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(Alphabetical by author's last name) 

KWAME ANTHONY APPIAH
(Clare)

[new!] The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen ($25.95, W.W. Norton, September 2010). A New York Times Notable Book of 2010.

"Rooting his analysis firmly in historical manifestations of honor, Appiah, a professor of philosophy at Princeton, offers four case studies in what he calls moral revolutions, attesting to how altering notions of honor can provoke positive changes in social behavior. Codes of honor surrounding dueling, Chinese foot binding, the Atlantic slave trade, and the ongoing practice of honor killing in contemporary Pakistan are all examined to reveal the various dimensions of honor as it relates to notions of respect, shame, and dignity...a compelling read...represents a refreshingly concrete solution to the question of how to alter deeply objectionable, deeply intractable human practices." - Publishers Weekly

"The word cosmopolitan applies to Mr. Appiah as fully as to any serious thinker alive." - The New York Times

Click here to view video of Kwame Anthony Appiah on the C-Span Video Library.

TASH AW
(Jesus)

[new!] Map of the Invisible World ($15, Spiegel & Grau, December 2010). The author studied law at Cambridge and earned a master's degree in 1996.

"This exquisite and haunting second novel from Aw (The Harmony Silk Factory) follows a vibrant cast searching for a sense of home during the political upheaval of 1960s Indonesia.... Well-paced and gorgeously written, this epic story of loss and identity mirrors the struggles of the young Indonesia in which it takes place." - Publishers Weekly

"With moving settings and memorable characters, this atmospheric and complicated tale of a rediscovered past and recovered family will engage readers interested in distant lands and timeless tales of bonds of blood and place." - Booklist

Listen to an interview with Tash Aw on NPR (5:46).

[new!] It’s Not That I’m Bitter…or How I Learned to Stop Worrying About Visible Panty Lines and Conquered the World ($14.99, St. Martin’s Press, paperback, June 2010)

Essays by a professor of English and feminist theory at the University of Connecticut, who earned a B.A. and M.A. at New Hall, Cambridge. 

“Between the snappy observations, Barreca takes an opportunity to liken the progression of contemporary feminist thought to a car accident—it's not so much that we're in a backlash as we're in a whiplash.” – Publishers Weekly

While some may debate whether Barreca’s collection of short essays are painfully funny or humorously painful, many will agree these eminently readable pieces will have people laughing out loud, then sighing thoughtfully.... Many readers, especially women, will enjoy, discuss, and reread this quick, breezy work of commentary, a book that stirs up dust long after its covers are closed.” – Booklist

MIKE BENTLEY

HAROLD BLOOM
(Pembroke 1954)

[new!]  The Shadow of a Great Rock: A Literary Appreciation of the King James Bible ($28, Yale Univ. Press, September 2011). The esteemed Yale literary critic assesses how this canonical work stands up after 400 years.

"Bloom’s erudite mix of acerbic judgments and awed delight offers readers a fresh take on an old book."—Publishers Weekly.

[new!] The Anatomy of Influence: Literature as a Way of Life ($32.50, Yale University Press, May 2011).

From the longtime Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale, extended analyses of Bloom's most cherished poets—Shakespeare, Whitman, and Crane—as well as appreciations of Emerson, Tennyson, Browning, Yeats, Ashbery, and others.

“America’s giant of a literary critic... Bloom pulls off a masterly connecting of the dots through the literary canon and his own life with his usual breathtaking eloquence.”—Publishers Weekly

“An autumnal summing-up, winding through ‘the labyrinth of literary influence’ to conclude, ‘[t]hat labyrinth is life itself.’ ”
—Kirkus Reviews

Click here to listen to an interview with Harold Bloom on the NYT Video Library.

TODD BUCHHOLZ
(St. John's)

Click here to view video of Todd Buccholz on the C-Span Video Library.

D. GRAHAM BURNETT
(Trinity)

[new!]   The Sounding of the Whale: Science and Cetaceans in the 20th Century ($45, Univ. of Chicago Press, January 2012).

“[A] sweeping, important study of cetacean science and policy….[Burnett] spent a decade poring over thousands upon thousands of pages scattered in far-flung archives….[He has] given his heart and soul to the troubling story of whalekind’s worst century.” – Sunday New York Times Book Review.

“Burnett takes the reader on some wonderfully strange detours….Readers should be glad that he has made the effort.” – Financial Times.

HA-JOON CHANG
(Economics)

Click here to watch a video of Ha-Joon Chang on C-Span.

RON CHERNOW
(Pembroke 1970)

[new!] Washington: A Life ($40, The Penguin Press, October 2010).  The author earned a master’s degree at Cambridge, and is the National Book Award-winning biographer of John D. Rockefeller and Alexander Hamilton.   A New York Times Notable Book of 2010.

“Today, books about Washington continue to appear at such an astonishing rate that the publication of Ron Chernow’s prompts the inevitable question: Why another one? An obvious answer is that Chernow is no ordinary writer…his Washington while long, is vivid and well paced…his understanding of psychology is acute and his portraits of individuals memorable.  Most readers will finish this book feeling as if they have actually spent time with human beings.” – The Sunday New York Times Book Review

"[T]he best, most comprehensive, and most balanced single-volume biography of Washington ever written.... [N]o one has ever put together between two covers such a convincing depiction of the great man...." - Gordon Wood in The New York Review of Books

Winner of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Biography   

Click here to watch part 1 of an interview with Ron Chernow on C-Span.

