Book shelf

Book shelf

Explore a selection of publications by alumni and academics, and books with a link to the University or Cambridge

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the meaning of success

The Meaning of Success

Jo Bostock

The Meaning of Success: Insights from Women at Cambridge makes a compelling case for a more inclusive definition of success. It argues that in order to recognise, reward and realise the talents of both women and men, a more meaningful definition of success is needed. Practical ways of achieving this are explored through interviews with female role models at the University of Cambridge. First-person stories bring alive the achievements and challenges women experience in their working lives, and the effect gender has on careers.

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Gratitude: An Intellectual History

Peter J Leithart (Peterhouse 1995)

Gratitude is often understood as etiquette rather than ethics, an emotion rather than politics. It was not always so. From Seneca to Shakespeare, gratitude was a public virtue. The circle of benefaction and return of service worked to make society strong. But at the beginning of the modern era, European thinkers began to imagine a political economy freed from the burdens of gratitude. Though this rethinking was part of a larger process of secularization, it was also a distorted byproduct of an impulse ultimately rooted in the teachings of Jesus and the apostle Paul.

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Art as an Investment?

Melanie Gerlis (Clare 1993)

For such a relatively small and opaque industry, the art world is imbued with glamour and sophistication and attracts a lot of wealth. In recent years much attention has been given to art’s appeal as an investment, not least because the growth and influence of global investment banking and wealth-management industries from the 1980s encouraged a more financially sophisticated approach to asset allocation.  When the wider economic markets began to unravel in 2008, art dealers and other art-market practitioners maintained that art wasn’t subject to the same volatility as other investments.

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Samantha Sutton and the Winter of the Warrior Queen

Jordan Jacobs (Trinity Hall 2003)

Samantha Sutton is hesitant to join her Uncle Jay and his team on another archaeological excavation. But the marshes near Cambridge, England sound harmless after the sinister perils she faced in Peru.

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The Big Picture

PD Hemsley (Clare 1978)

The Big Picture is a much-needed book that allows the reader to consider the big questions of life without feeling bludgeoned to adopt the author’s opinion.  The book explains basics of science, philosophy and religion in a straightforward manner, and includes topics as diverse as quantum physics, cellular biology, evolution, consciousness, free will, historical accuracy of biblical accounts, and how to engineer a Boeing 747.

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Unshook Till The End of Time

Robert Alston and Stuart Laing (Corpus Christi 1967)

The 1800 agreement between Oman and Britain declared that the bond between the two nations should be "unshook till the end of time" - an ambitious goal but whatever the political ups and downs, a remarkable relationship endures to this day.  Oman's location at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, pincering oil flows with Iran, is of huge strategic importance and makes it the focus on increasing political interest.

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Blue Stockings

Jessica Swale

A moving, comical and eye-opening story of four young women fighting for education and self-determination against the larger backdrop of women’s suffrage.

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World Cities, City Worlds: Explorations with metaphors, icons and perspectives

William Solesbury (Downing 1958)

World Cities, City Worlds: Explorations with metaphors, icons and perspectives is about how we make sense of cities, those extraordinary places where half the world’s population now lives.

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The Confidence Trap

David Runciman (Trinity 1985)

Why do democracies keep lurching from success to failure? The current financial crisis is just the latest example of how things continue to go wrong, just when it looked like they were going right. In this wide-ranging, original, and compelling book, David Runciman tells the story of modern democracy through the history of moments of crisis, from the First World War to the economic crash of 2008.

a brief history of human behaviour

A Brief History of Human Behaviour

John Preece (St John's 1946)

This book studiously avoids the plethora of conjectural theories and poorly substantiated opinionation on which so much psychological and sociological research currently depends.  Instead, it reverts to the bedrock evidence of human history, and prehistory as mirrored in primatology, as its primary sources to construct a succinct and very user friendly text which teenagers, parents and aspiring global citizens can readily understand.  A more astute and widely assimilated knowledge of behavioural scientific principles is key to their resolution.

polish swan

The Polish Swan Triumphant

George Gömöri (Emeritus Fellow, Darwin College)

This present collection of George Gömöri's essays covers several centuries of Polish literature and its reception abroad.  The first three essays are devoted to Jan Kochanowski, the greatest poet of the Polish Renaissance, followed by shorter pieces on Stefan Batory, King of Poland from 1576 to 1586, whom Montaigne thought to be 'one of the greatest princes of our age'.  A substantial part of the book is devoted to the Baroque period and the final essays deal with the the great precursor of modern Polish poetry, Cyprian Norwid.

