Trade Books July 2026-November 2027 Catalogue - ANZ

July 2026–November 2027

HIGHLIGHTS

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PRICES AND SPECIFICATIONS

The specifications in this catalogue including price, format, extent, and month of publication, were as accurate as possible at the time the catalogue went to press, but may be subject to change. The publication dates listed in this catalogue are based on UK and US release dates. For Australia and New Zealand, additional freight times are added to the original UK and US publishing dates.

TRANSLATION RIGHTS

Emma Gier

Director of Translations and Reprints emma.gier@oup.com

Simplified Chinese (Humanities and VSIs), German

Jennifer Child Senior Rights Manager jennifer.child@oup.com

Japanese, Korean, Middle Eastern languages, Indian languages

Georgina Hoare

Senior Rights Manager georgina.hoare@oup.com

Italian, French, Simplified Chinese (Social and Behavioural Sciences, Higher Education, Medicine, Law, Science), South East Asian languages

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Rights Executive tasmin.dodson@oup.com

Central and Eastern European languages, Greek

Junan Collins Rights Executive junan.collins@oup.com

Turkish, Complex Chinese, Dutch, Englishlanguage reprints

AUDIO RIGHTS – global

Anna Chamberlain

Market Development Lead Anna.Chamberlain@oup.com

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Key Account Manager

Christopher.Thomas@oup.com

General Operational Inbox: Audio.Academic@oup.com

China’s Global Strategy under Xi Jinping

STEVE TSANG, University of London and OLIVIA CHEUNG, King’s College London

A powerful analysis of China’s bid for global pre-eminence and what it means for the future of international politics.

Xi Jinping’s pledge to achieve “the China Dream of national rejuvenation” by 2050 captures the ambition driving China’s current global strategy. While the phrase may be characteristically vague, its implications are far-reaching—shaping how Chinese leaders engage with the world and envision China’s place within it.

In China’s Global Strategy under Xi Jinping, Steve Tsang and Olivia Cheung offer a clear and compelling account of how China is seeking to reshape the international order on its own terms. Drawing on decades of political evolution, they introduce a powerful new framework—Sino-centric party-state realism—to explain the ideological, political, and strategic logic behind China’s foreign policy under Xi.

The authors apply this framework across three key domains: global diplomacy, technology and the economy, and geopolitics. At the heart of Xi’s vision is a revival of the ancient tianxia model of global leadership, in which China becomes the world’s pre-eminent power—not by replacing the United States as global hegemon, but by being widely embraced as a force for good. This model suggests a relatively passive form of leadership, yet one that still aims to fundamentally reshape global norms and institutions.

“A thought-provoking deep dive into Xi Jinping’s worldview and China’s elaborate efforts to reshape global norms, institutions, and procedures.”

David Shambaugh, author of Breaking the Engagement

About the Authors

is Director of the China Institute at SOAS University of London. He is also an Emeritus Fellow of St Antony’s College at Oxford, and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences.

OLIVIA CHEUNG is Lecturer in Politics at the Department of European and International Studies and Affiliate of the Lau China Institute at King’s College London. She is also China Fellow at the Centre for Security, Diplomacy and Strategy, Vrije Universiteit Brussel.

UK: September 2026

978-0-19-782881-6

HB | 272pp Available as an Ebook

ALSO BY STEVE TSANG AND OLIVIA CHEUNG The Political Thought of Xi Jinping 978-0-19-768936-3 | HB

LEAD

TITLE

UK: September 2026

A$TBC | NZ$TBC TA | 196x129mm

978-0-19-899685-9

HB | 336pp

169 figures

Available as an Ebook

ALSO BY DAVID ACHESON

The Spirit of Mathematics

978-0-19-284508-5 | HB 1089 and All That

978-0-19-959002-5 | PB

Wonders in Motion

The Story of Dynamics

DAVID ACHESON, Emeritus Fellow, Jesus College, Oxford

What makes an aeroplane fly? Why aren’t rollercoasters circular? And how long would it take to fall right through the Earth?

This wide-ranging popular introduction to the science of motion tells the story of how dynamics developed, from Galileo’s time to the present day. Including such exciting discoveries as the motion of the planets, the dynamics of spinning objects, wave motion, elasticity, and fluid mechanics, the book explains the physical phenomena involved, especially those that surprise us and most challenge our elementary intuition.

The book brings the fundamental principles of mechanics to life by tackling a wide variety of real-world questions, such as why modern-day loop-the-loop rollercoasters are not circular, why skaters on ice spin faster when they draw in their arms, and how a falling cat, initially upside-down, can sometimes manage to land on its feet. The book also explores the idea that classic problems in mechanics can often acquire a wholly new life by being given a sudden and unexpected modern ‘twist’, including, for example, the role played by the gravitational three-body problem in the Apollo moon missions of the 1960s.

Written in an informal and accessible style, yet underpinned by rigorous scholarship and historical research, this book shows that, even after all these years, classical mechanics still has the potential to surprise us and challenge our understanding of how the world around us really works.

“A lively journey through mathematics and mechanics, where simple curiosities open onto deep and beautiful ideas: surprising, illuminating, and a pleasure to read.”

John A. Adam, Professor Emeritus of Mathematics, Old Dominion University

About the Author

DAVID ACHESON is an Emeritus Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford. After a career of teaching and research in applied mathematics, specialising in dynamics and fluid mechanics, he now writes and lectures on mathematics for young people and the general public. He is the author of several OUP books, including The Wonder Book of Geometry in 2020 and The Spirit of Mathematics in 2023.

LEAD TITLES

For the Dead Remember

The Life of M. R. James

DARRYL JONES, Trinity College Dublin

M. R. James: greatest of all ghost story writers, a repressed member of the English establishment struggling against changing times.

Every Christmas around the turn of the twentieth century, Montague Rhodes James would gather his friends and students together in his rooms at King’s College Cambridge, for what he once described as a ‘dark séance’, in which he read a new ghost story by candlelight at midnight. But the ghost stories are only one aspect of the life and writing of this fascinating, complex, troubled, difficult man. Monty James was widely recognized as perhaps the outstanding scholar of his generation, a man whose academic achievements were unparalleled, and who became the foremost living authority on medieval manuscripts, on stained glass, on Biblical apocrypha, and on the occult. He was also a formidable academic administrator, as Provost of King’s College Cambridge and then as Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University, he led his institution through the difficult years of the First World War, in which many of his colleagues and students were killed. After the war, he returned to the sanctuary of his beloved Eton, which he served as Provost until his death.

James’s life in Cambridge brought him into contact, and often into conflict, with many of the great figures and movements of his age, from Henry Sidgwick and the Society for Psychical Research to John Maynard Keynes, Lytton Strachey, and the Bloomsbury Group, with which he had many connections. He was the friend of A. C. Benson, the teacher of Rupert Brooke. He was a repressed gay man, whose friends recognized this even where he did not. He was often troubled by modern ideas and tendencies, widening social access to universities, degrees for women. This is also a story of the profound consolations of scholarship, and of a man who found meaning on the wilder shores of human experience, in a world of demons and ghosts.

“Comprehensive, erudite and insightful; this is the definitive biography of M.R. James.”

Andrew Smith, author of The Ghost Story 1840-1920

About the Author

Darryl Jones is the author or editor of fourteen books and numerous articles, mostly on nineteenth-century literature and popular literature. In 2011, he edited the Oxford World’s Classics edition of M. R. James’s Collected Ghost Stories. He is the General Editor of the Oxford Sherlock Holmes, for which series he edited The Hound of the Baskervilles.

