Open Book Publishers
This page shows the latest publications (in descending order of publication date) from Open Book Publishers.
Metadata is licensed as Creative Commons Zero (CC0) and is retrieved from Thoth’s open APIs.
Last updated: 2024-04-19 00:00:28
April 2024
A Grammar of the Jewish Arabic Dialect of Gabes
Author: Wiktor Gębski
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2024
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0394
This volume undertakes a linguistic exploration of the endangered Arabic dialect spoken by the Jews of Gabes, a coastal city situated in Southern Tunisia. Belonging to the category of sedentary North African dialects, this variety is now spoken by a dwindling number of native speakers, primarily in Israel and France. Given the imminent extinction faced by many modern varieties of Judaeo-Arabic, including Jewish Gabes, the study’s primary goal is to document and describe its linguistic nuances while reliable speakers are still accessible. Data for this comprehensive study were collected during fieldwork in Israel and France between December 2018 and March 2022.
Tangible and Intangible Heritage in the Age of Globalisation
Editor: Lilia Makhloufi
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2024
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0388
Tangible and Intangible Heritage in the Age of Globalisation offers a rich collection of perspectives on the complex interplay between tangible and intangible heritage. These essays illustrate the need to redefine heritage as an interdisciplinary and intercultural concept. They interrogate heritage paradigms while also providing concrete recommendations to promote the preservation of physical heritage spaces, and the cultural practices and social relationships that depend on them.
Heavy Metal: Earth’s Minerals and the Future of Sustainable Societies
Editor: Philippe D. Tortell
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2024
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0373
Heavy Metal: Earth’s Minerals and the Future of Sustainable Societies brings together world-leading experts from across the globe to reimagine the future of mineral exploration and mining in a post-fossil fuel world.
Translating Russian Literature in the Global Context
Editor: Cathy McAteer
Editor: Muireann Maguire
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2024
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0340
Translating Russian Literature in the Global Context examines the translation and reception of Russian literature as a world-wide process. This volume aims to provoke new debate about the continued currency of Russian literature as symbolic capital for international readers, in particular for nations seeking to create or consolidate cultural and political leverage in the so-called ‘World Republic of Letters’. It also seeks to examine and contrast the mechanisms of the translation and uses of Russian literature across the globe.
March 2024
No Life Without You: Refugee Love Letters from the 1930s
Editor: Franklin Felsenstein
Introduction by: Rachel Pistol
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2024
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0334
The letters and journals of Ernst Moritz and Vera Hirsch Felsenstein, two German Jewish refugees caught in the tumultuous years leading to the Second World War, form the core of this book. Abridged in English from the original German, the correspondence and diaries have been expertly compiled and annotated by their only son who preserves his parents’ love story in their own words. Their letters, written from Germany, England, Russia, and Palestine capture their desperate efforts to save themselves and their family, friends and businesses from the fascist tyranny. The book begins by contextualizing the early lives of Moritz and Vera.
Byron and Trinity: Memorials, Marbles and Ruins
Editor: Adrian Poole
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2024
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0399
This is a collection of reprinted essays about the life and writing of Lord Byron and the themes of ‘memorials, marbles and ruins’ that were prominent in his thinking and feeling.
Eliza Orme’s Ambitions: Politics and the Law in Victorian London
Author: Leslie Howsam
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2024
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0392
Why are some figures hidden from history? Eliza Orme, despite becoming the first woman in Britain to earn a university degree in Law in 1888, leading both a political organization and a labour investigation in 1892, and participating actively in the women’s suffrage movement into the early twentieth century, is one such figure.
A Country of Shepherds: Cultural Stories of a Changing Mediterranean Landscape
Author: Kathleen Ann Myers
Translator: Grady C. Wray
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2024
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0387
This book draws on the life stories told by shepherds, farmers, and their families in the Andalusian region in Spain to sketch out the landscapes, actions, and challenges of people who work in pastoralism. Their narratives highlight how local practices interact with regional and European communities and policies, and they help us see a broader role for extensive grazing practices and sustainability.
February 2024
Genetic Inroads into the Art of James Joyce
Author: Hans Walter Gabler
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2024
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0325
This book is a treasure trove comprising core writings from Hans Walter Gabler‘s seminal work on James Joyce, spanning fifty years from the analysis of composition he undertook towards a critical text of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, through the Critical and Synoptic Edition of Ulysses, to Gabler‘s latest essays on (appropriately enough) Joyce’s sustained artistic innovation.
Tener Demasiado: Ensayos Filosóficos sobre el Limitarismo
Editor: Ingrid Robeyns
Translator: Héctor Iñaki Larrínaga Márquez
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2024
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0354
‘Tener demasiado’ es el primer volumen académico dedicado al limitarismo: la idea de que el uso de los recursos económicos o de los ecosistemas no sobrepasen ciertos límites.
How Divine Images Became Art: Essays on the Rediscovery, Study and Collecting of Medieval Icons in the Belle Époque
Author: Oleg Tarasov
Translator: Stella Rock
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2024
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0378
How Divine Images Became Art tells the story of the parallel ‘discovery’ of Russian medieval art and of the Italian ‘primitives’ at the beginning of the twentieth century. While these two developments are well-known, they are usually studied in isolation. Tarasov’s study has the great merit of showing the connection between the art world in Russia and the West, and its impact in the cultural history of the continent in the pre-war period.
The Kingdom and the Qur’an: Translating the Holy Book of Islam in Saudi Arabia
Author: Mykhaylo Yakubovych
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2024
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0381
This book presents a detailed analysis of the translation of the Qur’an in Saudi Arabia, the most important global actor in the promotion, production and dissemination of Qur’an translations. Mykhaylo Yakubovych provides a comprehensive historical overview of the debates surrounding the translatability of the Qur’an, as well as exploring the impact of the burgeoning translation and dissemination of the holy book upon Wahhabi and Salafi interpretations of Islam. Backed by meticulous research and drawing on a wealth of sources, this work illuminates an essential facet of global Islamic culture and scholarly discourse.
January 2024
Classical Music Futures: Practices of Innovation
Editor: Karoly Molina
Editor: Peter Peters
Editor: Neil Thomas Smith
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2024
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0353
This edited volume brings together contributions from a wide range of international academics and practitioners. It traces innovations within classical music practice, showing how these offer divergent visions for its future. The interdisciplinary contributions to the volume highlight the way contrasting ideas of the future can effect change in the present.
