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Fifteen Eighty Four

Academic perspectives from Cambridge University Press

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Knowledge and Power in Prehistoric Societies

From the moment I first saw the enigmatic Scottish carved stone balls, I was intrigued. Although many purposes had been suggested for their purpose during the Neolithic, none had included the possibility...

Lynne Kelly | 30 Jun 2015

Word Order: Keep your Spanish House in Order

Ronald Batchelor, author of A Reference Grammar of Spanish, explores the grammatical differences between English and Spanish.

Ronald Batchelor | 29 Jun 2015

Critical Style

Simon Palfrey, the author of Shakespeare’s Possible Worlds, offers up a new model for appreciating Shakespeare's world--both the world he creates and the real one his writing reflects.

Simon Palfrey | 24 Jun 2015

Playing with Knives

How often do we discourage our children from handling dangerous objects--things like matches and knives? Are we protecting them, or failing to let them learn valuable lessons about the world we live in? David F. Lancy, the author of The Anthropology of Childhood, breaks down these questions from an anthropological stance.

David F. Lancy | 23 Jun 2015

Three Keys to Effective GHG Emissions Monitoring in a Broader Climate Agreement

Valentin Bellassen, author of Accounting for Carbon: Monitoring, Reporting and Verifying Emissions in the Climate Economy (2015), explores the requirements for the MRV of countries’ emissions and considers how this can be successfully extended to cover emerging and developing countries.

Valentin Bellassen | 22 Jun 2015

So Much Time, So Much Money—Such Unsatisfactory Results

Yellowlees Douglas, author of The Reader's Brain: How Neuroscience Can Make You a Better Writer (2015), explores how the teaching of writing is leaving some people ill-prepared for the workplace.

Yellowlees Douglas | 19 Jun 2015

Playing Hesiod

Early on in Hesiod’s Works and Days, the first didactic poem of Classical antiquity, we find in succession two versions of human history. The first is a retelling of the havoc resulting for mankind from...

Helen Van Noorden | 18 Jun 2015

Shakespeare: Where Is the Life?

Simon Palfrey, the author of Shakespeare’s Possible Worlds, breaks down the barriers of Shakespeare's complicated play world and the language holding it together.

Simon Palfrey | 17 Jun 2015

Civil Rights Words as Action, Then and Now

This month marks the 50th anniversary of the galley exhibition Works in Black and White, a key moment in the Black Arts Movement of the tumultuous 1960s. Julie Buckner Armstrong, the editor of The Cambridge Companion to American Civil Rights Literature, explores the role of art and literature in the fight for civil rights and the transformative power of language.

Julie Buckner Armstrong | 16 Jun 2015

A Project 800 Years in the Making

In February 2014 we were approached and asked if we would prepare a new edition of J.C. Holt’s landmark book on Magna Carta, first published to accompany the seven hundred and fiftieth anniversary of...

George Garnett, John Hudson | 15 Jun 2015

Six Things You Need to Know about Your Reader’s Brain—Before You Write Anything

Yellowlees Douglas, the author of The Reader's Brain: How Neuroscience Can Make You a Better Writer, offers six helpful insights into how you can become a better writer by understanding a bit about how our brains work.

Yellowlees Douglas | 12 Jun 2015

150 Years of W. B. Yeats and European Drama

W.B. Yeats is widely recognised as one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century. It has even been suggested that he was the greatest poet in Europe since Virgil. His reputation as a dramatist has...

Michael McAteer | 11 Jun 2015