The Year of Victory

How the North Won the Civil War

BRIAN HOLDEN REID, King’s College London

• Focuses on why the North won, rather than why the South lost the Civil War

• Offers a capacious analysis of attrition during the end stages of the Civil War, highlighting the Union army’s careful management of the final year of the war

• Stresses the often-overlooked importance of the Eastern Theater during the Civil War

Why did the North win the Civil War? In The Year of Victory, military historian Brian Holden Reid explores the nature of the Civil War in its final, climactic phase from the spring of 1864 to the collapse of the Confederacy the following spring. He shows that the central factor for the Union’s triumph was the successful employment of a strategy of attrition, by which a force incrementally wears down its enemy.

About the Author

BRIAN HOLDEN REID is the author of Robert E. Lee: Icon for a Nation, America’s Civil War: The Operational Battlefield, 1861-1863, and The Scourge of War: The Life of William Tecumseh Sherman (OUP, 2020), among other books. In 2019 he was awarded the Samuel Eliot Morison Prize by the Society for Military History for his contributions to the field.

UK: April 2027

A$TBC | NZ$TBC | AE | 234x156mm

978-0-19-763033-4

HB | 592pp

35 B&W halftones

Available as an Ebook

A Librarian’s War

The Man Who Fought World War II with Books and Brought the Joy of Reading to Millions

MOLLY GUPTILL MANNING, New York Law School

• Highlights the central role of books in a democracy, promoting literacy and fighting book bans

• The ALA, ABA, librarians, and book lovers across America will embrace this book

A Librarian’s War offers the story of Ray Trautman, the Greatest Generation’s librarian, who made reading central to the Allied fight in World War Two and spent a lifetime promoting literacy and access to books across America in the decades that followed. Molly Guptill Manning’s book puts Trautman where he deserves to be: at the center of the story.

About the Author

MOLLY GUPTILL MANNING is a historian, curator, and professor of law at New York Law School. She is the author of the New York Times-bestseller, When Books Went to War, as well as The Myth of Ephraim Tut, and The War of Words. She frequently gives talks about the centrality of books in democracy.

UK: January 2027

A$TBC | NZ$TBC | AE | 234x156mm

978-0-19-786124-0

HB | 264pp

15 B&W illustrations

Available as an Ebook

Forty-Five Days

The Fall of Mussolini and Italy’s Reckoning with Fascism

JOSHUA ARTHURS, University of Toronto

• Written in a highly narrative style, presenting events as they unfolded through the eyes of contemporary actors

• Examines political transition during the interregnum between the Fascist regime and the Italian Civil War as experienced by ordinary people

Forty-Five Days reconstructs the immediate aftermath of the Italian Fascist regime, from the fall of Mussolini on July 25 to the armistice of September 8, 1943, when the Italian state disintegrated and civil war ensued. Narrating events through the eyes of contemporaries, it explores how ordinary people tried to come to terms with twenty years of dictatorship and offers new insights on this critical juncture in the history of modern Italy and the dynamics of regime change and popular protest.

About the Author

JOSHUA ARTHURS is a historian at the University of Toronto. He is the author of Excavating Modernity: The Roman Past in Fascist Italy and co-editor of The Politics of Everyday Life in Fascist Italy: Outside the State? A past President of the Society for Italian Historical Studies, he is a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome.

UK: February 2027 A$TBC

978-0-19-087293-9

Humans

The First Seven Million Years

CHRIS GOSDEN, Oxford University

• Offers the most comprehensive long-term history of humanity to date, revealing surprising patterns with provocative insights about human societies past and present

• Illuminates cutting-edge archaeological discoveries that are transforming our understanding of who we are and where we come from

For generations we’ve been taught a tidy arc of human progress: a march from primitive ancestors to Homo sapiens, from foraging bands to farming villages, from villages to cities, states, and empires. It’s a narrative that feels intuitive, and yet it obscures far more than it reveals. Humans overturns this familiar storyline, offering a truly global history that spans all continents and the full seven-million-year sweep of our past.

About the Author

CHRIS GOSDEN is Professor of European Archaeology at Oxford University, trustee of the British Museum, member of the Board of Visitors of the Ashmolean Museum, and fellow of the British Academy and the Society of Antiquaries. He is the author of many books, including Prehistory: A Very Short Introduction and The History of Magic.

US: February 2027

978-0-19-786913-0

The Declaration of Independence

A Concise History

MICHAEL D. HATTEM, Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute

• Illuminates the political and social moment in revolutionary America to better explain how some of the Declaration’s seemingly radical statements—such as “All men are created equal”—were anything but

• Explains how the Declaration was largely uncelebrated until the nineteenth century, when it began its journey to becoming “American scripture”

• Provides examples of how modern political movements have used the Declaration to justify their own fundamentally different causes

Michael D. Hattem offers a compelling story of the political moment in which the Declaration of Independence was created and its legacy over the past two hundred and fifty years.

About the Author

MICHAEL D. HATTEM is a historian of the American Revolution and historical memory. He is the author of The Memory of ‘76, which was a finalist for the 2025 George Washington Prize, and Past and Prologue: Politics and Memory in the American Revolution He is currently the Associate Director of the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute.

UK: February 2027

A$TBC | NZ$TBC | TA | 210x140mm

978-0-19-784668-1

HB | 120pp

10 B&W images Available as an Ebook

George Washington and His World

Enslaver, Revolutionary, President

DENVER BRUNSMAN, George Washington University

• Draws on a wealth of evidence, including rare primary sources and material culture from the George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon

• Upends misunderstandings and myths about George Washington’s life, achievements, and motives

Award-winning historian Denver Brunsman illuminates George Washington’s rise and influence by focusing on the people and society who made the first president’s accomplishments possible. Enslaver and revolutionary, destroyer of Native American communities and father of American liberty, Washington filled numerous roles in the Founding Era. Rather than shying from these contradictions, Brunsman embraces them in explaining Washington to a twenty-first century audience.

About the Author

DENVER BRUNSMAN is Associate Professor and Chair of the History Department at George Washington University, where his courses include “George Washington and His World.” He is the author of the award-winning book The Evil Necessity: British Naval and Impressment in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World, among multiple other publications.

UK: January 2027

A$TBC | NZ$TBC | TA | 210x140mm

978-0-19-785882-0

HB | 152pp

10 B&W images Available as an Ebook

The Last Place in Europe

A History of Gibraltar

GEOFFREY PLANK, Independent Historian

• Discusses Gibraltar’s contemporary place in international politics, including its role as a center of off-shore banking and taxation

• Places Gibraltar within a regional context that includes the north coast of Africa, as well as examining its British and Spanish ties

Famous since antiquity as a monument marking the intersection of Europe, Africa, the Atlantic, and the Mediterranean, Gibraltar has had a colorful history and outsized importance. The Last Place in Europe, the first book to cover the territory’s entire history, offers a sweeping narrative drawn from archaeological findings, archival sources, and firsthand narrative accounts of everyday life, introducing the lives of soldiers, families, enslaved people, and others who have peopled the territory’s few square miles.

About the Author

GEOFFREY PLANK is an independent historian who taught at the University of Cincinnati and the University of East Anglia. His most recent book, Atlantic Wars: From the Eighteenth Century to the Age of Revolution (OUP, 2020), was shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize.

Hu Shi A Biography

MOYING LI, Independent Scholar

• Features never-before-published correspondence and photographs that bring this extraordinary story to life

• Offers a fresh perspective on the historical relationship between China and the US, highlighting the influence of an American-educated Chinese reformer at a turning point in global history

The first comprehensive biography of a major figure in Chinese history and Chinese-American relations. Hu Shi’s life illuminates and personifies developments in and between China and America during the 20th century—offering a story full of contradictions and entangled political, intellectual, and romantic relationships. In doing so it offers a portrait of the man behind key transformations that set China on its trajectory to becoming the global superpower it is today, and who, at a critical moment in world history, brought the East and West closer together.

