Book shelf

Book shelf

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

To have your book considered for inclusion, please submit your publication's details

Please note: to have your book considered for inclusion, its publication date must be either upcoming or it must have been published during the last 12 months. Unfortunately, we cannot include any details of books published prior to this time.

CAMCard discounts

Get up to 20% off when you use your CAMCard in selected book shops!

A Guide to the Classics or How to Pick the Derby Winner
Guy Griffith (Trinity Hall 1920) and Michael Oakeshott (Caius 1920)

First published in 1936 when the authors were fellows at Caius, this light-hearted manual is a quirky mix of philosophy and horse racing.
      
Oakeshott went on to become one of the greatest political philosophers of the 20th Century. Republished this year with a foreword by journalist Peter Oborne (Christ's 1975) and preface by racing journalist Sean Magee (St Johns 1969), this gem is now available for fans of philosophy and racing.

Data Localisation Laws and Policy The EU Data Protection International Transfers Restriction Through a Cloud Computing lens
W Kuan Hon (Trinity 1979)

Countries are increasingly introducing data localisation laws, threatening digital globalisation and inhibiting cloud computing adoption despite its acknowledged benefits. This multi-disciplinary book analyses the EU restriction (including the Privacy Shield and General Data Protection Regulation) through a cloud computing lens, covering historical objectives and practical problems, showing why the focus should move from physical data location to effective jurisdiction over those controlling access to intelligible data, and control of access to data through security.

Love and Loss and Other Important Stuff
Jonathan Pinnock (Clare 1974)

This entertaining and accessible debut poetry collection takes the reader on a journey through the entire panopoly of human experience, using humour and pathos to explore themes of love, loss and other important stuff such as nanotechnology, cloning, and Karl Ove Knausgaard’s beekeeping skills. It also contains one of the few love poems to have been inspired by an episode of Steptoe and Son, as well as a moving tribute to the first dog in space.

Travels of a Tourist
Paddy Rooney (Trinity 1950)

This is a collection of anecdotes and reminiscences of the author’s travels over many years and in many countries—from Uzbekistan to Peru, Yemen to India, Spain to China. It is in no sense intended as a guidebook, though it may give something of the character of the people encountered and the places visited. As the author explains in the foreword it is intended as entertainment rather than education in order to share with others his delight in foreign places.

Latitude North
Charles Moseley (Queens' 1959)

In this captivating work part travelogue, part history, part memoir of a life-long affair with the northern lands, seas traveller and scholar Charles Moseley describes a haunting world, where the voices of the past are never quiet. From his account of the last days of the Viking settlements in Greenland to his own experiences on the melting glaciers of Spitsbergen, he reminds us how deceptive are human ideas of permanence, and how fragile are the systems of these starkly beautiful lands.

Pevsner: The BBC Years
Stephen Games (Magdalene 1974)

A critical history of Nikolaus Pevsner's engagement with the BBC from 1946 until 1977, taking account of the prevailing culture inside the BBC in respect of, in particular, the role of female producers, emigré producers and the birth of the Third Programme.

The wartime diary of WD Terry a ‘Safrican’ at Cambridge, with selected letters 1938 – 1941
Edited and introduced by Laurence Wright

A lively young South African, W.D. Terry, read English at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, during the early years of WW2.

His recently discovered diary and letters recount in vivid terms what it was like to be a South African student abroad as war breaks out. Travel, love and learning jostle with international politics, militarism and confusion.

Protestant Bible Translation and Mandarin as the National Language of China
George Kam Wah Mak (Homerton 2007)

This book represents the first monograph-length study of the relationship between Protestant Bible translation and the development of Mandarin from a lingua franca into the national language of China. Drawing on both published and unpublished sources, this book looks into the translation, publication, circulation and use of the Mandarin Bible in late Qing and Republican China, and sets out how the Mandarin Bible contributed to the standardisation and enrichment of Mandarin.

The Politics of Non-Assimilation
David Verbeeten (Pembroke 2007)

Over the course of the twentieth century, Eastern European Jews in the United States developed a left-wing political tradition. Their political preferences went against a fairly broad correlation between upward mobility and increased conservatism or Republican partisanship. Many scholars have sought to explain this phenomenon by invoking antisemitism, an early working-class experience, or a desire to integrate into a universal social order.

Entities and Lists in Hierarchy: a theory of language and inference
Arthur Young (Clare 1945)

This ebook proposes a theory to describe how knowledge of physical conditions is represented in physical systems. The theory suggests that object-oriented methods of software development are unsound in their form at the time of writing and should undergo major revision.