Click here to watch part 2 of an interview with Ron Chernow on C-Span.

BRIAN CLEGG
(Selwyn)

[new!] How to Build a Time Machine: The Real Science of Time Travel ($25.99, St. Martin’s Press, December 2011).

“With an eye to making science interesting and understandable, Clegg continues to craft accessible works out of difficult topics, in this case the nature of time….An engaging read….” – Library Journal.

RICHARD COHEN
(Magdalene 1965)

[new!] Chasing the Sun: The Epic Story of the Star That Gives Us Life ($35, Random House, November 2010)

“[An] information-packed miscellany on solar worship and solar studies, studded with evocative illustrations throughout.... With its pages as likely to turn from sunspots to sunlight’s play in famous paintings, Cohen’s medley will surprise and delight his readers, who will absorb humanity’s evolving view of the sky’s blazing orb, from deity to fusion-powered furnace.” – Booklist

[new!] That’s Offensive! Criticism, Identity, Respect  ($14.95, Seagull Press, February 2011). Part of a series addressing issues of censorship, “Manifestos for the 21st Century.”   The author is Professor of Intellectual History and English Literature at Cambridge and a Fellow of Clare Hall.

“A good antidote to both clash-of-civilizationalists and identity-politicians.” – Inside Higher Ed

Click here to watch a video of Stefani Collini on the Cambridge in America Day video page.

DAVID K.C. COOPER
(Magdalene)

[new!] Open Heart: The Radical Surgeons Who Revolutionized Medicine ($26.99, Kaplan Publishing, August 2010). The author is a heart surgeon and professor at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

"In this well-researched history of heart transplants, surgeon Cooper shares his interviews with more than 60 sources, including his former colleague, Christiaan Bernard, who performed the first human heart transplant...a fascinating account of the colorful men who pioneered what is now a common surgical procedure." - Booklist

ROGER CROWLEY
(Emmanuel)

CHARLES CUMMING

[new!] The Trinity Six ($24.99, St. Martin's, March 2011). Fictional thriller based on the "Cambridge Five."

"Cumming's novel focuses on the belated search for a sixth traitor.... Cumming writes smart, seductive prose, and he's gifted at revealing the subtleties of personality. Scene after scene crackles with excitement, tension and suspense. The novel's ingenious plot is almost as complicated as real life, but as one astonishing revelation follows another, the book is all but impossible to put aside. Finally, as a bonus for readers who have forgotten the story of the Cambridge Five, or never knew it, the novel is a welcome reminder of the greatest spy scandal of the 20th century." - The Washington Post

"Cumming's knowledge of the spy business, his well-crafted prose, and his intensely engaging plot make this a breakthrough novel." - Publishers Weekly

WILLIAM DALRYMPLE
(Trinity)

[new!] Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India ($26.95, Knopf, June 2010)

"Dalrymple interviews nine very different individuals, four of them women, and sets their live stories in social and political context.... He elicits from his subjects long, often intimate histories, recorded in their own words.... The narratives Dalrymple unearths are fascinating and sometimes painfully moving, and he surrounds them with generous knowledge.  This is the India we seldom see, populated by obscure people whose lives are made vivid by their eloquent troubles and reckless piety." - Sunday New York Times Book Review 

LOUISE DEAN
(Downing)

[new!] The Old Romantic ($25.95, Riverhead Books, February 2011)

"Poignant and funny.... Ms. Dean writes sentences that are muscular in their support of the larger story and beautiful in their own right." -The New York Times

"The Old Romantic is not so much concerned with plot as with the complexity of relationships-the difficulties of fidelity, the selectivity of memory, the love of family, no matter how deeply flawed its members. Dean mercilessly sends up the working class to hilarious effect even as she compassionately reveals, in fresh and vivid language, the primal desire to return home." -Booklist

"Dean, with her superb ear for language and class nuance, gives readers the essence of contemporary British life in this touching and funny family portrait." -Publishers Weekly 

“[B]racingly acerbic….a highly entertaining, vivid evocation of love and marriage in its various forms….Dean’s characters have the rough edges and surprising grace of real people, and her fierce humanism animates every page. There continue to be funny and unexpected turns right to the end….” – The Sunday New York Times Book Review

DAVID DEUTSCH
(Clare)

EDMOND DE WAAL
(Trinity Hall)

[new!] The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Family’s Century of Art and Loss  ($26, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, August 2010)

A Financial Times “non-fiction favourite of 2010."  In this family history, de Waal, a potter and curator of ceramics at the Victoria & Albert Museum, describes the experiences of his family, the Ephrussis, during the turmoil of the 20th century.

"Rich in drama and valuable anecdote.´– Publishers Weekly

“Absorbing.... In this book about people who defined themselves by the objects they owned, de Waal demonstrates that human stories are more powerful than even the greatest works of art.” – The New Republic

EMMA DONOGHUE
(Girton)

[new!] Room: A Novel ($24.99, Little, Brown, September 2010). Shortlisted for the 2010 Man Booker Prize.  The author earned her Cambridge PhD in 1997. A New York Times Notable Book of 2010.

