Book shelf

Book shelf

Explore a selection of publications by alumni and academics, and books with a link to the University or Cambridge

To have your book considered for inclusion, please submit your publication's details

Please note: to have your book considered for inclusion, its publication date must be either upcoming or it must have been published during the last 12 months. Unfortunately, we cannot include any details of books published prior to this time.

CAMCard discounts

Get up to 20% off when you use your CAMCard in selected book shops!

front cover

The Glass Weaver's Tale and Other Stories

Guy Riddihough (King's 1984)

Science is at the core of most good science fiction. So it is with the seven stories in The Glass Weaver’s Tale And Other Stories. In 'The Patter of Tiny Feet', the consequences of the effects of continued human population growth are explored, to their ultimate limit. 'Needle and Groove' considers the power to change the past and whether and how such a genie could ever be put back into its bottle. A society trapped within the confines of a tiny microcosm is explored through the relationship of two brothers in 'The Boy Who Built A Rocket Ship'.

front cover

An Admirable Point: A Brief History of the Exclamation Mark!

Florence Hazrat (Lucy Cavendish 2008)

Love it or hate it, the exclamation mark has been with us from Beowulf to the spam email - an enthusiastic history for language lovers! Few punctuation marks elicit quite as much love or hate as the exclamation mark. It's bubbly and exuberant, an emotional amplifier whose flamboyantly dramatic gesture lets the reader know: here be feelings! Scott Fitzgerald famously stated exclamation marks are like laughing at your own joke; Terry Pratchett had a character say that multiple !!! are a 'sure sign of a diseased mind'. So what's the deal with ! ?

front cover

Breaking the Cycle of Women’s Paid Domestic Work in Brazil: A Study of Mothers and Daughters

Anna Maria Del Fiorentino (Murray Edwards 2019)

Widening access to higher education has been a political issue in Brazil for a long time, but only in the early 2000s was the education system changed radically. Affirmative action policies were combined with the expansion of the network of federal universities and new funding programmes for higher education. This created a generation of people who are the first within their families to go to university.

front cover

Deathday

Colin Philpott (Trinity 1976)

'Deathday' is a piece of speculative fiction set in 2045 England, a country where euthanasia is not just legal but compulsory. Severe economic depression in the wake of the Pandemic and Brexit, a collapse in the care system and inter-generational conflict had changed attitudes to death and old age. Ten years earlier, a right-wing Government, supported by the shadowy League of Youth, had won a majority in Parliament for the mandatory termination of life at the age of ninety.

front cover

A Child of Two Nations

Ian Stockton (Selwyn 1969)

This evocative memoir recaptures with almost photographic recall the now-distant world of a 1950s childhood. Set largely in industrial North Staffordshire, it tells of a boy's first eleven years of life. Born to an Ayrshire mother and an English Gordon Highlander, he knows that he belongs to both nations. It is a captivating study of memory, identity, and belonging. The author's wonderfully detailed recollections of childhood are confirmed and supplemented by documentary evidence.

front cover

Quantum Electrodynamics - annotated sources (Vols. I & II)

Trevor G. Underwood (Clare 1962)

This is not a sourcebook in the conventional sense. It is a working document that brings together annotated extracts from 107 primary sources, or translations of them, of the development of quantum electrodynamics, so that it is easier for a researcher to deal with the large volume of material. Links to internet copies of the primary documents or alternative sources are provided where available to enable these to be consulted. A summary is provided at the head of each paper and in the Contents.

front cover

Argentum: The Adventures of a Silver Piece at Great Moments in History

James Leslie-Melville (Trinity 1979)

3000 BCE, east Mediterranean. A slave digs a silver nugget out of the ground at an Anatolian mine, launching it on a journey through the ages to the present day. Criss-crossing the globe, travelling into space and plunging to the seabed, it features in the stories of numerous well-known historical figures, including Alexander the Great, Judas Iscariot, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Ferdinand Magellan and Adolf Hitler, to name just a few.

front cover

The Spiral Gospel: Intratextuality in Luke's Narrative

Rob James (Corpus Christi 2002)

How did the author of the Gospel of Luke intend it to be read? In The Spiral Gospel, Rob James shows that the assumptions many modern readers bring to the text – that it claims to be historically factual, or merely regurgitates existing stories – are not those of antiquity. Building on the central insight that it was written for a community who would have used it as their pre-eminent text, James argues convincingly for a continuous, cyclical reading of Luke’s narrative.

front cover

Unearthing the Underworld – A Natural History of Rocks

Ken McNamara (Emeritus Fellow, Downing College)

People have had a long and often fraught relationship with rocks. They have been used and abused – blown up, dug up and turned into homes and places of worship for thousands of years. Yet these days most people simply ignore them, that is unless they make a home in your shoe. Unearthing the Underworld is a history of the Earth as told through rocks – keepers of secrets of past environments, of changing climates and the pulse of life over billions of years.

front cover

Forbidden Wife The Life and Trials of Lady Augusta Murray

Julia Abel Smith (Selwyn 1978)

On the night of 4 April 1793, two lovers were planning a secret ceremony in Rome. The wedding of the son of King George III to the daughter of the Earl of Dunmore would not only be concealed, it would also be illegal. Lady Augusta Murray had known Prince Augustus Frederick, later the Duke of Sussex, for only three months but they had fallen deeply in love and were desperate to be married. However, the Royal Marriage Act forbade such a union without the King's permission and Augusta's life was changed forever.