Divine Style: Walt Whitman and the King James Bible
Author: F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2024
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0357
Dobbs-Allsopp, Professor of Old Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary, explicitly approaches Whitman from the perspective of a biblical scholar. Utilising his wealth of expertise in this field, he constructs a compelling, erudite and methodical argument for the King James Bible’s importance in the evolution of Whitman’s style – from his signature long lines to the prevalence of parallelism and tendency towards parataxis in his works.
December 2023
Synopses and Lists: Textual Practices in the Pre-Modern World
Editor: Teresa Bernheimer
Editor: Ronny Vollandt
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2023
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0375
Textual practices in pre-modern societies cover a great range of representations, from the literary to the pictorial. Among the most intriguing are synopses and lists. While lists provide a complete enumeration of ideas, people, events, or terms, synopses juxtapose one against the other. To understand how they were planned, produced, and consumed, is to gain insight into the practices of what one can call management of knowledge in a time before our own.
‘Wit’s Wild Dancing Light’: Reading the Poems of Alexander Pope
Author: William Hutchings
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2023
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0372
The book is a chronological reading of Alexander Pope’s poems, from the Pastorals (1709) to the four-book Dunciad (1743). Each of the 26 chapters forming the volume selects examples for detailed scrutiny, demonstrating how close reading can generate understanding of a whole poem and how critical appraisal can build into a creative survey of an entire poetic career.
Modelling Between Digital and Humanities: Thinking in Practice
Author: Arianna Ciula
Author: Øyvind Eide
Author: Cristina Marras
Author: Patrick Sahle
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2023
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0369
This volume presents an exploration of Digital Humanities (DH), a field focused on the reciprocal transformation of digital technologies and humanities scholarship. Central to DH research is the practice of modelling, which involves translating intricate knowledge systems into computational models. This book addresses a fundamental query: How can an effective language be developed to conceptualize and guide modelling in DH?
Financing Investment in Times of High Public Debt: 2023 European Public Investment Outlook
Editor: Floriana Cerniglia
Editor: Francesco Saraceno
Editor: Andrew Watt
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2023
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0386
The fourth book in the ‘European Public Investment Outlook’ series focuses on the urgent issue of how to finance needed investment in critical tangible and intangible infrastructure given high levels of public debt, a thorny problem facing many governments across Europe. Drawing on expertise from academics, researchers at public policy institutes and international governance bodies, the contributors analyse the current situation and prospects and propose feasible solutions.
November 2023
The Standard Language Ideology of the Hebrew and Arabic Grammarians of the ʿAbbasid Period
Author: Benjamin Paul Kantor
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2023
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0382
In the present book we survey six specific characteristics of a ‘standard language ideology’ that appear in both the writings of the Hebrew grammarians who wrote in Judeo-Arabic and the Arabic grammarians during the ʿAbbasid period. Such striking lines of linguistic-ideological similarity suggest that it may not have been only grammatical concepts or literary genres that the medieval Hebrew grammarians inherited from the Arabic grammatical tradition, but a way of thinking about language as well.
Health Care in the Information Society: Volume 1 - From Adventure of Ideas to Anarchy of Transition
Author: David Ingram
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2023
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0335
In this fascinating book David Ingram traces the history of information technology and health informatics from its pioneers in the middle of the twentieth century to its latest developments.
Health Care in the Information Society: Volume 2 - From Anarchy of Transition to Programme for Reform
Author: David Ingram
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2023
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0384
In this fascinating book David Ingram traces the history of information technology and health informatics from its pioneers in the middle of the twentieth century to its latest developments.
Prismatic Jane Eyre: Close-Reading a World Novel Across Languages
Author: Kayvan Tahmasebian
Author: Ida Klitgård
Author: Matthew Reynolds
Author: Andrés Claro
Author: Annmarie Drury
Author: Mary Frank
Author: Paola Gaudio
Author: Rebecca Ruth Gould
Author: Yunte Huang
Author: Eugenia Kelbert
Author: Ana Teresa Marques dos Santos
Author: Cláudia Pazos-Alonso
Author: Abhishek Jain
Author: Ulrich Timme Kragh
Author: Léa Rychen
Author: Madli Kütt
Author: Yousif M. Qasmiyeh
Author: Eleni Philippou
Author: Céline Sabiron
Author: Giovanni Pietro Vitali
Author: Jernej Habjan
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2023
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0319
Jane Eyre, written by Charlotte Brontë and first published in 1847, has been translated more than five hundred times into over sixty languages. Prismatic Jane Eyre argues that we should see these many re-writings, not as simple replications of the novel, but as a release of its multiple interpretative possibilities: in other words, as a prism.
Misunderstandings: False Beliefs in Communication
Author: Georg Weizsäcker
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2023
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0367
What do we expect when we say something to someone, and what do they expect when they hear it? When is a conversation successful? The book considers a wide set of two-person conversations, and a bit of game theory, to show how conversational statements and their interpretations are governed by beliefs. Thinking about beliefs is suitable for communication analysis because beliefs are well-defined and measurable, allowing to differentiate between successful understandings and their less successful counterparts: misunderstandings.
October 2023
Higher Education for Good: Teaching and Learning Futures
Editor: Laura Czerniewicz
Editor: Catherine Cronin
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2023
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0363
After decades of turbulence and acute crises in recent years, how can we build a better future for Higher Education?
Thoughtfully edited by Laura Czerniewicz and Catherine Cronin, this rich and diverse collection by academics and professionals from across 17 countries and many disciplines offers a variety of answers to this question. It addresses the need to set new values for universities, trapped today in narratives dominated by financial incentives and performance indicators, and examines those “wicked” problems which need multiple solutions, resolutions, experiments, and imaginaries.
The Predatory Paradox: Ethics, Politics, and Practices in Contemporary Scholarly Publishing
Author: Amy Koerber
Author: Jesse C. Starkey
Author: Karin Ardon-Dryer
Author: R. Glenn Cummins
Author: Lyombe Eko
Author: Kerk F. Kee
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2023
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0364
In today’s ‘publish or perish’ academic setting, the institutional prizing of quantity over quality has given rise to and perpetuated the dilemma of predatory publishing. Upon a close examination, however, the definition of ‘predatory’ itself becomes slippery, evading neat boxes or lists which might seek to easily define and guard against it. This volume serves to foreground a nuanced representation of this multifaceted issue. In such a rapidly evolving landscape, this book becomes a field guide to its historical, political, and economic aspects, presenting thoughtful interviews, legal analysis and original research. Case studies from both European-American and non-European-American stakeholders emphasize the worldwide nature of the challenge faced by researchers of all levels.
