böttger (1682-1719) at Dresden in 1709, resulting in the foundation of the Meissen porcelain factory. Böttger, however, was only recruited to research into porcelain-making by Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus (1651-1708) in 1707, by which date Tschirnhaus had carried out much preliminary work. The paper considers what Tschirnhaus learnt during an intellectual and scientific grand tour to Holland, London, Paris and Milan in 1674-76. In London he mingled with some of the Royal Society’s great men and is likely to have heard of John Dwight’s experimental porcelain. Porcelain research under the aegis of Prince Rupert of the Rhine also seems to have produced a saleable product. A controversial category of enamelled and gilded porcelain surviving in some five examples of which those at Burghley House are recorded as early as 1683 is considered in these connections. Whether Tschirnhaus (who died just before successful glazed hard-paste porcelain was achieved) or Böttger deserves the most credit for discovering a viable European hard-paste porcelain, it can also be considered an achievement of the European Enlightenment. Please consult the French Porcelain Society’s website for further information.
Stephen Moss (1975), The Rookie: An Odyssey Through Chess (and Life) (Bloomsbury, 2016)
Stephen Moss writes: Stephen Moss, who was captain of chess at Balliol in 1976-77, is a very average player who – in his fifties – decided he would try to get a whole lot better. This is the record of his (sadly doomed) attempt to become a true chess expert. He joins two London clubs, enters tournaments all over the UK, plays in Holland, the US and Russia, talks to great players who have cracked the code, and delves into chess history to try to answer the question of why people have played this infuriating game for more than 1,500 years.
Alan Taylor (1990), Film Mavericks in Action: New Hollywood, New Rhetoric, and Kenneth Burke (Peter Lang AG, 2016)
Description by Peter Lang AG: The book's ambition is to uniquely yoke familiar histories of New Hollywood with aspects of critical theory that, since the 1950s, have embraced advances in the New Rhetoric as pioneered by literary theorist, philosopher, social analyst and educator Kenneth Burke (1897-1993). The study tracks the career arcs of Hollywood film directors Peter Bogdanovich, Martin Scorsese, Michael Cimino and Francis Ford Coppola whose productions are regarded as Burkean perspectives by incongruity. This analysis is contextualized within an overview that, from the 1920s to the present, considers Hollywood as a "languaged industry" that is grounded in Burkean principles of Order, identification, hierarchy, courtship and ambiguities of substance. The project is designed to serve the interests of colleagues and students in Rhetorical Theory, Film Education, Creative Writing, American Studies, Production Studies, and Film and Media Studies. Film Mavericks in Action: New Hollywood, New Rhetoric, and Kenneth Burke complements two previous books: Jacobean Visions: Webster, Hitchcock, and Google Culture (2007, pp. 201), and We, the media.... (2005, pp. 418), an analysis of the film representation of U.S. news broadcasting since the 1970s.
Featured in December 2016
Ranjit Bolt OBE (1978), A Knight with a Big Blue Balloon (Gibson Square, 2016)
Description by The Daily Telegraph: If it’s pure silliness you’re after, look no further than A Knight with a Big Blue Balloon (Gibson Square, £8.99) by playwright Ranjit Bolt. The book is 96 pages long and there are three limericks on almost every page. Remarkably, none of them are duds. Do away with cracker jokes and read one of these instead. “There was a young lady from Brussels/ Who possessed the most marvellous muscles/ But I’m sorry to say/ There was rank disarray/ ‘mid her neurons and glands and corpuscles.”
Angela Daly (2003), Private Power, Online Information Flows and EU Law: Mind the Gap (Hart Publishing, 2016)
Description by Hart Publishing: This monograph examines how European Union law and regulation address concentrations of private economic power which impede free information flows on the Internet to the detriment of Internet users' autonomy. In particular, competition law, sector specific regulation (if it exists), data protection and human rights law are considered and assessed to the extent they can tackle such concentrations of power for the benefit of users. Using a series of illustrative case studies, of Internet provision, search, mobile devices and app stores, and the cloud, the work demonstrates the gaps that currently exist in EU law and regulation. It is argued that these gaps exist due, in part, to current overarching trends guiding the regulation of economic power, namely neoliberalism, by which only the situation of market failure can invite ex ante rules, buoyed by the lobbying of regulators and legislators by those in possession of such economic power to achieve outcomes which favour their businesses. Given this systemic, and extra-legal, nature of the reasons as to why the gaps exist, solutions from outside the system are proposed at the end of each case study. This study will appeal to EU competition lawyers and media lawyers.
Naina Patel (1998), Sir Jeffrey Jowell QC and Naina Patel: Miller Is Right (UK Constitutional Law Association, 2016)
Ms Patel writes in the introductory paragraph: Even those of us who question the notion of absolute parliamentary sovereignty (eg. whether it should trump the rule of law in extreme situations such as the abolition of judicial review) wholly subscribe to the view that parliament, not the executive, should make or unmake our domestic laws.