About the Author

MOYING LI attended Swarthmore College and earned a Ph.D. from Boston University. Her first book, Beacon Hill: The Life & Times of a Neighborhood, won the Julia Ward Howe Award. Snow Falling in Spring, a memoir, was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and named an Editor’s Choice by The New York Times Book Review

UK: January 2027

978-0-19-767336-2

35 B&W halftones & 4 maps

UK: May 2027

978-0-19-783622-4

42 photographs

Portrait of an Obsession

How England’s Greatest Private Library was Built from the Ruins of Europe’s Monasteries

KELSEY JACKSON WILLIAMS, University of Stirling; Blackie House Library and Museum

• Unpicks the extraordinary psychology and history of Georgian book collecting

• Brings to life the physical experience of handling the world’s rarest books

• Draws extensively on archives that have remained largely untapped

George John Spencer, 2nd Earl Spencer (1758-1834) spent his life and fortune acquiring the rarest books in the world and Portrait of an Obsession recovers how he did so, threading its way through a Europe torn apart by the Napoleonic Wars and unpicking what made one man assemble perhaps the greatest private library ever formed in Great Britain.

About the Author

KELSEY JACKSON WILLIAMS’s works include The First Scottish Enlightenment: Rebels, Priest, and History (Oxford University Press, 2020) and The Antiquary: John Aubrey’s Historical Scholarship (Oxford University Press, 2016), which was shortlisted for the Katharine Briggs Award in 2017.

Hidden Terrors

The Scourge of Cholera in Jackson’s America

PAUL KELTON, Stony Brook University

• Recounts the experiences of numerous Americans during a frightening time through their own words, while revealing that the pandemic was quickly forgotten—a parallel with our own times

• Illustrates the harsh incongruities of the growth of American democracy during the cholera pandemic of the 1830s

In the 1830s, cholera, caused by a yet to be identified bacterium, ignited outbreaks of mass death in urban neighborhoods, rural towns, prisons, and plantations across the United States. In the first comprehensive history of this pandemic, Hidden Terrors humanely captures the experiences of people living in fear of a mysterious disease and exposes how moralizing elites ignored the injustices of Jacksonian America that exacerbated mortality.

About the Author

PAUL KELTON is the Robert David Lion Gardiner Chair in American History at Stony Brook University. He is the author of Cherokee Medicine, Colonial Germs: An Indigenous Nation’s Fight Against Smallpox, 1518-1824 and Epidemics and Enslavement: Biological Catastrophe in the Native Southeast, 1492-1715. UK: October 2026

978-0-19-887905-3

UK: January 2027

978-0-19-777208-9

How to Think About Terrorism

Reflections on Philosophy, History, and Politics

QUASSIM CASSAM, University of Warwick, and RICHARD ENGLISH, Queen’s University Belfast

• A deeply original approach to understanding terrorism, pioneered by a philosopher and political historian and drawing simultaneously on the insights of philosophy, history, and politics

How to Think About Terrorism transforms how we understand terrorism, through innovative engagement with philosophical ideas and arguments as they intersect with historical and political thinking. This book reflects on the vital question of definition, recognizing that a useful description of terrorism should be sufficiently flexible and open-ended to accommodate the great variety of terrorist methods, motives, objectives, perpetrators, and targets.

About the Authors

QUASSIM CASSAM’s books include Extremism: A Philosophical Analysis (Routledge 2021), Vices of the Mind: From the Intellectual to the Political (Oxford 2019), and Conspiracy Theories (Polity 2019).

RICHARD ENGLISH’s books include: Armed Struggle: The History of the IRA; Irish Freedom: The History of Nationalism in Ireland; Does Terrorism Work? A History; and Does Counter-Terrorism Work?

UK: October 2026

A$TBC | NZ$TBC | AE | 234x156mm

978-0-19-891107-4

HB | 288pp Available as an Ebook

Rome

An Oxford Archaeological Guide Third Edition

AMANDA CLARIDGE, University of London and CHRISTOPHER SIWICKI, The British School at Rome

Rome is the ultimate guide to all the important archaeological sites in the city of Rome from the period 800 BC to AD 600, with over 200 site maps, plans, and photographs. For this expanded new edition the text has been extensively revised in line with recent discoveries, openings, and scholarship. Numerous new sites and illustrations have been added, the itineraries re-organized and expanded to suit the many changes that have taken place in the fifteen years since the previous edition.

About the Authors

AMANDA CLARIDGE was Reader in Classical Archaeology, Royal Holloway, University of London, and was formerly Lecturer in Archaeology at St John’s College, Oxford. Assistant Director of the British School in Rome from 1980 to 1994, she was the author of numerous publications on Roman archaeology.

CHRISTOPHER SIWICKI is a research fellow at the British school at Rome, where he is also director of the undergraduate and postgraduate taught courses on the history, archaeology, and topography of the ancient city.

UK: February 2027

A$60.95 | NZ$71.99 | TA | 216x138mm

Part of the Oxford Archaeological Guides series

NEW EDITION

978-0-19-883776-3

PB | 592pp

160 site maps, plans, and photographs Available as an Ebook

For publicity queries, please contact publicity@oup.com

1942

Crux of War

JONATHAN PARSHALL, U.S. Naval War College

• Offers a dramatic yet balanced retelling of the year based on diverse English-language and foreign sources

“This is a monumental achievement, a masterpiece, the best single-volume history about World War II that I’ve read.”

Alex Kershaw, author of Patton’s Prayer

Jonathan Parshall’s epic 1942: Crux of War offers a sweeping new narrative and visual history. Containing more than 150 maps and timelines, it looks at the year from all sides and from every front, revealing how military reform, economic mobilization, inspired improvisation, and growing professionalism coalesced quickly and decisively, paving the way toward final Allied victory. Parshall’s book examines and illuminates World War II’s most crucial and consequential year: its crux.

About the Author

JONATHAN PARSHALL is co-author of the bestselling Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway. His work has been published in the U.S. Naval War College Review, U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, Naval History magazine, WWII magazine, Wartime (the journal of the Australian War Memorial), and others.

UK: September 2026

A$83.95 | NZ$95.99 | TA | 254x178mm

978-0-19-784837-1

HB | 1200pp

150 images, maps, and timelines Available as an Ebook

Dreams of Empire A History of the Ottomans

CARTER VAUGHN FINDLEY, Emeritus Professor, Ohio State University

• Clearly stated themes structure a comprehensive history spanning politics and war, economics, society, culture and religion

• Pays sustained attention to the interaction of polyglot, polyethnic communities of many religions, including Sunni and Shii Muslims, Christians of all denominations, and Jews

Dreams of Empire is a comprehensive history of the Ottoman Empire from its beginnings in 1300 to its dissolution in 1922. This work by North America’s leading Ottomanist recounts the dramatic events and adventurous lives of the peoples of one of the great powers of world history.

About the Author

CARTER VAUGHN FINDLEY is Humanities Distinguished Professor of History Emeritus at Ohio State University. He is the author of multiple prize-winning books in Ottoman history, including The Turks in World History (OUP, 2005), as well as a world-history textbook now in its seventh edition. He received the Mentoring Award of the Middle East Studies Association and the Pioneer in World History Award of the World History Association.

UK: October 2026

A$64.95 | NZ$74.99 | TA | 235x156mm

978-0-19-007414-2

HB | 664pp

50 B&W illus. & 16-page color insert Available as an Ebook

Beyond the Ocean

France and the Atlantic World from the Crusades to the

Age of Revolutions

CHRISTOPHER HODSON, Brigham Young University and BRETT RUSHFORTH, Huntington Library Quarterly

• Presents the first full history of France’s Atlantic empire written in the modern era

• Tells powerful human stories across the French empire, highlighting the role of non-European actors

• The product of decades of collaborative research in over 100 archives and private collections

Beyond the Ocean presents a bold reinterpretation of French colonialism from its medieval roots to the Age of Revolutions. Driven by compelling individual stories that are woven into a sweeping chronological narrative, it reveals France’s profound significance to Atlantic history and offers new insights on the interconnected histories of France, West Africa, and the Americas.