Transparent Minds in Science Fiction: An Introduction to Alien, AI and Post-Human Consciousness
Author: Paul Matthews
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2023
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0348
Transparent Minds explores the intersection between neuroscience and science fiction stories. Paul Matthews expertly analyses the narratives of humans and nonhumans from Mary Shelley to Kazuo Ishiguro across 200 years of the genre. In doing so he gives lucid insight into the meaning of existence and self-awareness. Rigorously researched and highly accessible, Matthews argues that psycho-emotional science fiction writers both imitate and inform alien and post-human consciousnesses through exploratory narratives and metaphor.
Shépa: The Tibetan Oral Tradition in Choné
Author: Members of the Choné Tibetan Community
Author: Bendi Tso
Author: Marnyi Gyatso
Author: Mark Turin
Author: Naljor Tsering
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2023
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0312
This book contains a unique collection of Tibetan oral narrations and songs known as Shépa, as these have been performed, recorded and shared between generations of Choné Tibetans from Amdo living in the eastern Tibetan Plateau. Presented in trilingual format — in Tibetan, Chinese and English — the book reflects a sustained collaboration with and between members of the local community, including narrators, monks, and scholars, calling attention to the diversity inherent in all oral traditions, and the mutability of Shépa in particular.
September 2023
After the Miners’ Strike: A39 and Cornish Political Theatre versus Thatcher’s Britain: Volume 1
Author: Paul Farmer
Author: Mark Kilburn
Preface by: Rebecca Hillman
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2023
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0329
In this rich memoir, the first of two volumes, Paul Farmer traces the story of A39, the Cornish political theatre group he co-founded and ran from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s. Farmer offers a unique insight into A39’s creation, operation, and artistic practice during a period of convulsive political and social change.
Linguistic Theory and the Biblical Text
Editor: Elizabeth Robar
Editor: William A. Ross
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2023
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0358
This volume is the result of the 2021 session of the Linguistics and the Biblical Text research group of the Institute for Biblical Research, which addresses the history, relevance, and prospects of broad theoretical linguistic frameworks in the field of biblical studies. Cognitive Linguistics, Functional Grammar, generative linguistics, historical linguistics, complexity theory, and computational analysis are each allotted a chapter, outlining the key theoretical commitments of each approach, their major concepts and/or methods, and their important contributions to contemporary study of the biblical text.
Toevallige ontmoetingen: Bio-ethiek voor een gehavende planeet
Author: Kristien Hens
Illustrator: Christina Stadlbauer
Illustrator: Bart H.M. Vandeput
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2023
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0370
In dit rigoureuze en noodzakelijke boek brengt Kristien Hens bio-ethiek en filosofie van de biologie bij elkaar, met het argument dat het ethisch noodzakelijk is om in het wetenschappelijk onderzoek een plaatsje vrij te houden voor de filosofen. Hun rol is behalve ethisch ook conceptueel: zij kunnen de kwaliteit en de coherentie van het wetenschappelijk onderzoek verbeteren door erop toe te zien dat specifieke concepten op een consistente en doordachte manier worden gebruik binnen interdisciplinaire projecten. Hens argumenteert dat toeval en onzekerheid een centrale rol spelen in de bio-ethiek, maar dat die in een spanningsrelatie kunnen raken met de pogingen om bepaalde theorieën ingang te doen vinden als wetenschappelijke kennis: bij het beschrijven van organismen en praktijken creëren we op een bepaalde manier de wereld. Hens stelt dat dit noodzakelijk een ethische activiteit betreft.
Ethics of Socially Disruptive Technologies: An Introduction
Editor: Ibo van de Poel
Editor: Jeroen Hopster
Editor: Behnam Taebi
Editor: Lily Eva Frank
Editor: Julia Hermann
Editor: Dominic Lenzi
Editor: Sven Nyholm
Editor: Elena Ziliotti
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2023
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0366
Technologies shape who we are, how we organize our societies and how we relate to nature. For example, social media challenges democracy; artificial intelligence raises the question of what is unique to humans; and the possibility to create artificial wombs may affect notions of motherhood and birth. Some have suggested that we address global warming by engineering the climate, but how does this impact our responsibility to future generations and our relation to nature? This book shows how technologies can be socially and conceptually disruptive and investigates how to come to terms with this disruptive potential.
Cheap Print and Street Literature of the Long Eighteenth Century
Editor: David Atkinson
Editor: Steve Roud
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2023
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0347
This deeply researched collection offers a comprehensive introduction to the eighteenth-century trade in street literature – ballads, chapbooks, and popular prints – in England and Scotland. Offering detailed studies of a selection of the printers, types of publication, and places of publication that constituted the cheap and popular print trade during the period, these essays delve into ballads, slip songs, story books, pictures, and more to push back against neat divisions between low and high culture, or popular and high literature.
August 2023
William Moorcroft, Potter: Individuality by Design
Author: Jonathan Mallinson
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2023
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0349
William Moorcroft (1872-1945) was one of the most celebrated potters of the early twentieth century. His career extended from the Arts and Crafts movement of the late Victorian age to the Austerity aesthetics of the Second World War. Rejecting mass production and patronised by Royalty, Moorcroft’s work was a synthesis of studio and factory, art and industry. He considered it his vocation to create an everyday art, both functional and decorative, affordable by more than a privileged few: ‘If only the people in the world would concentrate upon making all things beautiful, and if all people concentrated on developing the arts of Peace, what a world it might be,’ he wrote in a letter to his daughter in 1930.
The Linguistic Classification of the Reading Traditions of Biblical Hebrew: A Phyla-and-Waves Model
Author: Benjamin Paul Kantor
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2023
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0210
In recent decades, the field of Biblical Hebrew philology and linguistics has been witness to a growing interest in the diverse traditions of Biblical Hebrew. Indeed, while there is a tendency for many students and scholars to conceive of Biblical Hebrew as equivalent with the Tiberian pointing of the Leningrad Codex as it appears in Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (BHS), there are many other important reading traditions attested throughout history.
The Era of Global Risk: An Introduction to Existential Risk Studies
Editor: SJ Beard
Editor: Martin Rees
Editor: Catherine Richards
Editor: Clarissa Rios Rojas
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2023
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0336
This innovative and comprehensive collection of essays explores the biggest threats facing humanity in the 21st century; threats that cannot be contained or controlled and that have the potential to bring about human extinction and civilization collapse. Bringing together experts from many disciplines, it provides an accessible survey of what we know about these threats, how we can understand them better, and most importantly what can be done to manage them effectively.
