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

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Rethinking Reputational Risk: How to Manage the Risks that can Ruin Your Business, Your Reputation and You
Anthony Fitzsimmons (Pembroke 1969) and Derek Atkins

From ringside seats, I saw three decades' worth of crises as they unfolded, damaging organisations, their leaders, their reputations and their shareholders. But this lawyerly work left important questions unanswered: Why didn't insiders see what was coming? And were these crises 'predictable' only with hindsight?

It took time to uncover why predictable crises kept on happening but answers emerged from research spanning dozens of dissections as we dug in fields that included behavioural economics, anthropology and luck.

After the Final Whistle
Stephen Cooper (Trinity 1977)

When Britain’s Empire went to war in August 1914, rugby players were the first to volunteer: they led from the front and paid a disproportionate price. When Armistice came after four long years, their war game was over; even as the echo of the last guns of November faded, it was time to play rugby again. As Allied troops of all nations waited to return home, sport occupied their minds and bodies.

Modern Social Thought: An Introduction
Anthony Thomson (King's 1977)

This text provides an accessible survey of Western social thought from the early twentieth century to today by tracing the emergence, evolution, and consequence of ideas expressed by recognized social and political theorists as well as poets, novelists, and visual artists. A contextualizing approach helps place theory in broad, practical terms by linking key ideas to specific social, historical, cultural, and political developments.

Berber and Arabic in Siwa (Egypt)
Lameen Souag (Caius 2000)

Siwi is the easternmost Berber language, one of the few surviving representatives of the languages spoken in the eastern Sahara before the arrival of Bedouin Arab groups in the 11th century – although this apparent continuity conceals a history of migration, as this book argues based on loanwords and intra-Berber relationships.  The effects of contact upon the grammar are far more far-reaching than in better documented westerly Berber languages, extending to non-concatenative templatic morphology and some pronominal endings, as well as prominent calquing.

The Making of Social Theory: Order, Reason, and Desire (Second Edition)
Anthony Thomson (King's 1977)

The Making of Social Theory: Order, Reason, and Desire, second edition, chronicles the development of Western ideas about society, politics, and social life from the medieval period through to the rise of modern sociology in the early twentieth century. Theories are examined within a historical social context to provide understanding of the social circumstances in which various sociological ideologies arose. The first edition was published in 2006.

Glimpses Over The Edge
Alexander Treves (King's 1992)

A photobook documenting refugee stories in 12 different countries: photographed in Burma, Greece, Hong Kong, Japan, Jordan, Kenya, Lebanon, South Africa, South Korea, Tanzania, Thailand, Turkey. The images, of refugees from a dozen countries, are accompanied by a personal account which sets the individuals’ lives into the context of a vast global problem.

'Janiform Novels' and Other Literary Essays
Cedric Watts (Pembroke 1958)

Previously published in a diversity of magazines and books, these conveniently-gathered literary discussions deal with such authors as Sophocles, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Donne, Marvell, Milton, Defoe, Richardson, Jane Austen, Conrad, Hemingway, Graham Greene, William Golding, Samuel Beckett and Chinua Achebe. Topics include covert plotting, the conceit of the conceit, the fallacies of structuralist and post-structuralist literary theory, delayed decoding, Shakespeare's scepticism, Conrad' s opposition to racism and imperialism, and Hemingway's profoundly ambiguous style.

Curiocity: In Pursuit of London
Henry Eliot (Magdalene 2004) and Matt Lloyd-Rose (Magdalene 2003)

Curiocity is a new guide to the capital that weaves the city’s stories together with practical ideas and itineraries. Londonist called it ‘the greatest book about London published in modern times’ and Philip Pullman described it as ‘the most ingenious, insightful, inspiring, intoxicating, and simply interesting guide to the great city that I have ever seen.’ It has 26 large maps drawn by artists including the children’s laureate Chris Riddell and the graphic novelist Isabel Greenberg.

Generation Cherry
Tim Drake (Caius 1963)

In the UK, life expectancy has increased dramatically in the last century, and with it, our need to be financially active beyond the current retirement age. But what can we do when we find ourselves retired or redundant with a reduced income or a skinny pension?

In his positive and practical new book, author, thought leader and septuagenarian, Tim Drake, sets out how we can make a new future work for us.