About the Authors

CHRISTOPHER HODSON is Associate Professor of History at Brigham Young University. He is the author of The Acadian Diaspora: An Eighteenth-Century History (OUP, 2012).

BRETT RUSHFORTH is Editor in Chief of the Huntington Library Quarterly. He is the author of the award-winning Bonds of Alliance: Indigenous and Atlantic Slaveries in New France.

UK: September 2026

A$64.95 | NZ$74.99 | AE | 235x156mm

978-0-19-045584-2

HB | 624pp

75 B&W illustrations Available as an Ebook

COMBEE

Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom during the Civil War

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for History

EDDA L. FIELDS-BLACK, Carnegie Mellon University

• Uses more than 175 US Civil War pension files of the regiments of Second South Carolina Volunteers, including Tubman’s, never used before

• First detailed account of one of the most dramatic episodes of the Civil War, and the central part Harriet Tubman played in it

COMBEE will become and remain the authoritative work on the raid, all its historical actors, and its long aftermath. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, praised as one of the most remarkable works of nonfiction in recent years, and already considered a classic work of history.

About the Author

EDDA L. FIELDS-BLACK is Professor of History and Director of the Dietrich College Humanities Center at Carnegie Mellon University. She is the author of Deep Roots: Rice Farmers in West Africa and the African Diaspora. Fields-Black has served as a consultant for the Smithsonian National Museum of AfricanAmerican History and Culture’s permanent exhibit, “Rice Fields of the Lowcountry.”

UK: May 2027

A$TBC | NZ$TBC | AE235x156mm

978-0-19-785535-5

HB | 784pp

116 color plates and 3 maps Available as an Ebook

Washington’s Crossing

DAVID HACKETT FISCHER, Brandeis University

• Reissued in a new paperback format, the celebrated account of a pivotal moment in American history: George Washington’s crossing the Delaware on Christmas 1776 and the turning point of the War of Independence

A New York Times Bestseller Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for History

Into the Bright Sunshine

Young Hubert Humphrey and the Fight for Civil Rights

SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN, Columbia University

“Riveting. . .. A superbly written tale of moral and political courage for present-day readers who find themselves in similarly dark times.”

Khalil Gibran Muhammad, The New York Times

Fischer’s richly textured narrative reveals the crucial role of contingency in these events. We see how the campaign unfolded in a sequence of difficult choices by many actors, from generals to civilians, on both sides. While British and German forces remained rigid and hierarchical, Americans evolved an open and flexible system that was fundamental to their success. The startling success of Washington and his compatriots not only saved the faltering American Revolution, but helped to give it new meaning.

About the Author

DAVID HACKETT FISCHER is University Professor at Brandeis University, and the author of such acclaimed volumes as Liberty and Freedom, Albion’s Seed, The Great Wave, and Paul Revere’s Ride.

UK: February 2027

A$TBC | NZ$TBC | AE | 210x140mm

978-0-19-786239-1

PB | 576pp

97 halftones and 19 maps Available as an Ebook

“A powerful and captivating read.”

Richard Aldous, The Wall Street Journal

Winner of the Hillman Prize, a revisionist look at the American politician whom history has judged a loser, yet who played a key part in the greatest social movement of the 20th century. Into the Bright Sunshine celebrates one of the overlooked landmarks of civil rights history, and illuminates the early life and enduring legacy of the man who helped bring it about.

About the Author

SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN is an award-winning author, journalist, and educator. He has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award and has won the National Jewish Book Award and the New York Public Library’s Helen Bernstein Award. His columns for the New York Times about education and religion have received national prizes.

UK: December 2026

A$TBC | NZ$TBC | AE | 210x140mm

978-0-19-785872-1

PB | 504pp

Available as an Ebook

What China Wants

And What It Means for the World

JESSICA CHEN WEISS, SAIS Institute for America, China, and the Future

of Global Affairs (ACF)

At a time when many are heralding a new Cold War between the United States and China, What China Wants pushes back against the assumption that China has a zero-sum plan to subvert democracy everywhere and dominate the world. China’s competing domestic priorities mean that conflict with the United States is not inevitable and that China’s trajectory can still be shaped, from the Taiwan Strait to the horn of Africa. Weiss’ book is essential to understanding how China’s internal politics are accelerating and braking changes in the new global order.

About the Author

JESSICA CHEN WEISS was profiled by the New Yorker and named one of Prospect Magazine’s Top Thinkers for 2024. She served a year as a senior advisor to the U.S. State Department on a Council on Foreign Relations Fellowship. Her book Powerful Patriots: Nationalist Protest in China’s Foreign Relations was described by the Financial Times as “an invaluable chronicle of how China, Japan and the US have handled charged diplomatic confrontations.”

UK: May 2027

A$TBC | NZ$TBC | AE | 235x156mm

978-0-19-760262-1

HB | 304pp Available as an Ebook

CURRENT AFFAIRS

China’s Global Strategy under Xi Jinping

STEVE TSANG, University of London and OLIVIA CHEUNG, King’s College London

In China’s Global Strategy under Xi Jinping, Steve Tsang and Olivia Cheung explain Xi’s core strategy to make China great again by restoring the tianxia model of global leadership, in which China becomes the new pre-eminent power. To do so, they apply a Sino-centric party-state realism framework to three foreign policy realms: global diplomacy, technology and the economy, and geopolitics. Significantly, China does not intend to replace the US as the global hegemon, yet the potential source for a great power conflict is unmistakable. A powerful analysis of the drivers behind China’s global ambitions under Xi, this book will be essential reading for anyone interested in how China is attempting to reshape international politics.

About the Authors

STEVE TSANG is Director of the China Institute at SOAS University of London. He is also an Emeritus Fellow of St Antony’s College at Oxford, and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences.

OLIVIA CHEUNG is Lecturer in Politics at the Department of European and International Studies and Affiliate of the Lau China Institute at King’s College London. She is also China Fellow at the Centre for Security, Diplomacy and Strategy, Vrije Universiteit Brussel.

UK: September 2026

A$55.95 | NZ$63.99 | AE | 234x156mm

978-0-19-782881-6

HB | 296pp Available as an Ebook

CURRENT AFFAIRS

Under the Influence

What’s Real When America Feels Fake

DANIELLE LEE TOMSON, University of Washington

• Features original interviews with Steve Bannon, Jack Posobiec, Raheem Kassam, Laura Loomer, and Gavin Wax

Under the Influence is an insider account of the conservative media influencers who helped rewrite America’s common sense, and, with it, its political reality. Chronicling a six-year journey through the parties, demonstrations, social media, and minds within Steve Bannon’s media milieu, Danielle Lee Tomson reveals the tactics used to craft and elevate an alternative vision of America into being. Yet the book is not just a reflection on the Right. It is a mirror for a political culture of distrust, where the distinctions between performance and sincerity, truth and myth, have collapsed, charging us all to create a new political paradigm for the twenty-first century.

About the Author

DANIELLE LEE TOMSON is a writer, scholar, and strategist. She is currently Research Manager at the Center for an Informed Public at the University of Washington, where she leads research on election rumors and institutional communication. Her writing and commentary have appeared in outlets including The Wall Street Journal, POLITICO, and The Seattle Times.

UK: May 2027

A$TBC | NZ$TBC | AE | 234x156mm

Sanctuary in America

How Activists Defied the Government and Defended Immigrants—And Why It Still Matters

LLOYD D. BARBA, Amherst College and SERGIO M. GONZÁLEZ, Marquette University

• Offers a compelling and readable introduction to Sanctuary activism and its history for a broad audience

• Shows what today’s activists can learn from the history of the Sanctuary movement

• Draws upon extensive archival data from across the country

In Sanctuary in America, Lloyd D. Barba and Sergio M. González tell the story of how sanctuary activists have, for nearly half a century, organized one of the most robust civil disobedience movements in American history. This book speaks to those attempting to navigate the trying and tumultuous present.