Research, Writing, and Creative Process in Open and Distance Education: Tales from the Field
Editor: Dianne Conrad
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2023
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0356
This collection of reflective essays is a treasure trove of advice, reflection and hard-won experience from experts in the field of open and distance education. Each chapter offers tried-and-tested advice for nascent academic writers, delivered with personal, rich, and wonderful stories of the authors’ careers, their process, their research and their writing, and the struggles and triumphs they have encountered in the course of their careers.
A Relational Realist Vision for Education Policy and Practice
Author: Basem Adi
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2023
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0327
This volume argues that relational realism can help us to make better educational policy that is more effective in practice. Basem Adi draws on critical realism to thoroughly re-examine fundamental assumptions about how government policymaking works, developing an ontological basis from which to examine existing government approaches and imagine an alternative approach based on a relational realist-informed critical pedagogy.
Seabirds in the North-East Atlantic: Climate Change Vulnerability and Potential Conservation Actions
Author: Henry Häkkinen
Author: Silviu O. Petrovan
Author: William J. Sutherland
Author: Nathalie Pettorelli
Author: Nigel G. Taylor
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2023
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0343
This book was produced by the Zoological Society of London and the University of Cambridge with two aims: to assess seabirds’ vulnerability to climate change in the North-East Atlantic, and to identify potential conservation actions that could reduce this vulnerability.
Digital Transformation: Understanding Business Goals, Risks, Processes, and Decisions
Author: Love Ekenberg
Author: Cecilia Gullberg
Author: Gunnar Wettergren
Author: Mathias Cöster
Author: Gard Titlestad
Author: Alf Westelius
Author: Mats Danielson
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2023
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0350
Whilst digitisation is far from a new concept, many assume that simply introducing automation and information systems in various forms will be enough to make their organisation’s operations more efficient. This misconception can often lead to disarray and costly mistakes. Digital Transformation: Understanding Business Goals, Risks, Processes, and Decisions shows how to avoid such issues via careful consideration of what an enterprise really needs.
July 2023
Destins de femmes: French Women Writers, 1750-1850
Author: John Claiborne Isbell
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2023
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0346
Destins de femmes is the first comprehensive overview of French women writers during the turbulent period of 1750-1850. John Isbell provides an essential collection that illuminates the impact women writers had on French literature and politics during a time marked by three revolutions, the influx of Romantic art, and rapid technological change.
Folktales of Mayotte, an African Island
Author: Lee Haring
Foreword by: Mark Turin
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2023
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0315
The book uncovers the versatility and literary skills of oral narrators in a small African island. Relying on the researches of three French ethnographers who interviewed storytellers in the 1970s-80s, Lee Haring shows a once-colonised people using verbal art to preserve ancient values in the postcolonial world, when the island of Mayotte was transforming itself from a neglected colony to an overseas department of France.
Breaking Conventions: Five Couples in Search of Marriage-Career Balance at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century
Author: Patricia Auspos
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2023
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0318
This rich history illuminates the lives and partnerships of five married couples – two British, three American – whose unions defied the conventions of their time and anticipated social changes that were to come in the ensuing century. In all five marriages, both husband and wife enjoyed thriving professional lives: a shocking circumstance at a time when wealthy white married women were not supposed to have careers, and career women were not supposed to marry.
From Handwriting to Footprinting: Text and Heritage in the Age of Climate Crisis
Author: Anne Baillot
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2023
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0355
Integrating historical, archival and environmental perspectives, From Handwriting to Footprinting illuminates the impact that digitisation has had on the dissemination and preservation of textual heritage and reflects on what its future may hold. It is invaluable reading for anyone interested in textual history from a linguistic or philological perspective, as well as those working on publishing, archival and infrastructure projects that require the storing and long-term preservation of texts, or who want to know how to develop a more mindful attachment to digitised material.
Having Too Much: Philosophical Essays on Limitarianism
Editor: Ingrid Robeyns
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2023
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0338
Having Too Much is the first academic volume devoted to limitarianism: the idea that the use of economic or ecosystem resources should not exceed certain limits. This concept has deep roots in economic and political thought. One can find similar statements of such limits in thinkers such as Plato, Aquinas, and Spinoza. But Having Too Much is the first time in contemporary political philosophy that limitarianism is explored at length and in detail.
June 2023
Models in Microeconomic Theory: Expanded Second Edition (He)
Author: Martin J. Osborne
Author: Ariel Rubinstein
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2023
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0362
Models in Microeconomic Theory covers basic models in current microeconomic theory. Part I (Chapters 1-7) presents models of an economic agent, discussing abstract models of preferences, choice, and decision making under uncertainty, before turning to models of the consumer, the producer, and monopoly. Part II (Chapters 8-14) introduces the concept of equilibrium, beginning, unconventionally, with the models of the jungle and an economy with indivisible goods, and continuing with models of an exchange economy, equilibrium with rational expectations, and an economy with asymmetric information. Part III (Chapters 15-16) provides an introduction to game theory, covering strategic and extensive games and the concepts of Nash equilibrium and subgame perfect equilibrium. Part IV (Chapters 17-20) gives a taste of the topics of mechanism design, matching, the axiomatic analysis of economic systems, and social choice.
For Palestine: Essays from the Tom Hurndall Memorial Lecture Group
Editor: Ian Parker
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2023
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0345
This book is a collection of lectures written by reputable scholars who offer diverse perspectives on the historical, political and cultural struggles in Palestine. Encompassed in the pages are sixteen chapters produced for the Tom Hurndall Memorial Lecture Group. Unlike predecessors of this topic, this book offers a thought-provoking and comprehensive analysis of Palestine, including architectural, cultural, legal, sociological, and psychological questions, providing a larger scope of study that has not yet been done before. Ultimately, this book explores oppression in Palestine and beyond in the Middle East.
Models in Microeconomic Theory: Expanded Second Edition (She)
Author: Martin J. Osborne
Author: Ariel Rubinstein
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2023
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0361
Models in Microeconomic Theory covers basic models in current microeconomic theory. Part I (Chapters 1-7) presents models of an economic agent, discussing abstract models of preferences, choice, and decision making under uncertainty, before turning to models of the consumer, the producer, and monopoly. Part II (Chapters 8-14) introduces the concept of equilibrium, beginning, unconventionally, with the models of the jungle and an economy with indivisible goods, and continuing with models of an exchange economy, equilibrium with rational expectations, and an economy with asymmetric information. Part III (Chapters 15-16) provides an introduction to game theory, covering strategic and extensive games and the concepts of Nash equilibrium and subgame perfect equilibrium. Part IV (Chapters 17-20) gives a taste of the topics of mechanism design, matching, the axiomatic analysis of economic systems, and social choice.