front cover

The Salt Is The Schedule

Alea D. Reeves (Hughes Hall 2018)

Did you know that salt was used as a currency to pay Roman soldiers, the Don Juan Pond is so salty that it does not freeze, and the word 'salt' is derived from “salarium” meaning salary? Where would the world be without salt? Too little salt or too much will cause imbalance. Salt is all around and used in many different ways. Salt plays a crucial role in many things such as the body, food, and on roads. Just as salt is crucial and necessary so is a schedule.

front cover

Guide to the Mental Health of Children and Young People: Q and A for Parents, Caregivers and Teachers

Dr Meinou Simmons (Girton 1999)

Supporting the mental health and well-being of children and young people is a top priority for parents, caregivers, and teachers, but it can be tricky to find reliable and evidence-based information. Written by an experienced child and adolescent psychiatrist, in a user-friendly question and answer format, this book outlines the mental health challenges facing our children and young people and offers practical advice on how to best support them.

front cover

Time and Power in Azraq Refugee Camp: A Nine-to-Five Emergency

Melissa Gatter (Magdalene 2015)

Azraq refugee camp, built in 2014 and host to forty thousand refugees, is one of two official humanitarian refugee camps for Syrian refugees in Jordan. Time and Power in Azraq Refugee Camp investigates the relationship between time and power in Azraq, asking how a politics of time shapes, limits, or enables everyday life for the displaced and for aid workers. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, carried out during 2017-2018, the book challenges the perceptions of Azraq as the 'ideal' refugee camp.

front cover

Safety Razor

Emily Osborne (Trinity 2007)

Safety Razor combines personal lyrics with translations from Old Norse skaldic verse, its taut poems running like high wires between the poles of terror and joy, danger and safety, erudition and naivety. Mingling subjects as diverse as dinosaur bones and diacritical markers, Vikings and mothering, Safety Razor pits cultural and historical flotsam against the intimate and the academic.

front cover

Landscape: A common place

Rosamunde Codling (Trinity Hall 1978)

This book brings together a varied collection of material relating to projects on which I have worked as a landscape architect and planner, from a single field in East Anglia to a whole continent. I argue that landscape belongs – is “common” – to us all. Landscapes are for living in, and many of their components meet our material needs. But there is more – landscapes are part of our lives, places where values and emotions co-exist, giving us a different form of sustenance not met by other means.

front cover

Cracking the Nazi Code

Jason Bell (Robinson 2008)

The thrilling true story of Agent A12, the earliest enemy of the Nazis. In public life, Cambridge alumnus Dr Winthrop Bell of Halifax was a Harvard philosophy professor and wealthy businessman. As MI6 secret agent A12, he evaded gunfire and shook off pursuers to break open the emerging Nazi conspiracy in 1919 Berlin. His reports, the first warning of the Nazi plot for WWII, went directly to the man known as C, the mysterious founder of MI6, and to prime ministers. But a powerful fascist politician quietly worked to suppress his alerts.

front cover

Empire First: Churchill's War Against D-Day

Graeme Bowman (King's 1985)

Did Churchill try to sabotage Overlord? Did the ‘Greatest Ever Briton’ champion a ‘Brexit’ military strategy which prioritised British oil and Empire interests in the Mediterranean over the need to liberate western Europe from fascism? Read Empire First and decide. Conventional WWII histories begin in 1933 or 1939 and offer a limited understanding of the conflict but Empire First begins in 1874-75 (Churchill’s birth and Disraeli’s acquisition of Suez Canal shares) to show how Suez dominated British thinking for six decades prior to 1939 and shaped the PM’s wartime priorities.

front cover

Il CERN, che avventura!

Letizia Diamante (Murray Edwards 2009)

This is the Italian version of the only game-book (similar to a "choose-your-own-adventure book") set at CERN, which was published in English as Your adventures at CERN by World Scientific Publisher. It will be translated in other languages in the future. As soon as you open this book, YOU become the main character! You will be catapulted to CERN, one of the most famous laboratories in the world ― a real scientific wonderland of underground tunnels, massive experiments and technological marvels.

front cover

Student Life in Nineteenth-Century Cambridge: John Wright's Alma Mater

Christopher Stray (Sidney Sussex 1968)

This autobiographical memoir, by a man who was at Trinity 1813-19, was originally published in 1827 as Seven years at the University of Cambridge but never reprinted. It gives fascinating details about student life, including examinations, misbehaviour in chapel, teaching, riotous and sexual misconduct, sport and hunting. The author was a successful student, but due to a series of misadventures graduated with a pass degree, and failed to gain a college fellowship.

front cover

Leadership - A Life of Diplomacy

Lord Simon McDonald (Pembroke 1979)

When Abraham Lincoln said, 'You can be anything you want to be,' Americans, and eventually everybody everywhere, lifted their sights. Nowadays anybody can aspire to be a leader, and nearly everybody has to lead sometimes. In his first book, Simon McDonald assumes that thinking about leadership before you lead helps you to lead better.

Pages

Want to see your book here?

Submit your book's details for consideration using our webform.

Submit your book