"Talented, versatile Donoghue relates a searing tale of survival and recovery, in the voice of a five-year-old boy.... Donoghue brilliantly shows mother and son grappling with very different issues as they adjust to freedom.... In the story's most heartbreaking moments, it seems that Ma may be unable to live with the choices she made to protect Jack. But his narration reveals that she's nurtured a smart, perceptive and willful boy--odd, for sure, but resilient, and surely Ma can find that resilience in herself.... Wrenching, as befits the grim subject matter, but also tender, touching and at times unexpectedly funny." – Kirkus Reviews

"Powerful.... Seen entirely through Jack's eyes and childlike perceptions, the developments in this novel–there are enough plot twists to provide a dramatic arc of breathtaking suspense–are astonishing.... Donoghue brilliantly portrays the psyche of a child raised in captivity...will keep readers rapt." – Publishers Weekly

A Financial Times “Book of the Year / Fiction” of 2010. 

JENNIFER EGAN
(St. John's)

[new!] A Visit from the Goon Squad ($25.95, Knopf, June 2010). A New York Times Notable Book of 2010.

"Readers will be pleased to discover that the star-crossed marriage of lucid prose and expertly deployed postmodern switcheroos that helped shoot Egan to the top of the genre-bending new school is alive in well in this graceful yet wild novel." - Publishers Weekly

 "Clever. Edgy. Groundbreaking.... For all of its cool, languid, arched-eyebrow sophistication...the novel is actually a sturdy, robust, old-fashioned affair. It features characters about whom you come to care deeply as you watch them doing things they shouldn't, acting gloriously, infuriatingly human." - Chicago Tribune

"In her audacious, extraordinary fourth novel, A Visit from the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan uses the pop-music business as a prism to examine the heedless pace of modern life, generational impasses, and the awful gravity of age and entropy.... A Visit from the Goon Squad is fascinating for its daring scope and fractured narrative, but along the way, Egan crafts some brilliant scenes.... A rich and rewarding novel." - Philadelphia Inquirer 

Winner of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction   

Click here to view video of Jennifer Egan on wnyc.org

BRUCE FEILER
(Clare)

ERIC FONER
(King’s; Pitt Professor)

[new!] The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery ($29.95, W.W. Norton, October 2010).   The author is De Witt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia, and was visiting Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions at Cambridge in 1980-1981. A New York Times Notable Book of 2010.

“Do we need another book on Lincoln?.... Well, yes, we do – if the book is by so richly informed a commentator as Eric Foner...the most thorough and judicious account of Lincoln’s attitudes toward slavery that we have to date.... More cogently than any previous historian, Foner examines the political events that shaped Lincoln and ultimately brought out his true greatness.” – The Sunday New York Times Book Review

“[A] probing assessment.... Lincoln is no paragon in Foner's searching portrait, but something more essential--a politician with an open mind and a restless conscience.” – Publishers Weekly

Winner of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for History  

[new!] My Father’s Fortune: A Life ($25, Metropolitan Books, February 2011).  Memoir by the novelist (Spies) and playwright (Noises Off!, Copenhagen)

“A sprightly, warmhearted memoir of his dapper salesman father….Michael Frayn was not destined to be the brilliant cricketer and wit that his father envisioned….he became enamored with music and poetry, eventually attending Cambridge and becoming a journalist. Here is a son's proud, gently poking tribute to the remarkable qualities of an ordinary man, if only on the outside.” – Publishers Weekly.

“Frayn…writes with poignancy and wit about a humble, hardworking man.” – Booklist.

Click here to listen to an interview with Michael Frayn on NPR

[new!] The Fry Chronicles ($29.95, Penguin, January 2012).

 “With his trademark dry wit, Fry recounts his Cambridge years and those leading up to his 30th birthday in this genuinely touching and often hilarious second autobiographical installment ….Fry is cheeky and thoughtful in equal measures, making this a must for his legion of fans.” – Publishers Weekly

Click here to view video of Stephen Fry on CBS This Morning.

HENRY LOUIS GATES, JR.
(Clare College)

[new!] Faces of America: How 12 Extraordinary People Discovered Their Pasts ($26.95, NYU Press, July 2010). The author, a Harvard professor, was a Mellon Scholar at Clare College and the first African-American to earn a Cambridge PhD.

"Based on the PBS series [available on DVD] of the same name hosted by the author, the book is a deceptively breezy read that contains profound revelations on race, on biology vs. social constructs, and how ancestry can subtly (or resoundingly) manifest itself.... Gates offers a book stuffed with epiphanies that will spark curiosity among readers about their own ancestry as well as their possible connections to each other." - Publishers Weekly

"Gates's book supports the idea that the United States is a nation built from the contributions of immigrants. The family histories here provide an inspiring and engaging read for genealogy buffs, students of American history, and fans of Gates's previous work." - Library Journal 

Click here to view video of Henry Louis Gates, Jr. on the C-Span Video Library

MARTIN GAYFORD
(Corpus Christi)

[new!] Man with a Blue Scarf: On Sitting for a Portrait by Lucien Freud ($40, Thames & Hudson, October 2010)

A Financial Times “non-fiction favourite of 2010.”  The author, European art critic for Bloomberg News, sat for Freud for seven months.

“...[N]o matter how fascinating its revelations of the artist’s working life and his pungent views on painting, what carries the narrative is this dialogue between the two, in which Freud is vividly surprising, potent and dynamic, while Gayford is steadily attentive and respectful....” – The Observer

"...Mr Gayford’s writing has an authority and clarity that matches the nature of this subject – this is a portrait of the artist in words, full of observation about how he looks, sounds, thinks and moves...” – Country Life

JOHN GIMLETTE (Jesus)

[new!] Wild Coast: Travels on South America’s Untamed Edge ($28.95, Knopf, June 2011). The author, a London barrister and travel writer, visited Guyana, French Guiana, and Suriname for several months in 2008. 