Decolonial Ecologies: The Reinvention of Natural History in Latin American Art
Author: Joanna Page
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2023
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0339
In Decolonial Ecologies: The Reinvention of Natural History in Latin American Art, Joanna Page illuminates the ways in which contemporary artists in Latin America are reinventing historical methods of collecting, organizing, and displaying nature in order to develop new aesthetic and political perspectives on the past and the present.
Play in a Covid Frame: Everyday Pandemic Creativity in a Time of Isolation
Editor: Julia Bishop
Editor: Anna Beresin
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2023
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0326
During the international coronavirus lockdowns of 2020–2021, millions of children, youth, and adults found their usual play areas out of bounds and their friends out of reach. How did the pandemic restrict everyday play and how did the pandemic offer new spaces and new content? This unique collection of essays documents the ways in which communities around the world harnessed play within the limiting frame of Covid-19.
May 2023
Migrant Academics’ Narratives of Precarity and Resilience in Europe
Editor: Olga Burlyuk
Editor: Ladan Rahbari
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2023
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0331
This volume consists of narratives of migrant academics from the Global South within academia in the Global North. The autobiographic and autoethnographic contributions to this collection aim to decolonise the discourse around academic mobility by highlighting experiences of precarity, resilience, care and solidarity in the academic margins.
An Introduction to Andalusi Hebrew Metrics
Author: José Martínez Delgado
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2023
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0351
Delgado presents his view of Andalusi Hebrew metrics, as encountered in medieval manuals of Arabic and Hebrew metrics and scattered notes in the works of Andalusi Hebrew philologists. Whilst twentieth-century scholars spoke about the adaptation of Arabic metrics to Hebrew, he instead approaches these compositions by Andalusi Jews (10th-13th c.) as Arabic metrics written in Hebrew, thus emphasising how Hebrew poetry of the Andalusi Jews can help us to understand the general evolution of Arabic strophic poetry, and its experimental evolution, which is quite unlike classical and strophic Arabic poetry.
The Last Man Who Knew Everything: Thomas Young
Author: Andrew Robinson
Foreword by: Martin Rees
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2023
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0344
No one has given the polymath Thomas Young (1773-1829) the all-round examination he so richly deserves—until now. Celebrated biographer Andrew Robinson portrays a man who solved mystery after mystery in the face of ridicule and rejection, and never sought fame.
April 2023
Touching Parchment: How Medieval Users Rubbed, Handled, and Kissed Their Manuscripts: Volume 1: Officials and Their Books
Author: Kathryn M. Rudy
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2023
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0337
The Medieval book, both religious and secular, was regarded as a most precious item. The traces of its use through touching and handling during different rituals such as oath-taking, is the subject of Kathryn Rudy’s research in Touching Parchment.
March 2023
Introduction to Systems Biology: Workbook for Flipped-classroom Teaching
Author: Thomas Sauter
Author: Marco Albrecht
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2023
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0291
This book is an introduction to the language of systems biology, which is spoken among many disciplines, from biology to engineering. Authors Thomas Sauter and Marco Albrecht draw on a multidisciplinary background and evidence-based learning to facilitate the understanding of biochemical networks, metabolic modeling and system dynamics.
The Last Years of Polish Jewry: Volume 1: At the Edge of the Abyss: Essays, 1927–33
Author: Yankev Leshchinsky
Editor: Robert Brym
Translator: Robert Brym
Translator: Eli Jany
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2023
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0341
Ukrainian-born Yankev Leshchinsky (1876–1966) was the leading scholarly and journalistic analyst of Eastern European Jewish socioeconomic and political life from the 1920s to the 1950s. Known as “the dean of Jewish sociologists” and “the father of Jewish demography,” Leshchinsky published a series of insightful and moving essays in Yiddish on Polish Jewry between 1927 and 1937. Despite heightened interest in interwar Jewish communities in Poland in recent years, these essays (like most of Leshchinsky’s works) have never been translated into English. The Last Years of Polish Jewry helps to rectify this situation by translating some of Leshchinsky’s key essays.
Susan Isaacs: A Life Freeing the Minds of Children
Author: Philip Graham
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2023
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0297
This revised and expanded edition of Susan Isaacs: A Life Freeing the Minds of Children by Philip Graham, provides a comprehensive biography of a highly influential educationist and psychoanalyst. The book covers Isaacs’ childhood through to the end of her life, making it of great interest to historians of British education and of psychoanalysis as well as to practicing early years teachers and psychoanalysts.
The Poetic Edda: A Dual-Language Edition
Author: Edward Pettit
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2023
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0308
This book is an edition and translation of one of the most important and celebrated sources of Old Norse-Icelandic mythology and heroic legend, namely the medieval poems now known collectively as the Poetic Edda or Elder Edda.
February 2023
The European Experience: A Multi-Perspective History of Modern Europe, 1500–2000
Editor: Jochen Hung
Editor: Jaroslav Ira
Editor: Judit Klement
Editor: Andrew Tompkins
Editor: Jan Hansen
Editor: Juan Luis Simal
Editor: Sylvain Lesage
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2023
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0323
The European Experience brings together the expertise of nearly a hundred historians from eight European universities to internationalise and diversify the study of modern European history, exploring a grand sweep of time from 1500 to 2000.
Dire Straits-Education Reforms: Ideology, Vested Interests and Evidence
Author: José Ignacio Wert
Author: Montserrat Gomendio
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2023
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0332
Responding to an ‘educational emergency’ generated largely by the difficulties of implementing education reforms, this book compares education policies around the world in order to understand what works where. To address the key question of why education reforms are so difficult, the authors take into account a broad range of relevant factors, such as governance, ideology, and stakeholder conflicts of interest, and their interactions with one another.
The Historical Depth of the Tiberian Reading Tradition of Biblical Hebrew
Author: Aaron D. Hornkohl
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2023
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0310
This volume explores an underappreciated feature of the standard Tiberian Masoretic tradition of Biblical Hebrew, namely its composite nature. Focusing on cases of dissonance between the tradition’s written (consonantal) and reading (vocalic) components, the study shows that the Tiberian spelling and pronunciation traditions, though related, interdependent, and largely in harmony, at numerous points reflect distinct oral realisations of the biblical text.
