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Fifteen Eighty Four

Academic perspectives from Cambridge University Press

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The Making of Brazilian Amazonian Societies: A Study in Ethnographic and Spatial History

Those who watched the televised images of COP30 in November 2025 could not have missed the striking presence of Indigenous peoples in the Brazilian city of Belém. They were there to insist that their...

Mark Harris | 5 Jan 2026

Can Animals be Public Enemies?

“Your cattle are public enemies now,” a state veterinary scientist tells Homer Bannon, an aging cattle rancher in Larry McMurtry’s 1961 novel Horsemen, Pass By, shortly before he compels Homer to...

Raymond Malewitz | 5 Jan 2026

“Nothing Feminine About It”? Composing While Female in 19th-Century France

We’ve all received what used to be called a “left-handed compliment,” a comment or judgement that seems positive on the surface, but holds a thinly veiled insult. Parisian composer Louise Farrenc...

Marie Sumner Lott | 4 Jan 2026

An Introduction to the New Cambridge History of the English Language

The New Cambridge History of the English Language represents a second edition of the original Cambridge history published in the 1990s. Much has happened in English historical linguistics in the last...

Raymond Hickey | 29 Dec 2025

The Desire for Syria in Medieval England

On Friday 9 June 1458, a pirate ship swerved and fired on two Bristolian trading boats as they passed the coast of Malta, on their return from the Levant. I found the event transcribed in a legal document....

E. K. Myerson | 23 Dec 2025

Quantum Mechanics at 100: A Triumph That Still Leaves Fundamental Questions in the Air

As the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology 2025 marks one hundred years of modern, quantum mechanics this reflection invites readers to look beyond the theory’s extraordinary successes...

Luis de la Peña, Ana María Cetto | 23 Dec 2025

Bailouts: Do They Benefit Us All, or Just a Narrow Few?

When financial crises strike, rescues and bailouts of distressed firms spark a familiar question: who really benefits? That same reservation arose long before the Federal Reserve, our lender of last resort,...

Mary Tone Rodgers, Jon Moen | 23 Dec 2025

A madness ate into all the Army, and they turned against their officers. The Ressaldar, in Rudyard Kipling, Kim (1901)

With these words Rudyard Kipling explained the Indian revolt against the British in 1857. Nearly a century after Kipling’s novel was published, Edward Said would draw attention to the necessary tendentiousness...

William R. Pinch | 22 Dec 2025

A modern scientific revolution: quasars and how they changed our science of the cosmos

Imagine a time when our best images of the universe were black and white photos. This is the year 1960. Forget about galaxy evolution theory, we didn’t even have mature ideas on how they came to...

Christopher W. Churchill | 22 Dec 2025

“Moral Imagination in the 21st Century: Individuals and Organizations”

Moral imagination is a well-developed concept in business ethics, and one that is closely associated with Patricia Werhane, whose much-cited 1999 textbook argued that ethical failures often arise...

David J. Bevan, Patricia H. Werhane | 22 Dec 2025

Reassessing the Peloponnesian War

In the early summer of 431 BCE, villages and farms in Attica were abandoned as people moved into Athens. They were fleeing the advance of one of the largest armies ever assembled in ancient Greece. At...

Samuel Gartland, Robin Osborne | 18 Dec 2025

How do you solve a problem like Napoleon?

Napoleon Bonaparte: Corsican, illustrious general, First Consul, Emperor of the French, exile, prisoner. It’s quite a CV. He was also a PR expert ahead of his time, and one of his chosen media for this...

Clare Siviter | 18 Dec 2025