“[A] spirited historical, political and personal travelogue guaranteed to arouse the adventurous traveler’s wanderlust….a gorgeously vivid depiction of one of the last untamed places on the planet.” — Sunday New York Times Book Review.

MARK GLICKMAN

[new!]  Sacred Treasure, the Cairo Genizah: The Amazing Discoveries of Forgotten Jewish History in an Egyptian Synagogue Attic ($24.95, Jewish Lights Publishing, October 2010)

Mark Glickman is rabbi of Congregation Kol Ami in Woodinville, WA and Kol Shalom on Bainbridge Island, WA, and religion columnist for the Seattle Times. His book tells how the largest treasure-trove of early and medieval manuscripts ever discovered made its way from Cairo to Cambridge, more than a century ago, and continues to enlighten and astound scholars today.

PETER GODWIN
(St. Catharine’s)

[new!]  The Fear: Robert Mugabe and the Martyrdom of Zimbabwe ($26.99, Little Brown, March 2011). 

“Godwin's skills as a journalist and his personal connection to Zimbabwe combine to create an astonishing piece of reportage marked by spare, stirring description, heartrending action, and smart analysis.” Publishers Weekly.

“An important work of witness.” – Booklist. 

"Peter Godwin's latest book is the most powerful indictment of Robert Mugabe's regime yet written, marking out the author as one of the sharpest observers of modern Africa." -- The Economist.

[new!] The Swerve: How the World Became Modern ($26.95, W.W.Norton, September 2011). Harvard Shakespeare scholar Greenblatt, author of the acclaimed Will in the World, tells how the discovery of an ancient text during the Italian Renaissance changed the course of Western thought.

“[A] gloriously learned page-turner, both biography and intellectual history.”-- Publishers Weekly.

“[An] affectionate portrait of a bibliophile and the poem he found.” – Financial Times.

“Mesmerizing intellectual history.” – Newsweek.

Winner of the 2011 National Book Award for Nonfiction

Click here to view video of Stephen Greenblatt on Charlie Rose.

STEPHEN HAWKING
(Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, Gonville & Caius; Trinity Hall)

STEPHEN HAWKING & LEONARD MLODINOW
[new!] The Grand Design ($28, Bantam, September 2010). Stephen Hawking was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge for thirty years, and has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors including, most recently, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Leonard Mlodinow is a physicist at Caltech.

"This is an amazingly concise, clear, and intriguing overview of where we stand when it comes to divining the secrets of the universe." - Publishers Weekly

"Hawking and Mlodinow's fascinating book, with its wonderful illustrations, takes us through the various supernatural and scientific cosmological theories that mankind has developed since earliest times to explain our universe.... Hawking and Mlodinow pack in a wealth of ideas and leave us with a clearer understanding of modern physics in all its invigorating complexity." - Los Angeles Times 

Click here to view video of Stephen Hawking on the C-Span Video Library.

SYLVIA ANN HEWLETT (Girton) AND RIPA RASHID  

[new!] Winning the War for Talent in Emerging Markets: Why Women are the Solution ($35, Harvard Business Review Press, August 2011). Girton alumna Hewlett is the founding president of the Center for Work-Life Policy and Rashid is its senior vice president.

ADINA HOFFMAN AND PETER COLE

[new!] Sacred Trash: The Lost and Found World of the Cairo Geniza ($26.95, Schocken, April 2011).  The authors, essayist Hoffman and MacArthur-winning poet and translator Cole, live in Jerusalem.  Much of the Genizah archive resides at the Cambridge University Library.

"Absorbing…an accessible, neatly narrated story of hallowed detritus and the resurrection of nearly 1,000 years of culture and learning."—Kirkus Reviews.

“[E]ngaging…The story told by ‘Sacred Trash’ is both lively and elevating….restores to life the mostly obscure and unnoticed scholars whose careers were touched by the geniza or who committed themselves to its study.” – The Sunday New York Times Book Review.

HOWARD JACOBSON
(Downing)

[new!] The Finkler Question (e-book: $26.70, Bloomsbury UK, August 2010). Winner of the 2010 Man Booker Prize. 

"Humour, insight and chutzpah pepper this fictional foray into what it means to be Jewish." - The Telegraph (UK)

"The Finkler Question balances precariously a bleak moralising with life-affirming humour."- The Independent (UK)

"The Finkler Question is full of wit, warmth, intelligence, human feeling and understanding. It is also beautifully written with that sophisticated and near invisible skill of the authentic writer. Technically the characterisation is impeccable, the prose a subtle delight, the word selection everywhere perfect, the phrase-making fresh and arresting without self-consciousness." - The Guardian (UK) 

A Financial Times “Book of the Year / Fiction” of 2010. 

MAYA JASANOFF
(King's)

Click here to view video of Maya Jasanoff on C-Span

PAM JENOFF
(Jesus)

TONY JUDT
(King's)

[new!] The Memory Chalet ($25.95, Penguin Press, November 2010).  Autobiographical essays, including several about the author's time at Cambridge as student and teacher. 