About the Authors

Under the Influence

What’s Real When America Feels Fake

Danielle Lee Tomson

Cover coming soon

978-0-19-784786-2

| 256pp

as an Ebook

LLOYD D. BARBA is the author of Sowing the Sacred (OUP, 2022), which won the 2024 Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award and the 2024 Pneuma Book Award for Best Book in the Study of Pentecostalism.

SERGIO M. GONZÁLEZ is the author of Strangers No Longer (2024) and Mexicans in Wisconsin (2017) and co-editor of Faith and Power (with Felipe Hinojosa and Maggie Elmore, 2022).

UK: Janaury 2026

A$TBC | NZ$TBC | AE | 210x140mm

978-0-19-785597-3

| 176pp 1 B&W figure

as an Ebook

Harnessing Disruption

Building the Tech Future Without Breaking Society

SARAH E. KREPS, Cornell University

• Offers a vital roadmap for navigating the future of technology, providing actionable takeaways on how governments, businesses, and individuals can better navigate the challenges of innovation and regulation

In Harnessing Disruption, Sarah E. Kreps—a national security expert and military veteran—offers a timely framework for understanding how societies respond to transformative technologies. From AI to nuclear weapons and cryptocurrency, Kreps shows that disruption is not collapse but part of a recurring pattern. Technologies emerge, warnings surface, crises unfold, and institutions adapt. Drawing on historical cases and contemporary challenges, she outlines a five-stage cycle that helps explain why some innovations spiral and others stabilize. For policymakers, technologists, and engaged citizens, this book offers a roadmap for navigating risk without surrendering the promise of progress.

About the Author

SARAH E. KREPS is the John L. Wetherill Professor in the Department of Government, Adjunct Professor of Law, and Director of the Tech Policy Institute at Cornell University. She previously served as an officer in the United States Air Force.

UK: January 2027

A$55.95 | NZ$63.99 | AE | 234x156mm

978-0-19-780376-9

HB | 184pp Available as an Ebook

CURRENT AFFAIRS

The Last Humans

UFOs, Global Security, and the Threat to State Sovereignty

ALEXANDER WENDT, The Ohio State University

In The Last Humans, Alexander Wendt conducts a novel thought experiment that explores a future scenario in which global authorities conclude that Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) are extraterrestrials (ETs), and what this discovery would mean for both human security and the international state system. Drawing on the 2021 Pentagon UAP Report and international relations scholarship, Wendt contends that this situation would indeed be a national security threat, but not of the traditional, military kind. He argues that ontological shock from the state’s impotence in the face of ET power could cause it to lose legitimacy and collapse—even if ETs never intervene in human affairs.

About the Author

ALEXANDER WENDT is among the founders of the constructivist school of International Relations theory, and the author of Social Theory of International Politics and Quantum Mind and Social Science. Wendt was voted by peers in the 2017 TRIP Survey as the most influential international relations scholar of the past 20 years. In 2023 he shared the Skytte Prize in Political Science with Martha Finnemore.

UK: January 2027

A$TBC | NZ$TBC | AE | 234x156mm

The Last Humans

UFOs, Global Security, and the Threat to State Sovereignty

Alexander Wendt

Cover coming soon

978-0-19-784116-7

HB | 240pp Available as an Ebook

CURRENT AFFAIRS

As China Ages

The Politics of Demographic Decline in the Counter-Reform Era

CARL MINZNER, Fordham Law School

• Written by an expert in expert in Chinese politics and law

China faces a massive demographic challenge. In As China Ages, Carl Minzner explains why China’s population is growing older and explores how China will address the core challenges that it will face in coming decades. He argues that China’s current political trajectory is actively undermining its ability to respond to a rapidly aging society and gives context for where China might be headed. Highlighting consequences that extend far beyond China’s borders, the book reveals how China’s authoritarian turn is undermining Beijing’s ability to respond to mounting demographic challenges—and what that means for China and the world.

About the Author

CARL MINZNER is a senior fellow for China studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and a professor at Fordham Law School. He is an expert in Chinese law and governance and has written extensively on these topics in both academic journals and the popular press. He is the author of End of an Era (Oxford, 2018).

UK: April 2027

A$TBC | NZ$TBC | AE | 234x156mm

978-0-19-767859-6

HB | 288pp

Available as an Ebook

Aging While Female

The Untold Story of Growing Older, Gender, and Law in America

NAOMI CAHN, University of Virginia and NINA A. KOHN, Syracuse University

Aging While Female reveals how growing older in America is profoundly shaped by the law and how that experience drastically differs for women and men. It uncovers a striking paradox: the law acts as both a shield against and a source of gender-based inequality in later life. With this insight, Naomi Cahn and Nina A. Kohn show how legal structures influence everything from financial security to caregiving and health, and they offer concrete reforms to make aging, especially aging while female, a more positive, equitable, and fulfilling experience for all Americans.

About the Authors

NAOMI CAHN has written numerous books and articles in family law, aging and the law, and feminist jurisprudence, including Fair Shake with June Carbone and Nancy Levit.

NINA A. KOHN is a Distinguished Professor of Law at Syracuse University, and a Distinguished Scholar in Elder Law with the Solomon Center for Health Law and Policy at Yale Law School.

UK: April 2027

A$TBC | NZ$TBC | AE | 234x156mm

978-0-19-760134-1

HB | 272pp

Available as an Ebook

CURRENT AFFAIRS

How Europe Survives

The

Adaptability and Resilience of a Continent in Peril

CATHERINE E. DE VRIES, IE University, and ALEXANDROS KENTIKELENIS, Bocconi University

• Challenges the standard, foundational European narratives of peace, prosperity, law, and trade by exposing their blind spots and contradictions

How Europe Survives is both a reinterpretation of Europe’s past and a guide to its future. This is not a triumphalist story. Europe’s adaptability has costs and limits. But it offers a practical lesson for governing in an age of permanent crisis: flexible institutions, open contestation, and a willingness to learn can keep a political project alive.

About the Authors

CATHERINE E. DE VRIES’ book

Euroscepticism and the Future of European Integration (OUP, 2018) received the European Union Studies Association’s Best Book in EU Studies Award and was listed as a top 5 book on Europe’s future by the Financial Times.

ALEXANDROS KENTIKELENIS has published more than fifty awardwinning articles and three books. His research has attracted wide coverage in major international media outlets and informed debates in parliaments and international organizations.

UK: October 2026

A$60.95 | NZ$71.99 | AE | 234x156mm

978-0-19-790805-1

HB | 272pp

Available as an Ebook

The Other Side

A Moderate’s Manifesto on How to Disagree

JOHN CORVINO, Wayne State University

• Offers a clear path beyond today’s toxic and divisive public conversations, showing how we can restore meaningful dialogue

John Corvino’s The Other Side explains how, when, and why to engage with those you disagree with. Covering topics such as political polarization, free speech, and civility, The Other Side is an essential guide for how to argue productively in the culture wars. Drawing on the author’s three-decade experience as a bridge-builder in the same-sex marriage movement, The Other Side makes a nuanced case for engaging with culture-war adversaries even when you don’t think they deserve it.

Part of the Philosophy in Action series

About the Author

JOHN CORVINO is the author or co-author of three books from Oxford University Press, Debating Religious Liberty and Discrimination, with counterpoint by Ryan T. Anderson and Sherif Girgis (2017). Corvino has contributed to The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Detroit Free Press, the Huffington Post, The New Republic, Slate, and Commonweal.