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Waldenstein

Rosalie Osmond (Girton 1964)

This debut novel by Rosalie Osmond is set in Waldenstein, a tiny, isolated German community in early 20th-century Nova Scotia, where settlers survive lives of intolerable hardship through their unquestioning belief in a pre-Enlightenment Lutheranism. But when the most prominent man in the community fathers the child of his neighbour’s daughter, Erika, and a new clergyman from Europe arrives to shake the certainties of faith, their firm ideas are overturned.

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The Distraction Trap

Frances Booth (Fitzwilliam 1998)

If you're worried that you're losing the power to concentrate, The Distraction Trap can help. Learn how you can easily release your life from the steely grip of modern technology where you're always available and always connected. Discover how you can radically boost your productivity by keeping your whole brain and both eyes on the task in hand.

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Firefighters of Cambridge

David Bennett (Sidney Sussex 1962)

Firefighters of Cambridge vividly recalls what life was like for a dedicated firefighter in a large and busy fire station between 1951 and 1981. David Bennett was himself a firefighter at Cambridge Fire Station from 1972 to 1977 so this book draws from his own experiences as well as those of his colleagues at that time. Fighting fires, extricating people from road accidents and attending a myriad of other emergencies are all described - exacting and sometimes dangerous work.

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Desert Snow: one girl's take on Africa by bike

Helen Lloyd (St Catharine's 2000)

Desert Snow is the story of one girl, one bike and 1,000 beers in Africa. By daring to follow a dream and not letting fear prevail, Helen cycled across the Sahara, Sahel and tropics of West Africa, paddled down the Niger River in a pirogue, hitch-hiked to Timbuktu and spent three months traversing the Congo, which she thought she may never leave...

Helen takes you with her on the journey through every high and low of her memories and misadventures. She describes a continent brimming with diversity that is both a world away from what she knows and yet not so different at all.

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A Long Walk with Lord Conway

Simon Thompson

In 1894, Martin Conway (Trinity 1875) became the first man to walk the Alps ‘from end to end’ when he completed a 1,000-mile journey from the Col de Tende in Italy to the summit of the Ankogel in Austria. On a midsummer’s morning, nearly 120 years later, Simon Thompson followed in his footsteps, setting out to explore both the mountains and the man.

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Cambridge and Stourbridge Fair

Honor Ridout (Newnham 1967)

For hundreds of years, Stourbridge Fair was the biggest fair in England and a high point of the Cambridge year.

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Pompeii

Mary Beard (Newnham 1973)

'This marvellous book won the Wolfson History Prize and is a model of subtle but accessible writing about the past' Judith Rice, Guardian

'Classicist Mary Beard has had a great time rooting about that ghostly place and she has brought it quite splendidly back to life' Nicholas Bagnall, Sunday Telegraph

'To the vast field of Pompeiana she brings the human touch ...this absorbing, inquisitive and affectionate account of Pompeii is a model of its kind. Beard has caught the quick of what was and, in our lives today, remains the same' Ross Leckie, The Times

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Gerda Taro

Jane Rogoyska (Christ's 1983)

In 1934, a young and beautiful Jewish émigrée, Gerda Pohorylles, met a Hungarian political exile, André Friedmann in Paris. They reinvented themselves as the photographers Gerda Taro and Robert Capa – and he would become the most important photojournalist of his generation.

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The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets

Simon Singh (Emmanuel 1987)

Some have seen philosophy embedded in episodes of The Simpsons; others have detected elements of psychology and religion. Simon Singh, bestselling author of Fermat's Last Theorem, The Code Book and The Big Bang, instead makes the compelling case that what The Simpsons' writers are most passionate about is mathematics.

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