Tony Judt was educated at King's College, Cambridge and the École Normale Supérieure, Paris, and taught at Cambridge, Oxford, and Berkeley. He was the Erich Maria Remarque Professor of European Studies at New York University, and the Director of NYU's Remarque Institute, dedicated to the study of Europe, which he founded in 1995. The author or editor of fourteen books, Professor Judt was a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, The New Republic, The New York Times and many other journals. He died in August 2010 at the age of sixty-two. 

Click here to view video of Tony Judt on the C-Span Video Library

JAMES KLOPPENBERG
(Pitt Professor; Jesus)

[new!] Reading Obama: Dreams, Hope, and the American Political Tradition ($24.95, Princeton Univ. Press, October 2010)

The author, who is Charles Warren Professor of History at Harvard, was the visiting Pitt Professor at Cambridge in 2008-2009, and was named a Fellow Commoner at Jesus College.

Click here to read an article about his book in The New York Times, October 28, 2010.

ROBERT LACEY
(Selwyn)

[new!] Inside the Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists, and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia ($17, Penguin, October 2010). Sequel to the author's acclaimed The Kingdom (1981).

"Lacey's eye for sweeping trends and the telling detail combined with the depth, breadth and evenhandedness of his research makes for an indispensable guide." - Publishers Weekly 

Click here to view video of Robert Lacey on the C-Span Video Library

[new!] The Unfinished Global Revolution: The Pursuit of a New International Politics ($27.95, Penguin Press, February 2011). The author has served in top posts at the World Bank, the United Nations, and the UK government.

“Malloch-Brown has seen global institutions struggle with terrorism, poverty, financial crises, and environmental threats. Part autobiography and part political treatise, his book journeys through the recent past, relating the highs and lows of global governance….Malloch-Brown argues that as global challenges mount, states will find it harder to deliver security and welfare for their citizens and so the demand for international cooperation will grow.” – Foreign Affairs. 

TILAR MAZZEO
(Pembroke)

Click here to view a video of Tilar Mazzeo talking about The Secret of Chanel No. 5 to Cambridge alumni

MEHER McARTHUR
(Emmanuel)

CHINA MIÉVILLE
(Clare)

[new!] Embassytown ($26, DelRey/Ballantine Books, May 2011).

“The fashioning of intricately conceived parallel worlds plus the recombinant use of popular formulas equals a story-generating method that Miéville has employed to write eight novels….’Embassytown’ has the feel of a word-puzzle, and much of the pleasure of figuring out the logic of the world and the story comes from gradually catching the full resonance of its invented and imported words….a particularly deep-thinking entry in a tradition of using the speculative resources of science fiction to address how language shapes culture and society….with his usual confident ambition [the author] takes its monsters and spaceships deep into the zone of overlap between linguistics and politics…” – Sunday New York Times Book Review. 

[new!] Kraken ($26, Del Rey, June 2010)

“British fantasist Miéville mashes up cop drama, cults, popular culture, magic, and gods in a Lovecraftian New Weird caper...[a] dizzying whirl of outrageous details and fantastic characters.” – Publishers Weekly

“Miéville's fantasy is a rich literary work, full of wordplay and imagery that will appeal to literary-fiction fans as much as to fantasy readers.”—Booklist

“With his tale of a giant-squid corpse, Miéville, never predictable, lobs a grenade into the urban-fantasy genre, remaking it into wild comedy.... Miéville tears through the story with an almost manic energy.... Anyone who reads this is never going to think about natural-history museums — or aquariums — in the same way again.” – Entertainment Weekly

BENJAMIN MORRIS
(Clare Hall)

[new!] The Bella ($4.95, Kindle edition, Amazon Digital Services, 2011).

Novel set at the 2009 climate negotiations in Copenhagen.  The author, who earned his PhD in archaeology at Cambridge, lives in New Orleans.

[new!] Bandwidth ($14.95, Dog Ear Publishing, October 2010)

The novel’s author is a financial journalist (Bloomberg, International Herald Tribune) and former U.S State Department advisor and speechwriter for the Secretary of State and IBM executives.

THANT MYINT-U
(Trinity)

[new!] Where China Meets India: Burma and the New Crossroads of Asia ($27, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, September 2011). The author, who earned a Ph.D. at Cambridge in 1996, is the grandson of U.N. Secretary General U Thant.

SYLVIA NASAR

[new!] Grand Pursuit: The Story of Economic Genius ($35, Simon & Schuster, September 2011). The course of modern economic thought and debate over the past two hundred years, with many Cambridge protagonists, from Henry Fawcett and Alfred Marshall to Maynard Keynes and Amartya Sen.

“[T]he story of the evolution of a radical, planet-reshaping idea…The canvas is epic…The details are fresh, at times startling…At the same time, gnarly but critical concepts shine through in all their richness and complexity. If only Econ 101 had been this interesting!” – Fortune 

MARK NICHOLLS
(St. John's)

MARK NICHOLLS & S PENRY WILLIAMS

[new!] Sir Walter Raleigh in Life and Legend ($34.95, Continuum, March 2011).  Historian Mark Nicholls, President and Librarian of St. John’s College, Cambridge, co-authors a new biography that offers fresh insights about Raleigh – soldier, voyager, courtier, colonizer, politician, poet, historian, possible traitor.