UK: January 2027

A$TBC | NZ$TBC | AE | 178x127mm

978-0-19-783235-6

HB | 224pp

Available as an Ebook

A Healthier Profit

The Cost of Business as Usual and the Case for Health

NASON MAANI, University of Edinburgh and SANDRO GALEA, Washington University in St. Louis

• Provides a pragmatic, nuanced lens for rethinking how commercial activity can align with public health

A Healthier Profit reveals how the biggest influences on our health often lie not in personal choices, but in the boardrooms of powerful companies. Drawing on cutting-edge public health research, Nason Maani and Sandro Galea uncover how industries shape what we eat, drink, breathe, and believe, and why their profits, at times, come at the public’s expense. Clear, urgent, and accessible, this is a book for the public, including business leaders, investors, policymakers, and employees, about power, health, and the future we choose to build.

About the Authors

Nason Maani co-edited The Commercial Determinants of Health (Oxford, 2022), alongside Sandro Galea and Mark Petticrew, and he hosts the Money Power Health podcast.

Sandro Galea has been named an epidemiology innovator by Time, a top voice in healthcare by LinkedIn, and is one of the most cited social scientists in the world. He is the author of Well and The Contagion Next Time, among many other books.

UK: May 2027

A$TBC | NZ$TBC | AE | 210x140mm

978-0-19-779814-0

Navigating the Complexities of Stroke

Second Edition

LOUIS R. CAPLAN, and VASILEIOS-ARSENIO LIOUTAS, both at Harvard University

Navigating the Complexities of Stroke is your practical, easy-tounderstand guide for facing one of life’s toughest challenges. Whether you’re recovering from a stroke, caring for a loved one, or working to reduce your risk, this book gives you the knowledge and confidence to take control. Inside, you’ll find clear explanations of stroke types, causes, treatments, and recovery strategies, plus essential tips for prevention and support for families and communities.

Part of the Brain and Life Books series

About the Authors

LOUIS R. CAPLAN is Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School, a senior member of the Division of Cerebrovascular Disease at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, and the founder of the Harvard Stroke Registry.

VASILEIOS-ARSENIO LIOUTAS is Assistant Professor at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston and serves as Assistant Director of the Vascular Neurology Fellowship. He has published more than 50 articles and co-edited Stroke, 2nd edition (2016).

UK: May 2027

A$TBC | NZ$TBC | AE | 210x140mm

978-0-19-777076-4

as an Ebook

Wonders in Motion

The Story of Dynamics

DAVID ACHESON, Emeritus Fellow, Oxford

• Includes many original and previously unpublished documents and sources

This wide-ranging popular introduction to the science of motion tells the story of how dynamics developed, from Galileo’s time to the present day. Including such exciting discoveries as the motion of the planets, the dynamics of spinning objects, elasticity, and fluid mechanics, Wonders in Motion explains the physical phenomena involved, especially those that surprise us and most challenge our elementary intuition.

Undesirable

Invasive Species, Humans, and Where We All Belong

AMY

CRAWFORD, Independent Scholar

• Traces the development of invasion biology in parallel with the environmental movement

• Features diverse perspectives from academic biologists and ecologists as well as community leaders and volunteers

In an era when the media loves a reallife monster story, Undesirable takes a heterodox approach to invasion biology and explores whether changing the way we think about invasive species could help us manage them in more productive ways and inspire better stewardship of nature.

Quantum Drama

From the Bohr-Einstein Debate to the Riddle of Entanglement

DR JIM BAGGOTT, Freelance Science Writer, and JOHN L. HEILBRON, Professor Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley

“I have never read a better account: balanced, authoritative and spiced with elegant wit.”

Philip Ball, Physics World

Quantum mechanics is an extraordinarily successful scientific theory. It is also completely baffling. From the moment of its inception, its founders struggled to understand its meaning. This struggle was most famously encapsulated in the debate between Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein; Quantum Drama tells the story of their engagement and its legacy.

UK: September 2026

A$TBC | NZ$TBC

TA | 196x129mm

978-0-19-899685-9

HB | 336pp

169 figures

Available as an Ebook

UK: November 2026

A$55.95

NZ$63.99

AE | 235x156mm

978-0-19-776808-2

HB | 280pp

Available as an Ebook

UK: September 2026

A$26.95

NZ$31.99

TA | 198x129mm

978-0-19-284611-2

PB | 352pp

19 figures and 15 photos

Available as an Ebook

RELIGION

Occulture

The New Face of American Spirituality

CHRISTIAN SMITH, MATTHEW COETZEE, and BRIDGET RITZ, all at University of Notre Dame

• Shows that the traditional divide between religion and secularism has been disrupted as Americans embrace nontraditional beliefs

The last several decades have witnessed a sea change in American culture as traditional religion has declined significantly. What has taken its place, however, is not widespread secularism, but a growing interest in magic, spirituality, alternative healing practices, neopaganism, psychic powers, eastern religions, the New Age, and more. Occulture draws on survey data, interviews, and more to provide the first, ground-breaking, big-picture examination of the re-enchantment of America.

About the Authors

CHRISTIAN SMITH’s most recent published books were Why Religion Went Obsolete (OUP, 2025) and Divided By Faith (OUP, 2025).

MATTHEW COETZEE is the author of “Recurating Robben Island” in the American Journal of Cultural Sociology

BRIDGET RITZ is co-author of Religious Parenting: Transmitting Faith and Values in Contemporary America (2020).

UK: April 2027

A$TBC | NZ$TBC | AE | 235x156mm

978-0-19-785575-1

HB | 448pp

Available as an Ebook

Trads

Latin Mass Catholics in the United States

STEPHEN CRANNEY, Baylor University’s Institute for the Studies of Religion and STEPHEN BULLIVANT, St Mary’s University, UK; University of Notre Dame, Australia

• Demonstrates that Trads are more complex than media portrayals suggest

Trads: Latin Mass Catholics in the United States offers the first full-scale, data-driven portrait of the strikingly resilient movement of Traditional Latin Mass Catholics—or “Trads.”

Blending ethnographic observation, original survey data, and in-depth interviews, they reveal who attends Mass in Latin, what motivates them, how they differ from other American Catholics, and what their growth means for the Church’s future.

About the Authors

STEPHEN CRANNEY has published over 30 peer-reviewed studies. His research has been featured in The Guardian, The New York Times, Deseret News, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, and Christianity Today.

STEPHEN BULLIVANT’s books include Mass Exodus: Catholic Disaffiliation in Britain and America since Vatican II (OUP, 2019), Nonverts: The Making of Ex-Christian America (OUP, 2022), and, with Shaun Blanchard, Vatican II: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2023).

UK: March 2027

A$TBC | NZ$TBC | AE | 210x140mm

978-0-19-784390-1

HB | 240pp

Available as an Ebook

By Land and by Sea

The Persian Wars and the Birth of Classical Greece

JEREMY McINERNEY, University of Pennsylvania

• Offers a fresh, compelling account of one of history’s most famous wars, distilling cutting-edge scholarship into an accessible narrative

• Brings new voices and perspectives to life, drawing on sources rarely included in traditional Greek-centered accounts

By Land and by Sea tells the story of the Persian Wars but without the familiar biases against the Persians, and without accepting the Greek accounts of their victory uncritically. It introduces the reader to the Persians as the sophisticated and accomplished rulers of a multi-ethnic world empire and explains how imperial ambitions collided with the harsh realities of fighting by both land and sea.

Part of the Ancient Warfare and Civilization series

About the Author

JEREMY MCINERNEY is the author of Centaurs and SnakeKings: Hybrids and the Greek Imagination, Ancient Greece: A New History, and The Cattle of the Sun: Cows and Culture in the World of the Ancient Greeks

The New Roman Empire A History

of Byzantium

ANTHONY KALDELLIS, University of Chicago

“Outstanding in every aspect.” Library Journal

“Provides an astonishingly detailed and authoritative history of the Eastern Roman Empire, in which the author shows a remarkable depth of knowledge.... A highly readable achievement.” Times Literary Supplement

The New Roman Empire is the first full, single-author history of Byzantium (the eastern Roman empire) to appear in a generation. It begins with the foundation of Constantinople in AD 324 and ends with the fall of the empire to the Ottoman Turks in the fifteenth century, presenting those twelve centuries in an accessible narrative of events, free of jargon. The book focuses on political and military history, as well as all the major changes in religion, society, administration, demography, and economy.