Aphra Behn: A Secret Life
Janet Todd (Newnham 1961)

Author, spy, political propagandist, Aphra Behn (1640-1689) was one of the most extraordinary figures in the history of English literature, a female polymath who rose from humble origins to come close to the heart of power.  In this landmark biography, Janet Todd draws on contemporary documents and on Behn’s own writings to examine the history of the times and to tell the story of an independent woman in a harsh and glittering society, caught up in and exploiting the political, diplomatic and sexual intrigues of her time.

Thinking Globally Acting Locally: A Personal Journey
Peter Mittler (Pembroke 1950)

Thinking Globally Acting Locally is more than just the memoir of a distinguished career. It is a history of the twentieth century reflected in the life and work of one individual.

It begins in 1938 with a year in the life of an eight year old Viennese Jewish boy as he experiences the worst and best of humanity, from Nazi persecution to rescue by strangers through the Kindertransports. It tells of his encounters with an English schooling system at its worst and best and of his formative years.

Women as Public Moralists in Britain: From the Bluestockings to Virginia Woolf
Benjamin Dabby (Caius 2003)

This book explores the ways in which a tradition of women moralists in Britain shaped public debates about the nation's moral health, and men's and women's responsibility to ensure it. It focusses on the role played by eight of the most significant of those women moralists whose writing on history, literature and visual art changed contemporaries' understanding of the lessons to be drawn from each field at the same time as they contested and redefined contemporary understandings of masculinity and femininity.

The First Serious Optimist: A.C. Pigou and the Birth of Welfare Economics
Ian Kumekawa (Clare 2012)

The First Serious Optimist is an intellectual biography of the Cambridge economist A. C. Pigou (1877–1959), a founder of welfare economics and one of the twentieth century's most important and original thinkers. Though long overshadowed by his intellectual rival John Maynard Keynes, Pigou was instrumental in focusing economics on the public welfare. And his reputation is experiencing a renaissance today, in part because his idea of "externalities" or spillover costs is the basis of carbon taxes.

Cambridge Company
Farrukh Dhondy (Pembroke 1964)

A semi fictionalised memoir of the Indian born author's undergraduate years in Cambridge in the Britain of the swinging sixties. A young man's journey through a sometimes bewildering culture and the people he encounters, befriends, antagonises and works and plays with. A rite of passage which ends in the fulfilment of becoming a professional writer.

Set Free; From Banking to Buddhism in Bhutan
Emma Slade (Selwyn 1985)

Set Free is the inspiring true story of a life lived to extremes. Honestly, with humour and poetry Emma tells her tale of leaving the high paced work of finance and following her heart to Bhutan. Along the way she describes the ups and downs of jobs and relationships, becoming a mother and always the question of what is it which brings a meaningful and happy life.

Find Me
J S Monroe

Five years ago, Rosa walked to Cromer pier in the dead of night. She looked into the dark swirling water below, and she jumped. She was a brilliant young Cambridge student who had just lost her father. Her death was tragic, but not unexpected.

Was that what really happened? The coroner says it was. But Rosa’s boyfriend Jar can’t let go. He hallucinates, seeing Rosa everywhere – a face on the train, a distant figure on the hillside. He is obsessed with proving that she is still alive. And then he gets an email.

Find me, Jar. Find me, before they do…

In and Around Cambridge in the 1960s
Richard Gaunt (Corpus 1966)

In and Around Cambridge in the 1960s is a unique book showing the iconic university city from different angles. Striking, previously unpublished photographs, show famous buildings as well as the river, backstreets and small towns, villages and countryside. Students and distinguished members of staff are here with builders, shoppers in the market and men from gasworks. This was a time of demos, protests and disruption to established academic traditions.

Political Conflict in South Asia
Gerald Peiris (St John's 1962)

Since the termination of European dominance over South Asia in the mid-20th century people living in most parts of the region have been plagued by various types of violent political conflict - some, excruciatingly prolonged and devastating in impact - most of which have roots in the colonial legacy. These range from international military confrontations and protracted civil wars to intermittent localised riots involving rival groups with distinctive primordial or associational identities.

Wooffie Says ...
Robin Hesketh (Selwyn 1978)

Ten short cat stories for children of all ages. Each has a different scientific theme and the main aim is to help youngsters to enjoy reading and to get them thinking about science. Electronic links make it easy to follow up the main topics. The hero is a cat called Wooffie whose peaceful life is turned upside down when two orphaned kittens join the family – not least because they’re female! Wooffie finds a new role as a father figure in which he draws on his experiences to teach the ‘girls’ as much as he can whilst they are growing up.

Pages

Want to see your book here?

Submit your book's details for consideration using our webform.

Submit your book