“With this landmark book, Mark Nicholls and Penry Williams debunk the legends, giving us instead a story that is all the more engrossing for its sophistication.” – Sunday Times (London)

CLIVE OPPENHEIMER
(Geography; Sidney Sussex)

HELEN OYEYEMI
(Corpus Christi 2003)

Click here to view a video of Helen Oyeyemi talking at CAm Day NY 2011.

ALISON PARGETER
(Centre of International Studies; Pembroke)

[new!] The Muslim Brotherhood: The Burden of Tradition ($29.95, Saqi Books, December 2010)

"She has a sure grasp of the political dynamics of the Middle East, the soil from which the Brotherhood sprang. As her subtitle suggests, she regards it as an essentially reactionary movement unable to break with its past.... The portrait of the Brotherhood that emerges from her book is scarcely attractive.... The Islamists have become ‘part of the furniture', as Ms. Pargeter puts it; besides, there are few credible alternatives. It is better to talk to them, carefully and without illusions." - The Economist

[new!] Fame: What the Classics Tell Us About Our Cult of Celebrity ($16, Picador, October 2010)

“Payne (former deputy editor of the Daily Telegraph) offers an erudite and vastly entertaining look at how the Western cultural obsession with and ‘shared human responses’ to celebrity haven't really changed in the last few millennia.... A charming, contrarian, and very witty look at how our stargazing can be ‘something that bonds us, and which expresses something about how our civilization works.’ ”  - Publishers Weekly

ALLISON PEARSON
(Clare)

[new!] I Think I Love You ($24.95, Knopf, February 2011)

"Pearson's insights into friendship, celebrity worship from the inside out, and the knocks you take in life create a winning novel of hope, lost and found." - Publishers Weekly

"Pearson is at her best in capturing the way teenage girls use their romantic obsessions with celebrities to work out their fears about real relationships with the opposite sex." - Booklist 

“Ms. Pearson writes with such humor and affection for her characters that we’re perfectly happy to sit back and see how she steers her people toward that happy ending.” – Michiko Kakutani in The New York Times

NICHOLAS PHILLIPSON
(St. Catharine's)

[new!] Adam Smith: An Enlightened Life ($32.50, Yale Univ. Press, October 2010). A Financial Times "non-fiction favourite of 2010." The author, who teaches at Edinburgh, earned a BA and PhD at Cambridge.

"A fascinating book.... Adam Smith finally has the biography that he deserves, and it could not be more timely." - The Wall Street Journal

"Lively...well-observed.... It would take a ‘skillful pencil' to bring Smith to life, warned one of his friends. In bringing Smith's ideas to life, Phillipson shows that his pencilwork is skillful indeed. " - The Economist 

RACHEL POLONSKY
(Slavonic Studies; Emmanuel)

[new!] Molotov’s Magic Lantern: Travels in Russian History  ($28, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, January 2011). The author teaches Russian at Cambridge.

“British writer Polonsky moved to Moscow and took up residence in a once-opulent old building that had been a favorite of the Soviet elite, including the monstrous Vyacheslav Molotov, Stalin’s second in command. Invited into Molotov’s apartment, still owned by his granddaughter, Polonsky is morbidly fascinated by Molotov’s belongings, including a magic lantern and a stash of books from his formerly enormous library. And so begins Polonsky’s book-steered journey through modern Russian history.” – Booklist.

“Perceptive and erudite . . . the author has grit, charm and style—and a gift for traveller’s tales.” —The Economist

JIM POWELL
(Trinity Hall)

[new!] The Breaking of Eggs ($16, Penguin, July 2010).

“Powell's delightful debut novel is by turns winsome and moving. Feliks [Zhukovski] is an indelible character, and the people who enter his life tell remarkable stories of the suffering that fascism and communism visited on Europe. The Breaking of Eggs is a book that thoughtful readers won't soon forget." – Booklist

 "A magnificent debut novel...a haunting, quietly brilliant story...a rare and remarkable achievement: a novel that meshes storytelling potency with historical erudition." – The Boston Globe

V.S. RAMACHANDRAN
(Trinity)

[new!]  The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist's Quest for What Makes Us Human ($26.95, W.W. Norton, January 2011).  The author is director of the Center for Brain and Cognition and a professor with the Psychology Department and Neurosciences Program at the University of California, San Diego. He earned his PhD at Cambridge (Trinity College) in 1978.

"Ramachandran, a neurologist and scientist, skillfully walks the line between intriguing storytelling and detailed science in these readable tales of unusual patients. How he and others make sense of what's going on in these people's brains is a starting point for understanding normal brain function and its evolution. To him, drama lurks in the anatomy of each part of the brain...." - ScienceNews

Click here to view video of V.S. Ramachandran in the C-Span Video Library.

ANDREW ROBERTS
(Gonville & Caius) 

[new!]  The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War ($29.99, Harper, May 2011). 

“In what might be his best book yet, Roberts gives us the war as seen from the other side of the hill. He has the knack of making complex military operations comprehensible and salting the grand strategic sweep with vignettes of how it felt to be a soldier.” -- The Sunday Telegraph (UK).

“A magnificent book. . . .It manages to be distinctive but not eccentric, comprehensive in scope but not cramped by detail, giving due weight both to the extraordinary personalities and to the blind economic and physical forces involved.” -- The Economist.

“Roberts is a first-rate historian. He has a sharp eye for a good subject and a knack of getting to its heart. The Second World War, which cost more than 50 million lives, has a perennial fascination that Roberts conveys through an admirably lucid narrative.” -- The Sunday Times (UK)

Click here to view video of Andrew Roberts on the C-Span Video Library.