About the Author

ANTHONY KALDELLIS is Professor of Classics at the University of Chicago. His previous books include A Cabinet of Byzantine Curiosities; Streams of Gold, Rivers of Blood, 1453: The Conquest and Tragedy of Constantinople, and, as translator and editor, Prokopios’ The Secret History. In 2019, he began hosting the podcast “Byzantium & Friends.”

UK: February 2027

A$TBC |

978-0-19-781876-3

HB | 336pp

46 B&W images and 8-page color insert Available as an Ebook

UK: December 2026

A$TBC | NZ$TBC | AE | 235x156mm

978-0-19-785526-3

PB | 1152pp

75 illustrations Available as an Ebook NEW IN PAPERBACK

CULTURE & LITERATURE

Culture as Counterculture

Essays on Literature and Ideas

ADAM KIRSCH, Editor, Wall Street Journal’s weekend Review section

• Written by a leading cultural critic and Wall Street Journal book reviewer, offering trusted insight and expertise

• Features wide-ranging essays that explore literature, history, religion, and the fate of culture in a technological age

• Delivers original literary and cultural analysis in a style that is clear, engaging, and accessible to general readers

• Brings together secular and Jewish perspectives to illuminate enduring questions of faith, meaning, and modernity

In Culture as Counterculture, leading literary critic and intellectual Adam Kirsch explores the question of how 21st-century religion, art, and science engage with the past, and are both re-enlivened and redefined by it.

About the Author

ADAM KIRSCH is a poet and critic whose writing appears regularly in The New Yorker, the New York Review of Books, and other publications. He is a 2016 Guggenheim Fellow and an editor at the Wall Street Journal’s weekend Review section.

Dead Dharma

The Grateful Dead and the American Quest for Transcendence

CASEY RAE, Cultural Critic

How did the Grateful Dead rise from 1960s San Francisco counterculture to become such unlikely guides for an American spiritual odyssey? Blending cultural history, spiritual sociology, and musicology, Casey Rae connects the band’s improvisational ethos to ancient and contemporary Buddhist thought, early and ongoing psychedelic exploration, and the midcentury counterculture along with its commodified reincarnations. From the Beat Generation to today’s spiritual supermarket, Dead Dharma shows how the Dead’s music and mythos offered many a path of transcendence and ecstatic communion within the endless dance of impermanence.

UK: January 2027

A$TBC | NZ$TBC | AE | 234x156mm

978-0-19-779208-7

HB | 240pp

30 B&W halftones Available as an Ebook

About the Author

CASEY RAE is an author, music industry veteran, and cultural critic whose work explores intersections of music, literature, technology, and spirituality. He is the author of William S. Burroughs and the Cult of Rock ‘n’ Roll and Music Copyright: A Definitive Guide for the Digital Age

UK: February 2027

A$TBC | NZ$TBC | AE | 235x156mm

978-0-19-752968-3

HB | 344pp

10 B&W photographs Available as an Ebook

For the Dead Remember

The Life of M. R. James

DARRYL JONES, Trinity College Dublin

• The first biography of M. R. James to engage with the issues of politics, gender, and sexuality in the Victorian and Edwardian periods

• Written from many years of deep research in archival records and family papers, explores significant new interpretation of M. R. James as a repressed gay man, based on years of archival scholarship

A biography of the greatest writer of ghost stories, M. R. James, who was also the foremost scholar of medieval manuscripts and the occult of his day. This is also the portrait of an age and a generation in changing times, told through the life of one man and the institutions to which he belonged, Eton and King’s College Cambridge.

About the Author

DARRYL JONES is the author or editor of fourteen books and numerous articles, mostly on nineteenth-century literature and popular literature. In 2011, he edited the Oxford World’s Classics edition of M. R. James’s Collected Ghost Stories. He is the General Editor of the Oxford Sherlock Holmes, for which series he edited The Hound of the Baskervilles.

UK: September 2026

A$58.95 |

978-0-19-883523-3

HB | 528pp

10 B&W images Available as an Ebook

CULTURE & LITERATURE

Vampire Tales

Edited

by NICK GROOM, University of Macau

• From Lord Byron and John William Polidori to Mary Elizabeth Braddon and Rudyard Kipling, this new edition brings together the best Romantic and Victorian vampire tales predating Bram Stoker’s Dracula

• Complete with an in-depth introduction, comprehensive explanatory notes, detailed timeline of vampire publications up to 1897, and up-to-date recommendations for further reading

This collection, edited by Nick Groom, explores the extraordinary variety and range of the vampire in English literature prior to the publication of Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897): it includes classical and mediaeval vampires, Islamic and Caribbean vampires, aristocratic and penurious vampires, abject vampires and dandified vampires, erudite vampires and bestial vampires, invisible vampires and psychic vampires, and, of course, she-vampires.

Part of the Oxford World’s Classics Hardback Collection series

About the Author

NICK GROOM is Professor of Literature in English at the University of Macau. He is best known for his work on Gothic literature, including The Vampire: A New History (2020), The Gothic: A Very Short Introduction (2012), and scholarly editions of Frankenstein, The Italian, The Monk, and The Castle of Otranto for Oxford World’s Classics.

UK: September 2026 A$41.95 |

978-0-19-881465-8

HB | 368pp

Available as an Ebook

publicity

WORLD’S CLASSICS

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

The New Oxford Shakespeare

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Introduction by VARSHA PANJWANI, NYU (London)

Edited by TERRI BOURUS, Florida State University, and General Editor for OWC Shakespeare EMMA SMITH, University of Oxford

A Midsummer Night’s Dream evokes images of fairies, dreams, changeling children, and actors being transformed into asses. But is the play as ethereal as these associations suggest? Varsha Panjwani argues that it a rare work of art that is both hilarious and profound, dream and nightmare, submissive and yet subversive. She demonstrates how this play uses dreams as a device to make us examine our reality and the power structures that we have constructed based on class, gender, sexuality, ability, race, nationality, religion, and age.

Richard III

The New Oxford Shakespeare

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Introduction by SUSAN L. ANDERSON, Mary Baldwin University

Edited by JOHN JOWETT, University of Birmingham, and General Editor for OWC Shakespeare EMMA SMITH, University of Oxford

Richard III is Shakespeare’s most charismatic protagonist-villain, exercising his wrongdoing with devilish glee and dazzling loquaciousness. He is also one of the most notorious examples in English literature of a damaging equation of disability with moral failing. The introduction to this edition provides a fresh take on this play’s attractions and repulsions. Susan L. Anderson details how Shakespeare’s telling of the final chapter in the Wars of the Roses has irrevocably shaped both the reputation of the historical figure of Richard III and the way disability is represented on stage and in fiction.

About the Editors

TERRI BOURUS, Florida State University.

EMMA SMITH, Professor of Shakespeare Studies, University of Oxford.

UK: September 2026

A$19.95 | NZ$22.99 | TD | 196x129mm

978-0-19-888189-6

| 192pp

as an Ebook

About the Editors

JOHN JOWETT is the General Editor of The New Oxford Shakespeare Complete Works with particular responsibility for the original-spelling Critical Reference edition.

EMMA SMITH, Professor of Shakespeare Studies, University of Oxford.

UK: September 2026

A$19.95 | NZ$22.99 | TD | 196x129mm

978-0-19-286700-1

| 224pp

as an Ebook

Pericles

The New Oxford Shakespeare WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Introduction by EDEL SEMPLE, University College Cork, and RORY LOUGHNANE, University of Kent

Edited by GEORGE WILKINS, and General Editor for OWC Shakespeare, EMMA SMITH, University of Oxford

Written by Shakespeare and George Wilkins, Pericles capitalises on the seventeenth-century vogue for tragicomic romance and it proved to be a hit on the stage and in print. In the twenty-first century, Pericles has again surged in popularity. Inspiring novels by bestselling writers and theatrical adaptations around the globe, this ancient story is used to explore contemporary concerns such as displacement, the treatment of women, the abuse of authority, and the persistence of hope in the face of tragedy.