In the case of R (Miller) v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union [2016] EWHC 2768 (Admin), therefore, it seems plain that that in principle the prerogative power should not displace the power of parliament to trigger our withdrawal from the European Union (“EU”). Yet some of our respected colleagues writing on this website contend otherwise, drawing for analogy upon areas as remote from the Miller context as double tax agreements and the decision to exile the inhabitants of the Chagos Islands. Others are seeking to throw doubt on the Divisional Court’s judgment in Miller by questioning one of the assumptions on which the decision was premised (but not one without which it would necessarily change) namely, that once a notice under Article 50 TEU has been made, it cannot be revoked.
We shall here first deal with the question of parliament or prerogative, and then proceed to consider the revocation point.
Professor Ian Prattis (1965), New Planet, New World (Manor House Publishing, 2016)
Professor Prattis writes: My new book is the finale in a trilogy “Chronicles of Awakening.” I transport the reader to a faraway planet. Earth in the near future is dying due to Humankind’s damage to the environment. Children are sent via spacecraft to this distant planet to escape Earth and restart Humanity. The book opens with a lyrical and dangerous meeting on a distant planet later this century. The protagonists are from different centuries and cultures. From the 18th century Rising Moon is hurled by shamanic means to Planet Horizon in a nearby galaxy. From the 21st century Catriona gets there from a failing spaceship in an escape craft. Instead of killing one another they choose to be blood sisters and embrace survival, accepting nature as a Matriarch. They join other Earth refugees to form a new, sustainable, caring community – but can they withstand the threat of invaders bringing traits of treachery, power struggles and murder?
Flash Sheridan (1982), “A Variant of Church’s Set Theory with a Universal Set in which the Singleton Function is a Set” (abridged), in Logique et Analyse, Vol 59, No 233 (2016) pp. 81–131
Abstract: A Platonistic set theory with a universal set, CUSι, in the spirit of Alonzo Church’s “Set Theory with a Universal Set,” is presented; this theory uses a different sequence of restricted equivalence relations from Church’s, such that the singleton function is a 2-equivalence class and hence a set, but (like Emerson Mitchell’s set theory, and unlike Church’s), it lacks unrestricted axioms of sum and product set. The theory has an axiom of unrestricted pairwise union, however, and unrestricted complements. An interpretation of the axioms in a set theory similar to Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory with global choice and urelements (which play the rôle of new sets) is presented, and the interpretations of the axioms proved, which proves their relative consistency.
The verifications of the basic axioms are presented in considerably greater generality than necessary for the main result, to answer a query of Thomas Forster and Richard Kaye. The existence of the singleton function partially rebuts a conjecture of Church about the unification of his set theory with Quine’s New Foundations, but the natural extension of the theory leads to a variant of the Russell paradox.
Professor Eric Waddell (1958), Jean-Marie Tjibaou. Une parole kanak pour le monde (Tahiti: Éditions Au vent des îles, 2016)
Professor Waddell writes: The French-language edition is a revised and augmented edition of a book first published in English and entitled Jean-Marie Tjibaou, Kanak Witness to the World: An intellectual biography (Honululu: University of Hawaii Press, 2008, 256p). Herewith a statement from the University of Harvard Press about that first edition:
Jean-Marie Tjibaou is arguably the most important post–World War II Oceanic leader. His intellectual abilities, acute understanding of both Melanesian and European civilizations, stature as a statesman, commitment to nonviolence, and vision for Melanesia’s potential contributions to the global community have all contributed to the creation of a remarkable and enduring legacy. Until now, no substantial English-language study has existed of Tjibaou, who was assassinated in 1989. This intellectual biography of the Kanak (New Caledonia) leader takes an essentially chronological approach to his life—from his beginnings in the mountains of northern New Caledonia and his studies at the Sorbonne to his leadership of the independence movement in the Territory. The work focuses on the spiritual, cultural, and intellectual sources of Tjibaou’s ideas and actions as well as on those who were a source of inspiration to him.
Professor Matthew Bell (1983) ed., The Essential Goethe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016)
Description by Princton University Press: This book is the most comprehensive and representative one-volume collection of Goethe’s writings ever published in English. It provides English-language readers easier access than ever before to the widest range of work by one of the greatest writers in world history. Goethe’s work as playwright, poet, novelist, and autobiographer is fully represented. In addition to the works for which he is most famous, including Faust Part I and the lyric poems, the volume features important literary works that are rarely published in English—including the dramas Egmont, Iphigenia in Tauris, and Torquato Tasso and the bildungsroman Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, a foundational work in the history of the novel. The volume also offers a selection of Goethe’s essays on the arts, philosophy, and science, which give access to the thought of a polymath unrivalled in the modern world. Primarily drawn from Princeton’s authoritative twelve-volume Goethe edition, the translations are highly readable and reliable modern versions by scholars of Goethe. The volume also features an extensive introduction to Goethe’s life and works by volume editor Matthew Bell.