[new!]  The Inner Life of Empires: An Eighteenth-Century History ($35, Princeton Univ. Press, May 2011). The author teaches history at Harvard and is a Fellow of Magdalene College.

“[O]riginal and remarkable. . . the story of the Johnstones, 11 Scottish siblings whose lives spanned the entire 18th-century British Empire …Her tale often holds the mysteries of a fictional account. . . . While this is a scholarly work and the very model of the contemporary historian's craft, it's also deeply illuminating, humane, at times moving, and altogether captivating.” -- Publishers Weekly.

“[A]bsorbing….overflows with evidence--so finely detailed and from such scattered sources as to be scarcely imaginable before the development of digitized, searchable catalogues and archives.”-- The Economist.

CAROL FISHER SALLER
(Newnham) 

[new!] Eddie’s War ($9.95, namelos llc, August 2011). 

Young-adult fiction about a boy in small-town Illinois during World War II. 
The author is a senior manuscript editor at the University of Chicago Press and editor of the Chicago Manual of Style's online Q&A.

 A Kirkus Reviews Best Children's Book of 2011

DOMINIC SANDBROOK
(Jesus)

[new!] Mad as Hell: The Crisis of the 1970s and the Rise of the Populist Right ($36, Knopf, February 2011).  The author is a journalist, commentator, and critic who wrote his Cambridge PhD thesis on the political career of Senator Eugene McCarthy.

"A shrewd, sparkling politico-cultural history of post-Watergate America...[Sandford's] subtle, well-written narrative of wrathful little guys confronting a faltering establishment illuminates a crucial aspect of a time much like our own...." - Publishers Weekly

"Sandbrook lays out just how this discontent found its expression in the emergence of Ronald Reagan and the Republican Right...." - Booklist

"The author's frequent allusions to the era's films, TV shows, books and music lend color and context to an already penetrating and evenhanded political analysis." - Kirkus Reviews

Frisky and intelligent.... He's got a shrewd eye for detail.... As historians go, this man is a Hugh Grant-level charmer...." - The New York Times

SIMON SCHAMA
(Christ's 1963)

[new!] Scribble, Scribble, Scribble: Writing on Politics, Ice Cream, Churchill, and My Mother ($27.99, Ecco/HarperCollins Publishers, April 2011). A miscellany of essays by the Columbia University historian. 

“This robust, generous smorgasbord has pretty much something for every palate.” – The Sunday New York Times Book Review.

”Schama is essentially the reporter-pundit with a chair in history, illuminating the most contemporary of topics in the buttery glow of historical context….He approaches every subject with gusto and amusement and, like your favorite professor, always has smart things to say.” – Publishers Weekly.

“[C]ollections of essays don't come any better than this.” – Library Journal.

Click here to view video of Simon Schama in conversation with Charlie Rose (April 2011).

ANDRE SCHIFFRIN
(Clare)

[new!] Words & Money ($23.95, Verso, November 2010). The author is a longtime book publisher, founder of The New Press.

"Schiffrin shows how media consolidation is pulling the teeth of serious journalism, and how it can get its bite back." - Vanity Fair

"Masterfully written and extremely thought-provoking, this work should stimulate a much-needed dialog among those interested in the communications and publishing fields." - Library Journal

"[A] sophisticated voice of reason..., Schiffrin writes that it takes a village (government and local support of bookstores and publishers) to compete with the pressure of conglomerates." - Los Angeles Times 

Click here to view video of Andre Schiffrin in the C-Span Video Library.

JONATHAN SCHNEER
(Clare Hall, St. Catharine's)

[new!] The Balfour Declaration: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict ($30, Random House, August 2010). The author, who has been a Visiting Fellow at Cambridge, teaches history at Georgia Tech.

"Perceptive, complex...." - Publishers Weekly

"Schneer writes a fascinating and scrupulously balanced account of the events and intense maneuvers that led to the issuance of the declaration. He superbly navigates between the various conflicting interests and lobbying efforts of Zionists, Arabs, and opposing elements within the British government. There are no heroes here...." - Booklist 

Click here to view video of Jonathan Schneer on the C-Span Video Library.

SIMON SEBAG MONTEFIORE
(Caius)

[new!] Jerusalem: The Biography ($35, Knopf, October 2011).

“[I]mpossible to put down….Montefiore has a fine eye for the telling detail, and also a powerful feel for a good story.” – Sunday New York Times Book Review.

“Jerusalem is an extraordinary achievement….Read this book.” -- John Cornwell in the Financial Times.

JAMES A. SHAPIRO
(Corpus Christi)

NIGEL SMITH  

[new!] Andrew Marvell: The Chameleon ($45, Yale Univ. Press, November 2010).  Biography of the Trinity College-educated poet (1621-1678; To a Coy Mistress) by a professor of English at Princeton.

"Smith asks all the right questions about Marvell's life and times, and he works assiduously in helping to lay ‘a new foundation of the documentary knowledge.'" - The Sunday New York Times Book Review

"Superlative...the fullest portrait we have to date." - The Wall Street Journal 

[new!] Charles Jessold, Considered as a Murderer ($15, Picador, February 2011). The author is also the folksinger John Wesley Harding.  