January 2023
Reshaping Food Systems to improve Nutrition and Health in the Eastern Mediterranean Region
Author: Ayoub Al-Jawaldeh
Author: Alexa Meyer
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2023
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0322
This detailed and comprehensive study examines nutrition and health in the World Health Organization (WHO) Eastern Mediterranean Region, presenting the six game-changing food systems actions proposed by the WHO and the progress of their implementation in the region.
December 2022
Chance Encounters: A Bioethics for a Damaged Planet
Author: Kristien Hens
Illustrator: Christina Stadlbauer
Illustrator: Bart H.M. Vandeput
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2022
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0320
In this rigorous and necessary book, Kristien Hens brings together bioethics and the philosophy of biology to argue that it is ethically necessary for scientific research to include a place for the philosopher. As well as ethical, their role is conceptual: they can improve the quality and coherence of scientific research by ensuring that particular concepts are used consistently and thoughtfully across interdisciplinary projects. Hens argues that chance and uncertainty play a central part in bioethics, but that these qualities can be in tension with the attempt to establish a given theory as scientific knowledge: in describing organisms and practices, in a sense we create the world. Hens contends that this is necessarily an ethical activity.
Landscapes of Investigation: Contributions to Critical Mathematics Education
Editor: Miriam Godoy Penteado
Editor: Ole Skovsmose
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2022
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0316
Creating landscapes of investigation is a primary concern of critical mathematics education. It enables us to organise educational processes so that students and teachers are able to get involved in explorations guided by dialogical interactions. It attempts to address explicit or implicit forms of social injustice by means of mathematics, and also to promote a critical conception of mathematics, challenging the assumption that the subject represents objectivity and neutrality. Landscapes of Investigation provides many illustrations of how this can be done in primary, secondary, and university education. It also illustrates how exploring landscapes of investigation can contribute to mathematics teacher education programmes.
Greening Europe: 2022 European Public Investment Outlook
Editor: Floriana Cerniglia
Editor: Francesco Saraceno
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2022
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0328
The third installment of the ‘European Public Investment Outlook’ series is an important and timely publication that draws together recent analyses to recommend significant increases in public investment in green ventures. Compelling data from key economists affiliated with international organizations like the International Monetary Fund, European Investment Bank and the European Commission, as well as academic departments and policy institutes are a clarion call for green investment to boost the economy and put the planet on a sustainable path.
Music in Evolution and Evolution in Music
Author: Steven Jan
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2022
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0301
Music in Evolution and Evolution in Music by Steven Jan is a comprehensive account of the relationships between evolutionary theory and music. Examining the ‘evolutionary algorithm’ that drives biological and musical-cultural evolution, the book provides a distinctive commentary on how musicality and music can shed light on our understanding of Darwin’s famous theory – and vice-versa.
Transforming Conservation: A Practical Guide to Evidence and Decision Making
Editor: William J. Sutherland
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2022
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0321
There are severe problems with the decision-making processes currently widely used, leading to ineffective use of evidence, faulty decisions, wasting of resources and the erosion of public and political support. In this book an international team of experts provide solutions.
William Rimmer: Champion of Imagination in American Art
Author: Dorinda Evans
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2022
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0304
William Rimmer (1816–1879) is arguably the first modernist American sculptor, although his inventive originality has not been fully acknowledged. Rimmer cultivated an art of ideas and personal expression whilst supporting himself as a physician and, later, as a teacher of art anatomy at the Cooper Union School of Design for Women in New York.
November 2022
Engaging with Everyday Sounds
Author: Marcel Cobussen
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2022
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0288
‘Engaging With Everyday Sounds’ is a rich and inspiring exploration of the role of sounds in everyday life, including their impact on human actions, emotions, and imagination. Marcel Cobussen intertwines sonic studies with philosophy, sound art, sociology and more to create an impressively lucid and innovative guide to sonic materialism, calling for a re-sensitization to our acoustic environment and arguing that everyday sounds have (micro)political, social, and ethical impact to which we should attend.
The Bible in the Bowls: A Catalogue of Biblical Quotations in Published Jewish Babylonian Aramaic Magic Bowls
Author: Daniel James Waller
Contributions by: Dorota Molin
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2022
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0305
The Bible in the Bowls represents a complete catalogue of Hebrew Bible quotations found in the published corpus of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic magic bowls. As our only direct epigraphic witnesses to the Hebrew Bible from late antique Babylonia, the bowls are uniquely placed to contribute to research on the (oral) transmission of the biblical text in late antiquity; the pre-Masoretic Babylonian vocalisation tradition; the formation of the liturgy and the early development of the Jewish prayer book; the social locations of biblical knowledge in late antique Babylonia and socio-religious typologies of the bowls; and the dynamics of scriptural citation in ancient Jewish magic.
Women and Migration(s) II
Editor: Cheryl Finley
Editor: Ellyn Toscano
Editor: Deborah Willis
Editor: Kalia Brooks
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2022
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0296
Women and Migration(s) II draws together contributions from scholars and artists showcasing the breadth of intersectional experiences of migration, from diaspora to internal displacement. Building on conversations initiated in Women and Migration: Responses in Art and History, this edited volume features a range of written styles, from memoir to artists’ statements to journalistic and critical essays. The collection shows how women’s experiences of migration have been articulated through art, film, poetry and even food.
Studies in the Masoretic Tradition of the Hebrew Bible
Editor: Daniel J. Crowther
Editor: Aaron D. Hornkohl
Editor: Geoffrey Khan
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2022
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0330
This volume brings together papers on topics relating to the transmission of the Hebrew Bible from Late Antiquity to the Early Modern period. We refer to this broadly in the title of the volume as the ‘Masoretic Tradition’. The papers are innovative studies of a range of aspects of this Masoretic tradition at various periods, many of them presenting hitherto unstudied primary sources.
October 2022
Anthropology of Transformation: From Europe to Asia and Back
Editor: Juraj Buzalka
Editor: Agnieszka Pasieka
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2022
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0282
This collection of essays is the result of the joint efforts of colleagues and students of the leading social anthropology and post-socialism theorist, Professor Chris Hann. With the thirtieth anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 2019 as their catalyst, the authors reflect upon Chris Hann’s lifelong fieldwork in the discipline, spanning regions as diverse as East Central Europe, Turkey, and the Chinese north-west.