Daniel Burkhardt Cerigo (2011), Technological novelty profile and invention’s future impact, EPJ Data Science 2016 5:8
Mr Burkhardt Cerigo writes: What kinds of inventions tend to have the biggest impacts? Researchers from the University of Oxford and the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology looked to patent data to find out. A SpringerOpen blog post written about the paper can be found here.
James Irvine (1983), Euripides' Ion (DPhil Thesis, University of Oxford, published posthumously in 2016)
Abstract written by Mr Irvine: In this line by line commentary l have attempted to discuss all matters textual and linguistic on which a reader might resort to a commentary for aid. There is, naturally, a pronounced emphasis on textual criticism; literary comment is interwoven with my arguments as the play unfolds. I have endeavoured to cite Greek with sufficient generosity to enable the reader to form a different judgement from my own from the material I have furnished. Considerable space has also been devoted to matters mythological and religious, as the nature of the play demands.I conclude with an Endnote on the marginal annotations found in L. Three appendices follow: on the question of scenery, on alliteration in ancient poetry and poetic theory. and on a textual problem in the prologue to Euripides' Phrixus. As no new evidence has emerged either to enhance our knowledge of the paradosis or to indicate the date and general background of the play, I would prefer at this stage to direct the reader to A.S.Owen's introduction to his Clarendon edition of 1939 rather than burden this work further with a formal introduction. I conclude with a general bibliography of works often cited.
Robin Poulton (1969), The Limits of Democracy and the Postcolonial Nation State: Mali's democratic experiment falters, while jihad and terrorism grow in the Sahara (Lewiston NY & Lampeter, UK: Mellen Press)
Dr Poulton writes: “It is better to leave the goats to fight each other inside their enclosure than to allow the hyena to mediate.”
Poulton and Raffaella Tonegutti have written the curious story of Al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, from the point of view of people living south of the Sahara. Forget the clash of civilizations. They see Mali and its neighbours as victims of a Clash of Corporations: between religious corporations like the Wahhabis and the Sufi Brotherhoods; criminal mafia corporations like the Medelin cocaine conglomerate in Colombia, their Italian mafia customers in Europe, and Arab, Tuareg and Algerian criminal organisations who are go-betweens trading cocaine, hashish and weapons across the unprotectable desert frontiers into the markets of Europe and the Middle East; and extractive corporations interested in Saharan oil and gas and – especially – the uranium that supplies, and that France’s soldiers came to protect.
Cocaine undermined Mali State institutions, provoked the coup d’état of March 2012, brought internal collapse and a jihadist Al Qaida take-over of North Mali. With 12,000 UN peacekeepers (MINUSMA) and additional French garrisons, what now are the prospects for peace and democracy in the Sahel? What mechanisms exist within Malian society and its social capital that might build a sustainable peace economy? Are African Nation States too fragile to survive the pressures of demography and drought, poverty and globalisation? How can women mobilise family networks to promote peace and to create employment? Will their efforts avert another round of civil war in 2025 or 2030? The authors know everyone in Mali: we hear fascinating voices from rebels, politicians, sociologists and lots of women, and their conclusions are not optimistic. Who are the fighting goats? Who is the predatory hyena? Readers will come to their own conclusions.
Alison Rosenblitt (2001), E.E. Cummings' Modernism and the Classics: Each Imperishable Stanza (Oxford University Press, 2016)
Oxford University Press writes: This volume is a major, ground-breaking study of the modernist E.E. Cummings’ engagement with the classics. With his experimental form and syntax, his irreverence, and his rejection of the highbrow, there are probably few current readers who would think of Cummings as a poet in the classical tradition. But for most of his life, his readers saw him as a “pagan” poet or a “Juvenalian” satirist, with an Aristophanic sense of humour. In E.E. Cummings' Modernism and the Classics, Alison Rosenblitt aims to recover for the contemporary reader this lost understanding of Cummings as a classicizing and Horatian poet. The book also includes an edition of previously unpublished work by Cummings himself, including a previously unknown parody of T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land.
Elisabetta Tollardo (2010), Fascist Italy and the League of Nations, 1922-1935 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016)
Dr Tollardo writes: Following the completion of a DPhil in History at Balliol, Elisabetta Tollardo has published her first book, Fascist Italy and the League of Nations, 1922-1935, the first volume in English on the subject. By uncovering the traces of the Italians working in the organisation, the volume investigates Fascist Italy’s membership of the League, and explores the dynamics between nationalism and internationalism in Geneva. The relationship between Fascist Italy and the League of Nations was contradictory, shifting from active collaboration to open disagreement. Yet Fascist Italy remained in the League for more than fifteen years, and was the third largest power within the institution. How did a Fascist dictatorship fit into an organisation espousing principles of liberal internationalism? By using archival sources from four countries, Tollardo shows that Fascist Italy was much more concerned with, and involved in, the League than currently believed.