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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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The Kombi Trail: Across Three Continents in a VW Van

Robert Cox (Corpus Christi 1959), Roger Sherwin (St Catharine’s 1958), Tony Thompson (St Catharine’s 1958)

Following plans hitched within the walls of St Catharine’s college, nine dare-devil Cambridge students set off in 1961 on the trip of a lifetime after their graduation. Their mode of transport was the iconic VW Kombi van and their journey took them across three continents at a time of global political, economic and cultural turbulence. With the world in the grip of the Cold War, the students moved through the Soviet Union, the Middle East, South Africa and Asia. They meet treacherous terrain and undergo some nerve-wracking, often bizarre encounters.

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Francis Schaeffer (Bitesize Biography)

Rev. J Mostyn Roberts (Pembroke 1975)

We may call him a prophet for his prescient analysis of trends in philosophy that explain where we are today; we may call him an apologist; less accurately, though popular articles and publishers’ blurbs delight in it, he may be called a philosopher. Fundamentally though, Francis Schaeffer rejoiced in being a pastor and evangelist. That is how he began, and through many twists and turns, that is what he remained to the end.

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The Ellington Century

David Schiff (Clare 1967)

Breaking down walls between genres that are usually discussed separately - classical, jazz, and popular - this highly engaging book offers a compelling new integrated view of twentieth-century music.

Placing Duke Ellington (1899-1974) at the center of the story, David Schiff explores music written during the composer's lifetime in terms of broad ideas such as rhythm, melody, and harmony. He shows how composers and performers across genres shared the common pursuit of representing the rapidly changing conditions of modern life.

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The Cambridge Phenomenon: 50 years of Innovation and Enterprise

Kate Kirk and Charles Cotton

The Cambridge Phenomenon: 50 Years of Innovation and Enterprise covers the remarkable history of the Phenomenon since 1960, from the challenges of starting businesses in a hostile environment to the boom years in the late 1980s and 1990s, the dotcom bust in 2000 and the new reality of starting and growing businesses when money is tight.

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Teach us of Love

Dr R Henry Disney (Sidney Sussex 1959, Senior Research Associate in the Dept of Zoology)

This collection of stirring verses gathers into a single volume previously unpublished poems primarily concerned with musings about the author’s Christian faith–a faith which is neither facile nor sentimental–a faith which is less concerned with abstract doctrine than with living out the Gospel in every day living and in how one relates to the variety of people one encounters. Topics include family life, human nature, politics, an earnest faith and a variety of poignant situations.

The Museum on the Roof of the World: Art, Politics, and the Representation of Tibet

Dr Clare E Harris (Robinson 1984)

For millions of people around the world, Tibet is a domain of undisturbed tradition, the Dalai Lama a spiritual guide. By contrast, the Tibet Museum opened in Lhasa by the Chinese in 1999 was designed to reclassify Tibetan objects as cultural relics and the Dalai Lama as obsolete. Suggesting that both these views are suspect, Clare E. Harris argues in The Museum on the Roof of the World that for the past one hundred and fifty years, British and Chinese collectors and curators have tried to convert Tibet itself into a museum, an image some Tibetans have begun to contest.

Persuasion and Power: The Art of Strategic Communication

James P Farwell (Trinity 1971)

Now more than ever, in the arenas of national security, diplomacy, and military operations, effective communication strategy is of paramount importance. A 24/7 television, radio, and Internet news cycle paired with an explosion in social media demands it. According to James P. Farwell, a former political consultant, the US government's approach to strategic communication has been misguided.

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Elizabeth I: the people’s queen?

Liz Woodhouse (Girton 1959)

A different window on the first half of the famous Queen's life. Elizabeth I is a historical novel narrated by the three women who knew her best (real figures from history), Lady Margaret Bryan, Kat Ashley and Lady Catherine Knollys. Their unique, backstage angle on Elizabeth's story brings to vivid life the dramatic and dangerous period of the Tudors. Elizabeth's formative years left harsh scars, but at 25 she reached the throne, to great rejoicing.

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Doing Capitalism in the Innovation Economy

Dr William H Janeway Hon CBE (Pembroke 1965)

The innovation economy begins with discovery and culminates in speculation. Over some 250 years, economic growth has been driven by successive processes of trial and error: upstream exercises in research and invention and downstream experiments in exploiting the new economic space opened by innovation.

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The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes

John Maynard Keynes (King's 1902), edited by Elizabeth Johnson, Donald Moggridge and Austin Robinson

Available in electronic and paperback format for the first time, The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes is published on behalf of The Royal Economic Society and comprises thirty volumes of all Keynes’ published books and articles, including writing from his time in the India Office and Treasury, correspondence in which he developed ideas in argument with fellow economists, and correspondence relating to public affairs.