‘Fragile States’ in an Unequal World: The Role of the g7+ in International Diplomacy and Development Cooperation
Author: Isabel Rocha de Siqueira
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2022
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0311
This is a book about people. ‘Fragile States’ in an Unequal World: The Role of the g7+ in International Diplomacy and Development Cooperation introduces the members of the g7+, a group formed by 20 conflict-affected states: why they came to believe in politics and policy; how they feel about their work, their family and their communities; and what they want to leave behind for the next generations. It is the story of their personal and collective values, their mistakes, and the challenges they faced, and it will resonate with anyone who has tried to organize and work with a group of very different people.
Diachronic Variation in the Omani Arabic Vernacular of the Al-ʿAwābī District: From Carl Reinhardt (1894) to the Present Day
Author: Roberta Morano
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2022
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0298
In this monograph, Roberta Morano re-examines one of the foundational works of the Omani Arabic dialectology field, Carl Reinhardt’s Ein arabischer Dialekt gesprochen in ’Oman und Zanzibar (1894). This German-authored work was prolific in shaping our knowledge of Omani Arabic during the twentieth century, until the 1980s when more recent linguistic studies on the Arabic varieties spoken in Oman began to appear.
Life, Re-Scaled: The Biological Imagination in Twenty-First-Century Literature and Performance
Editor: Liliane Campos
Editor: Pierre-Louis Patoine
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2022
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0303
This edited volume explores new engagements with the life sciences in contemporary fiction, poetry, comics and performance. The gathered case studies investigate how recent creative work reframes the human within microscopic or macroscopic scales, from cellular biology to systems ecology, and engages with the ethical, philosophical, and political issues raised by the twenty-first century’s shifting views of life. The collection thus examines literature and performance as spaces that shape our contemporary biological imagination.
The Official Indonesian Qurʾān Translation: The History and Politics of Al-Qur’an dan Terjemahnya
Author: Fadhli Lukman
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2022
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0289
This book studies the political and institutional project of Al-Qur’an dan Terjemahnya, the official translation of the Qurʾān into Indonesian by the Indonesian government. It investigates how the translation was produced and presented, and how it is read, as well as considering the implications of the state’s involvement in such a work.
September 2022
The Diaries of Anthony Hewitson, Provincial Journalist, Volume 1: 1865–1887
Editor: Andrew Hobbs
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2022
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0262
Anthony Hewitson was a typical Victorian journalist, working in one of the largest sectors of the periodical press, provincial newspapers. His diaries, written between 1862 and 1912, lift the veil of anonymity hiding the people, processes and networks involved in the creation of Victorian newspapers. Andrew Hobbs’s introduction and footnotes provide background and analysis of these valuable documents. This full scholarly edition offers a wealth of new information about reporting, freelancing, sub-editing, newspaper ownership and publishing, and illuminates aspects of Victorian periodicals and culture extending far beyond provincial newspapers.
An Outline of Romanticism in the West
Author: John Claiborne Isbell
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2022
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0302
Navigating the landscape of Romantic literature and art across Europe and the Americas, An Outline of Romanticism in the West invites readers to embark upon a literary journey. Showcasing a breadth of theoretical and contextual approaches to the study of Romanticism, John Isbell provides an insightful contemporary overview of the field, paired with wide-ranging comparative reflections on the art and literature that helped shape it.
August 2022
The Classical Parthenon: Recovering the Strangeness of the Ancient World
Author: William St Clair
Editor: Lucy Barnes
Editor: David St Clair
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2022
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0279
Complementing Who Saved the Parthenon? this companion volume sets aside more recent narratives surrounding the Athenian Acropolis, supposedly ‘the very symbol of democracy itself’, instead asking if we can truly access an ancient past imputed with modern meaning. And, if so, how?
Second Chance: My Life in Things
Author: Ruth Rosengarten
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2022
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0285
In this intimate memoir, Ruth Rosengarten explores the subject of evocative objects through a series of interconnected essays.
Sefer ha-Pardes by Jedaiah ha-Penini: A Critical Edition with English Translation
Author: David Torollo
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2022
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0299
This groundbreaking new work is the first full critical edition and English translation of the Hebrew book Sefer ha-Pardes [The Book of the Orchard], written at the end of the thirteenth century by the Provençal Jewish author Jedaiah ha-Penini.
July 2022
Reading the Juggler of Notre Dame: Medieval Miracles and Modern Remakings
Author: Jan M. Ziolkowski
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2022
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0284
In this two-part anthology, Jan M. Ziolkowski builds on themes uncovered in his earlier The Juggler of Notre Dame and the Medievalizing of Modernity. Here he focuses particularly on the performing arts.
A Complete Guide to Maggot Therapy: Clinical Practice, Therapeutic Principles, Production, Distribution, and Ethics
Editor: Frank Stadler
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2022
https://doi.org/10.11647/obp.0300
Since the revival of maggot therapy in Western wound care approximately thirty years ago, there has been no comprehensive synthesis of what is known about its clinical practice, supply chain management, and social dimensions. This edited volume fills the information vacuum and, importantly, makes the current state of knowledge freely accessible. It is the first to provide sound, evidence-based information and guidance covering the entire supply chain from production to treatment.
The Power of Music: An Exploration of the Evidence
Author: Susan Hallam
Author: Evangelos Himonides
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2022
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0292
Building on her earlier work, ‘The Power of Music: A Research Synthesis of the Impact of Actively Making Music on the Intellectual, Social and Personal Development of Children and Young People’, this volume by Susan Hallam and Evangelos Himonides is an important new resource in the field of music education, practice, and psychology.
June 2022
Neo-Aramaic and Kurdish Folklore from Northern Iraq: A Comparative Anthology with a Sample of Glossed Texts, Volume 1
Author: Geoffrey Khan
Author: Dorota Molin
Author: Masoud Mohammadirad
Author: Paul M. Noorlander
Contributions by: Lourd Habeeb Hanna
Contributions by: Aziz Emmanuel Eliya Al-Zebari
Contributions by: Salim Abraham
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2022
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0306
This comparative anthology showcases the rich and mutually intertwined folklore of three ethno-religious communities from northern Iraq: Aramaic-speaking (‘Syriac’) Christians, Kurdish Muslims and—to a lesser extent—Aramaic-speaking Jews.
Neo-Aramaic and Kurdish Folklore from Northern Iraq: A Comparative Anthology with a Sample of Glossed Texts, Volume 2
Author: Geoffrey Khan
Author: Paul M. Noorlander
Author: Masoud Mohammadirad
Author: Dorota Molin
Contributions by: Lourd Habeeb Hanna
Contributions by: Aziz Emmanuel Eliya Al-Zebari
Contributions by: Salim Abraham
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2022
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0307
This comparative anthology showcases the rich and mutually intertwined folklore of three ethno-religious communities from northern Iraq: Aramaic-speaking (‘Syriac’) Christians, Kurdish Muslims and—to a lesser extent—Aramaic-speaking Jews.
