Book shelf

Book shelf

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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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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 Drawing on both published and unpublished sources, this book looks into the translation, publication, circulation and use of the Mandarin Bible in late Qing and Republican China, and sets out how the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.

Doctors At War - Life and Death in a Field Hospital
Mark de Rond

In 2011, as part of an ethnographic study, Cambridge University professor, Mark de Rond, spent six weeks at the “world’s bloodiest” field hospital, Camp Bastion, in Afghanistan.  His aim - to portray the lived experience of the surgical team working there.  Rare in its detail and told with a brutal honesty - everything happened, nothing has been exaggerated - this is their story.

Cambridge Engineering The First 150 Years
Haroon Ahmed (King's 1959)

Cambridge Engineering: The First 150 Years takes the reader on a journey that starts with the genesis of engineering as an academic discipline, leads to the creation of the Department in 1875, and looks forward to its plans for the 150th anniversary in 2025. The history is told through the extraordinary lives of engineering leaders, who fought through the initial derision of other disciplines to take the faculty from a workshop in a wooden hut to stand as the largest department in the University.

King’s College Chapel 1515-2015 Art, Music and Religion in Cambridge
Edited by Jean Michel Massing and Nicolette Zeeman

This lavishly illustrated, interdisciplinary volume encompasses many aspects of the Chapel’s history from its foundation to the present day. The essays all represent new research, with a particular emphasis on areas that have not been investigated before: Chapel furnishings and art; the architectural engineering of the building and current state of the glass; the history of the Choir and the life of the Chapel, not least in recent centuries. Essays will engage with politics, drama, music, iconoclasm and aesthetics.

The Lost Love Letters of Heloise and Abelard Perceptions of Dialogue in Twelfth-Century France
Constant Mews; translated by Neville Chiavaroli (Clare 1997)

An examination of a collection of Latin love letters preserved in a fifteenth-century manuscript of Clairvaux, which the main author argues may derive from the original correspondence of Abelard and Heloise. The complete Latin text is reproduced with an annotated translation by Neville Chiavaroli and Constant Mews.

Politics of Art: The Creation Society and the Practice of Theoretical Struggle in Revolutionary China
Zhiguang Yin (King's 2007)

In Politics of Art Zhiguang Yin investigates members of the Creation Society and their social network while in Japan. The study contextualises the Chinese left-wing intellectual movements and their political engagements in relation with the early 20th century international political events and trends in both East Asia and Europe.

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