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Cambridge in Concrete: Images from the RIBA British Architectural Library Photographs Collection

Edited by Dr Marco Iuliano (Researcher in the Department of Architecture) and Professor Francois Penz (Darwin 1978, Professor of Architecture and the Moving Image in the Department of Architecture, Fellow of Darwin College)

Drawing upon visual material from the Library, this book contains illustrated essays examining the concrete structures in Cambridge built between the 1950s and 1960s and their legacy. As well as embodying the optimistic and innovative spirit of architecture in the post-war period, these buildings are part of the hidden and misunderstood heritage of the city. The book accompanies an exhibition held at the University of Cambridge in 2012.

Find out more in CAM 67's Concrete Cambridge.

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Marital Agreements and Private Autonomy in Comparative Perspective

Dr Jens M Scherpe (University Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Law, Fellow of Gonville and Caius College)

This book deals with a subject that has recently been the focus of debate and law reform in many jurisdictions: how much scope should spouses have to conclude agreements concerning their financial affairs - and under what circumstances should such agreements be binding and enforceable? These marital agreements include pre-nuptial, post-nuptial and separation agreements.

Anatomical Dissection in Enlightenment England and Beyond

Edited by Dr Piers Mitchell (Affiliated Lecturer in the Department of Biological Anthropology)

Excavations of medical school and workhouse cemeteries undertaken in Britain in the last decade have unearthed fascinating new evidence for the way that bodies were dissected or autopsied in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

The Rough Guide to the Dark Side

Daniel Simpson (Clare 1993)

Ever dreamed of changing the world? Daniel Simpson shows how not to do it. His memoir charts a gonzo career at The New York Times. Ambitious and idealistic, he was hired to report on the Balkans but quit within months, freaked out by his editor's zeal for starting wars.

The Spirit of Selflessness in Maoist China: Socialist Medicine and the New Man

Dr Christos Lynteris (Mellon/Newton Postdoctoral Fellow 2011-13 at CRASSH

Assuming power in 1949, the Chinese Communist Party was faced with a crucial problem: how to construct the socialist 'New Man'? On the one hand, led by Liu Shaoqi, the proponents of the technocracy advocated self-cultivation. Led by Mao Zedong, their opponents advocated the exact opposite technique: the abolition of the self and the institution of a mass subjectivity.

Boundaries Undermined: The Ruins of Progress on the Bangladesh/India Border

Delwar Hussain (King's 2007)

When anthropologist Delwar Hussain arrived in a remote coal mining village on the Bangladesh/India border to research the security fence India is building around its neighbour, he discovered more about the globalised world than he had expected.

The present narrative of the Bangladesh/India border is one of increasing violence. Not so long ago, it was the site of a monumental modernist master-plan, symbolic of a larger optimism which was to revolutionise post-colonial nations around the world.

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Middle Age: a Natural History

Dr David Bainbridge (Emmanuel 1986), Clinical Verinary Anatomist in the University's Department of Physiology

Dr David Bainbridge is a vet with a particular interest in evolutionary zoology - and he has just turned forty. As well as the usual concerns about greying hair, failing eyesight and goldfish levels of forgetfulness, he finds himself pondering some bigger questions: have I come to the end of my productive life as a human being? And what I am now for? By looking afresh at the latest research from the fields of anthropology, neuroscience, psychology, and reproductive biology, it seems that the answers are surprisingly, reassuringly encouraging.

The Coder Special Archive: The Untold Story of Naval National Servicemen Learning and Using Russian During the Cold War

Mike Gerrard and Tony Cash, featuring contributions from alumni including but not limited to: Sir John Drummond (Trinity 1955), Dr James Muckle (Peterhouse 1957) and Mark Frankland (Pembroke 1954)

The authors along with 70 plus former 1950s national service Naval conscripts reveal how they learned Russian, spied on the Soviet military and shed light on the East-West conflict, including alumni of both JSSL (Joint Services School for Linguists) in Cambridge and the University of Cambridge. Acclaimed dramatist and author Alan Bennett (who came to the JSSL in Cambridge and went on to Oxford) supplies the foreword.

College Chapels

Greg Dickens (Selwyn 2004)

Veterinary student and photographer Greg Dickens has here collected the images from his hugely successful exhibition into an accessible and beautiful hardback volume.

Perfidy and Passion: Reintroducing the Iliad

Mark Buchan (Christ's 1985)

Homer’s Iliad is often considered a poem of blunt truthfulness, his characters’ motivation pleasingly simple. A closer look, however, reveals a complex interplay of characters who engage in an awful lot of lies. Beginning with Achilles, who hatches a secret plot to destroy his own people, Mark Buchan traces motifs of deception and betrayal throughout the poem. Homer’s heroes offer bluster, their passion linked to and explained by their lack of authenticity. Buchan reads Homer’s characters between the lies, showing how the plot is structured individual denial and what cannot be said.

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