The Merger Mystery: Why Spend Ever More on Mergers When So Many Fail?
Author: Geoff Meeks
Author: J. Gay Meeks
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2022
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0309
Drawing on findings from a wealth of statistical analyses and case evidence from many businesses, the book presents answers to this merger mystery. In a synthesis of ideas from several disciplines, solutions are detected in misaligned incentives, distorted financial engineering and information asymmetry. By revealing how weaknesses at multiple points can interact and cumulate to produce inefficient outcomes, the discussion serves as a corrective to the overwhelmingly positive tone of most commentary on M&A, whilst also advocating changes in participants’ contracts, in taxation, and in regulation which could significantly reduce the number of mergers that fail.
May 2022
Performing Deception: Learning, Skill and the Art of Conjuring
Author: Brian Rappert
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2022
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0295
In Performing Deception, Brian Rappert reconstructs the practice of entertainment magic by analysing it through the lens of perception, deception and learning, as he goes about studying conjuring himself.
Who Saved the Parthenon?: A New History of the Acropolis Before, During and After the Greek Revolution
Author: William St Clair
Editor: David St Clair
Editor: Lucy Barnes
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2022
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0136
In this magisterial book, William St Clair unfolds the history of the Parthenon throughout the modern era to the present day, with special emphasis on the period before, during, and after the Greek War of Independence of 1821–32.
April 2022
The Voice of the Century: The Culture of Italian Bel Canto in Luisa Tetrazzini’s Recorded Interpretations
Author: Massimo Zicari
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2022
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0277
This innovative work considers the notion of bel canto and the manner in which this vibrant tradition lives in the records of Luisa Tetrazzini (1871-1940), one of the most celebrated sopranos ever. Tetrazzini, whose discographic career includes about 120 recordings, belongs to that generation of inspirational performers who heralded the dawn of a new era of music appreciation, alongside such iconic figures as Enrico Caruso, Adelina Patti and Nellie Melba.
A Philosophy of Cover Songs
Author: P.D. Magnus
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2022
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0293
In A Philosophy of Cover Songs, P.D. Magnus demonstrates that philosophy provides a valuable toolbox for thinking about covers; in turn, the philosophy of cover songs illustrates some general points about philosophical method.
A Common Good Approach to Development: Collective Dynamics of Development Processes
Editor: Mathias Nebel
Editor: Oscar Garza-Vázquez
Editor: Clemens Sedmak
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2022
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0290
This edited collection proposes a common good approach to development theory and practice.
Ecocene Politics
Author: Mihnea Tănăsescu
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2022
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0274
Anchored in the diverse ecological practices of communities in southern Italy and Aotearoa/New Zealand, this book devises a unique and considered theoretical response to the shortcomings of global politics in the Ecocene—a new temporal epoch characterised by the increasingly frequent intrusion of ecological processes into political life.
March 2022
A Short History of Transport in Japan from Ancient Times to the Present
Author: John Andrew Black
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2022
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0281
A Short History of Transport in Japan from Ancient Times to the Present is a unique study: the first by a Western scholar to place the long-term development of Japanese infrastructure alongside an analysis of its evolving political economy.
February 2022
William Sharp and “Fiona Macleod”: A Life
Author: William F. Halloran
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2022
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0276
Drawing extensively on his letters, his wife Elizabeth Sharp’s Memoir, and accounts by friends and associates, this biography provides a lucid and intimate account of William Sharp’s life, from his rejection of the dour religion of his Scottish boyhood, his turn to spiritualism, to his role in the Scottish Celtic Revival in the mid-nineties.
The Form of Ideology and the Ideology of Form: Cold War, Decolonization and Third World Print Cultures
Editor: Francesca Orsini
Editor: Neelam Srivastava
Editor: Laetitia Zecchini
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2022
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0254
This timely volume focuses on the period of decolonization and the Cold War as the backdrop to the emergence of new and diverse literary aesthetics that accompanied anti-imperialist commitments and Afro-Asian solidarity. Competing internationalist frameworks produced a flurry of writings that made Asian, African and other world literatures visible to each other for the first time. The book’s essays examine a host of print culture formats (magazines, newspapers, manifestos, conference proceedings, ephemera, etc.) and modes of cultural mediation and transnational exchange that enabled the construction of a variously inflected Third-World culture which played a determining role throughout the Cold War.
Learning, Marginalization, and Improving the Quality of Education in Low-income Countries
Editor: Daniel A. Wagner
Editor: Nathan M. Castillo
Editor: Suzanne Grant Lewis
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2022
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0256
Improving learning evidence and outcomes for those most in need in developing countries is at the heart of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal on Education (SDG4). This timely volume brings together contributions on current empirical research and analysis of emerging trends that focus on improving the quality of education through better policy and practice, particularly for those who need improved ‘learning at the bottom of the pyramid’ (LBOP).
The Neo-Aramaic Oral Heritage of the Jews of Zakho
Author: Oz Aloni
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2022
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0272
Aloni focuses on three genres of the Zakho community’s oral heritage: the proverb, the enriched biblical narrative and the folktale.
Replanteando la acción social por la música: la búsqueda de la convivencia y la ciudadanía en la Red de Escuelas de Música de Medellín
Author: Geoffrey Baker
Translator: Claudia García
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2022
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0263
Este libro pionero examina el desarrollo de La Red de Escuelas de Música de Medellín, una red de 27 escuelas fundada en 1996 en la segunda ciudad principal de Colombia como respuesta a su reputación como la ciudad más peligrosa en la Tierra. Inspirada en El Sistema, el programa venezolano fundacional de educación musical, La Red es, no obstante, notablemente diferente: su historia es una de múltiples reinvenciones y de una búsqueda continua para mejorar su oferta educativa y alcanzar mejor sus objetivos sociales. Sus reflexiones internas e intentos de transformación arrojan luz valiosa sobre el pasado, el presente y el futuro de ASPM.
January 2022
Democratising Participatory Research: Pathways to Social Justice from the South
Author: Carmen Martinez-Vargas
Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2022
https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0273
In this book Carmen Martinez-Vargas explores how academic participatory research and the way it is carried out can contribute to more, or less, social justice. Adopting theoretical and empirical approaches, and addressing multiple complex, intersectional issues, this book offers inspiration for scholars and practitioners to open up alternative pathways to social justice, viewed through a Global South lens.