“[Stace’s] twisty plot of jealousy and murder unfolds with Nabokovian precision during Britain’s early twentieth-century folk and early music revival.” —Financial Times. 

ANDREW TAYLOR
(Emmanuel)

[new!] The Anatomy of Ghosts ($24.99, Hyperion, January 2011).  Mystery novel set in 18th-century Cambridge’s fictional Jerusalem College.

“Every character in The Anatomy of Ghosts is holding at least one piece of dangerous information against someone else, maneuvering for position or simple security in a social order notable for its lack of mercy, let alone a safety net. The court of the Borgias had nothing on Jerusalem College.” – Salon

NICHOLAS THOMAS
(Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology)

[new!] Islanders: The Pacific in the Age of Empire ($35, Yale University Press, January 2011).The author is director of Cambridge’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and professor of historical anthropology at Cambridge.  He was awarded the 2011 Wolfson History Prize for Islanders.

“[A] a history of political manoeuvres involving diverse local and European powers where ideas were adopted and put to use in new imaginings….As this comprehensive but gripping book shows, it is hard to predict what something as volatile as movement between complex cultures will produce.” – Times Higher Education (UK).

MARK THOMPSON
(Corpus Christi)

[new!] The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front, 1915-1919 ($18.95, Basic Books, October 2010)

"Mark Thompson, a young British writer, can claim a notable achievement with his narrative history of Italy's World War I experience. With authority, sympathy, and unusual literary skill, he illuminates an aspect of the conflict about which some of us feel embarrassed to have known so little. The battlefield saga is sufficiently fascinating, but eclipsed by the portrait of Italy's social and cultural experience within which the author sets it.... Thompson's book gives a fascinating, indeed brilliant, portrait of a society immolated by its own delusions." - Max Hastings, in the New York Review of Books

RICHARD TOYE
(St. John's; former Fellow and Director of Studies, Homerton)

[new!] Churchill's Empire: The World That Made Him and the World He Made ($32, A John Macrae Book/Henry Holt & Company, August 2010)

"Not a conventional biography, this is a probing and thoroughly enjoyable life focusing on the contradictions and dilemmas of Churchill's imperialism.... Even veterans of Churchilliana will find plenty of fresh material, recounted with wit and insight into a man whose values were shaped by an age that no longer existed." - Publishers Weekly

"This detailed, engaging biography dwells on the dichotomy between Churchill pre- and post-second world war: between a time he was considered almost a danger to the empire, and a time he was considered its saviour." - Financial Times

"[S]uperb, unsettling.... [Toye is] one of Britain's smartest young historians." - New York Times Sunday Book Review 

SALLEY VICKERS
(Newnham)

[new!] Dancing Backwards ($25, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, August 2010)

"[A] moving story of a good second-chance romance." - Publishers Weekly

"Salley Vickers has a gift for making the most unlikely settings for fiction absolutely compelling.... Dancing Backwards, her new work, is located on a Transatlantic cruise-liner. My one bad experience of making such a voyage had put me off ever repeating it again - in life or in fiction - but within 10 pages, Vickers had won me over.... Vickers is a brave writer. The liner, the dancing, the unhappy past and the notebooks are all uncomplicated devices to build a story, that have been used many times before. Yet her triumph is to endow them with something fresh, intriguing and enlightening...." - The Independent (UK)

ANDREW WALLACE-HADRILL
(Sidney Sussex)

JONATHAN WEINER

[new!] Long for This World: The Strange Science of Immortality ($27.99, Ecco, June 2010) 

A New York Times “Notable Book of 2010.” 

“Pulitzer Prize–winning science writer Weiner (The Beak of the Finch) focuses on amateur gerontologist and oddball visionary Aubrey de Grey [Trinity Hall], a charismatic motormouth who has won a respectful scientific hearing for his argument that we will soon achieve life spans of thousands of years.... Weiner’s erudite, elegant exposition of the underlying science is stimulating yet sobering.” – Publishers Weekly

[new!] Mary Tudor: Princess, Bastard, Queen ($28.00, Random House, September 2010).  Biography of “Bloody Mary,” eldest child of Henry VIII, the first woman to inherit the British throne.  The author earned her PhD at Cambridge in 2004 and teaches history at the University of London.

TOBY WILKINSON
(Downing, Clare)

[new!] The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt ($35, Random House, March 2011).  The author earned degrees at Downing College and is a Fellow of Clare College. 

"Wilkinson offers a revisionist view of the ugly life hidden by the splendors and dazzling treasures of pharaonic Egypt. He shows in rich detail that it was a brutal society where life was cheap, royal power absolute and established through fear and coercion.... This is a penetrating and authoritative overview of a violent ancient civilization often revered by contemporary scholars and enthusiasts." - Publishers Weekly

"[A] thorough, erudite and enthusiastic gallop through an astonishing three thousand years." -The Sunday Times (London)

"Wilkinson expresses admiration for the continuity, stability, and relative harmony of pharaonic Egypt. Yet he is strikingly at odds with other Egyptologists in his efforts to present the darker side of Egyptian life. Egyptian rulers created and maintained the first true nation-state. As Wilkinson shows, however, the price of this stability was regimes based on fear, coercion, and, when deemed necessary, violent military suppression." - Booklist 

Listen to an interview with Toby Wilkinson on NPR's 'All Things Considered'

DANIEL YERGIN
(Trinity)

Click here for an NPR interview with Daniel Yergin