The Canadian Law of Unjust Enrichment and Restitution
Mitchell McInnes (Trinity Hall 1989)

The book is the first and only work devoted to the modern Canadian law of unjust enrichment.

Reflections on Cambridge
Alan Macfarlane

The traditions and creativity of Cambridge University have survived 800 years. In celebration, this first-ever combined historical and anthropological account explores the culture, the customs, the colleges and the politics of this famous institution. As professor here for nearly forty years, the author sets forth on a personal but also dispassionate attempt to understand how this ancient university developed and changed, and how it continues to influence all people who pass through it.

The Worst Golf Course Ever: Coldham Common
Michael Morrison (Darwin 1978)

Bernard Darwin famously described Coldham Common in nineteenth century Cambridge as ‘the worst course I have ever seen, and many others would probably award it a like distinction’. Flat, featureless, frequently waterlogged, with foul-smelling ditches, a rifle range and local hooligans stealing golf balls were just some of the attributes that justified Darwin’s assertion. And yet from modest beginnings in 1869, CUGC would thrive and by the early 1890s, become one of the largest golf clubs in England.

Rivals of the Republic
Annelise Freisenbruch (Newnham 1995)

Rome, 70BC. Roman high society hums with gossip about the sudden, suspicious suicide of a prominent Roman senator. Shortly afterwards, the body of a Vestal Virgin is discovered in the river Tiber.

Everyday Evils: A Psychoanalytic View of Evil and Morality
Coline Covington (Darwin 1975)

Everyday Evils blends psychoanalytic concepts with sociology, history, anthropology, philosophy, theology and studies of violence to look at the evils committed by “ordinary” people in different contexts. Ranging from discussion of Nazi atrocities and the horrors of Islamic State to the consequences of Stockholm Syndrome, this book will appeal to scholars from across disciplines as well as anyone who has ever asked the question:"How could anyone do something like that?" Coline Covington is a Jungian analyst in private practice in London.

Pain, Pleasure and Perversity: Discourses of Suffering in Seventeenth-Century England
John Yamamoto-Wilson (Magdalene 1971)

Luther’s 95 Theses begin and end with the concept of suffering, and the question of why a benevolent God allows his creations to suffer remains one of the central issues of religious thought. In order to chart the processes by which religious discourse relating to pain and suffering became marginalised during the period from the Renaissance to the end of the seventeenth century, this book examines a number of works on the subject translated into English from (mainly) Spanish and Italian.

Low Life Lawyer: in the footsteps of Bechet
Michael Simmons (Emmanuel 1952)

A legal thriller charting the rise and fall --and rise and fall again--of a somewhat unorthodox lawyer. 

Quintember
Richard Major

When there are high crimes to be covered up, mysteries to be wrapped in enigmas, or a murderer to be liquidated - literally - there is only one man in England who can be trusted with the task: Felix Culpepper, tutor in Classics at St Wygefortis' College, Cambridge, and assassin-at-large for the British Establishment.

The Phoenician Symbol
Basil Maddox (Christ's 1957)

The year is 1678 AD. Simon Maddox, a graduate student at Christ’s College Cambridge, receives from his tutor a subject for his thesis in History: “A Century through the Eyes of One Unusual Man.” That man, his uncle Thomas, is also a graduate. He has disappeared but may still be alive, and has left Simon with his research material in a cottage in Grantchester. He must make sense of a Phoenician Symbol described by Ptolemy a thousand years earlier and its connection to the Welsh Prince Madoc who sailed to America three hundred years before Columbus in his ship ‘Gwennan Gorn’.

Theatre and Aural Attention: Stretching Ourselves
George Home-Cook (Homerton 2002)

The question of attention in theatre remains relatively unexplored. In redressing this, Theatre and Aural Attention investigates what it is to attend theatre by means of listening. Focussing on four core aural phenomena in theatre  ̶  noise, designed sound, silence, and immersion – Home-Cook concludes that theatrical listening involves paying attention to atmospheres.

RED: A Natural History of the Redhead
Jacky Colliss Harvey (Newnham 1981)

The first book to set out an overview of the red hair from the first appearance of the gene 60,000 years ago to the present day. RED combines genetics, biology, art history, literature, anthropology, gender studies, social history and psychology to track and explain attitudes to red hair and explore it as an example of 'otherness' in societies from Ancient Greece to the media-obsessed world of today.

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