OXFORD WORLD’S CLASSICS

Timon of Athens

The New Oxford Shakespeare WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Introduction by SOPHIE BATTELL, Independent Scholar

Edited by GARY TAYLOR, Florida State University, FRANCIS X. CONNOR, Wichita State University, and General Editor for OWC Shakespeare, EMMA SMITH, University of Oxford

Coriolanus

The New Oxford Shakespeare WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Introduction by TED TREGEAR, Merton College, Oxford

Edited by FRANCIS X. CONNOR, Wichita State University, and General Editor for OWC Shakespeare, EMMA SMITH, University of Oxford

UK: September 2026

A$19.95

NZ$22.99

| 196x129mm

978-0-19-288978-2 PB | 192pp

Available as

Ebook

In Timon of Athens, Shakespeare and Middleton chart the dramatic downfall of an Athenian nobleman, exposing the corrosive effects of money and status. At once a critique of wealth inequality and a meditation on the fragility of human bonds, the play presents Timon as one of the playwright’s most puzzling and enigmatic creations. In her introduction, Sophie Battell connects early modern debates on usury to the continuing reverberations of the recent financial crisis and global recession.

Based on events from Roman history, but glancing at contemporary popular discontent, Coriolanus is a highly sophisticated analysis of crisis: social, political, economic, ecological, and psychological. It stages the unpredictable struggle between Rome’s ruling class and its people, testing out the prospects and limits of political action, and reflecting on the tragic inflections of politics itself.

UK: September 2026 A$19.95

978-0-19-891606-2

UK: September 2026

A$19.95

NZ$22.99

| 196x129mm

978-0-19-891450-1

PB | 256pp

Available as an Ebook

WORLD’S CLASSICS

Mario and the Magician and Other Late Stories

THOMAS MANN

RITCHIE ROBERTSON, University of Oxford

Translated by IAIN GALBRAITH, Independent Author and Translator

• Sheds new light on five lesser-known works by Thomas Mann

• Accompanied by extensive notes and an introduction exploring the themes of each short story and Mann’s own lived experience

Five stories in which Mann depicts life under the Weimar Republic; the activities of a power-ctazed hyonotist symbolizing Italian Fascism; an ancient Indian legend humorously raising questions of personal identity; an ironic take on Moses in the Old Testament; and finally a story set in the 1920s in which Mann confronts the taboo subject of cancer.

Death’s Jest-Book and Other Writings

THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES

Edited by ANDREW HODGSON, University of Birmingham

• The first annotated edition of Beddoes’s writings

• Displays the full range of genres in which Beddoes wrote, including lyric, drama, narrative poems, letters, fragments, criticism

This volume presents a wide selection of Beddoes’s writings across a variety of genres. At its heart lies his sprawling masterpiece Death’s Jest-Book, an extravagant attempt to resurrect the tradition of Shakespearean verse drama that obsessed Beddoes throughout his writing life.

Penguin Island

ANATOLE FRANCE

Translated by JORDAN FINKIN, Hebrew Union College

• Engages with the rich scholarship on the Dreyfus Affair as a watershed moment for French intellectual life

• Explanatory notes provide a detailed key to the historical figures and events that France describes in allegorical form and point out other literary works and authors with whom France was in dialogue

Anatole France’s 1908 novel Penguin Island offers a thinly veiled lampoon of French history and human civilization. This new translation offers a full introduction to its historical and literary context, including France’s life and literary legacy.

UK: November 2026

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UK: February 2027

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UK: November 2026

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The Princess Casamassima

HENRY JAMES

Edited by HUTNER GORDON, University of Illinois

• Concerns the makings of a terrorist during a period of radical activism in the late nineteenth century

• Provides a full context for understanding the novel’s place in literary history, in James’s career, and how we think about the relation between Politics and fiction

The Princess Casamassima (1886) is among the most important novels in Henry James’s oeuvre. This edition includes the magisterial preface James later wrote for the New York edition. Along with a full set of explanatory notes, Gordon Hutner’s introduction explores the novel’s literary and social background.

OXFORD WORLD’S CLASSICS

Heroides (Heroines)

OVID

Edited by CAROLE E. NEWLANDS, University of Colorado Boulder

New Translation by SARAH KAFATOU

• Conveys the dignity, the immediacy, the urgency or the poignance of the original voices

Ovid’s Heroides (Heroines) is a unique collection of fictional letters, written by an outstanding poet of the Augustan age. Self-portraits, in effect, of women exposed to extreme stress through their relationships to beloved men, these letters bring characters familiar from classical mythology to life, affording intimate glimpses into the ways of thought and feeling of a culture that is distant, and yet easily accessible to readers today.

The Brother

NADEZHDA KHVOSHCHINSKAYA

Edited by ANNA A. BERMAN, University of Cambridge, and HILDE HOOGENBOOM, Arizona State University

Translated by NORA SELIGMAN

FAVOROV, Independent Scholar and Translator

• The first English translation of The Brother written by Russia’s greatest forgotten novelist

The Brother is an unflinching portrayal of brutal provincial patriarchy. It tells the story of three sisters trapped on their remote, deteriorating family estate and their brother, a corrupt St Petersburg official who schemes to take their inheritances. When he returns home, a dark family drama ensues, infused with wry humor and pathos.

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OXFORD WORLD’S CLASSICS

Women Romantic Poets

Edited by CLAIRE KNOWLES, La Trobe University

• Includes poets from across the British Isles and lesser-known poets, as well as poets from a variety of class and religious affiliations

• Reflects the diversity of Romantic female poets and highlights connections between women within the literary culture of the Romantic period

Women Romantic Poets is a collection of poetry by some of the most important female poets of the Romantic period. Including canonical figures such as Charlotte Smith, Mary Robinson, and Letitia Landon alongside lesser-known poets such as Amelia Opie, Ann Batten Cristall, and Isabella Lickbarrow, this volume offers an accessible and erudite introduction to the female poetry of the Romantic era.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra

A Book for Everyone and Nobody Second Edition

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

Edited by GRAHAM PARKES, University of Vienna

• New introduction and updated translation

• Retains the musicality of the original, by paying attention to the rhythms and cadences of the German

Thus Spoke Zarathustra Nietzsche addresses the problem of how to live a fulfilling life in a world without meaning, in the aftermath of ‘the death of God’. Nietzsche’s solution lies in the idea of eternal recoming which he calls ‘the highest formula of affirmation that can ever be attained’.

The Captive

MARCEL PROUST

Introduction by ELISABETH LADENSON, Columbia University

Edited by ADAM WATT, University of Exeter, and BRIAN NELSON, Emeritus Professor, Monash University

Translated by ANDREW ROTHWELL, Emeritus Professor, Swansea University

• New translation of Marcel Proust’s landmark work

• Includes in-depth, expert introduction and wide-ranging explanatory notes

The fifth volume of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time focuses principally on the protagonist’s relationship with Albertine in Paris. The Captive, however, is no conventional love story. Proximity and intimacy breed anxiety and suffering on account of the protagonist’s jealousy.

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Sodom and Gomorrah

MARCEL PROUST

Translated by HELEN CONSTANTINE

Introduction by MICHAEL LUCE, University of California, Berkeley

Edited by ADAM WATT, University of Exeter

• An accomplished new translation by renowned translator Helen Constantine that will be of interest to readers new to Proust and those already familiar with the author and his work

Sodom and Gomorrah is the fourth volume of Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time (1913-27), one of the most important novels of the twentieth century. It ponders questions of time, memory, identity, sensation, art, and existence. This volume lays bare the ways in which ambitions and desires are nurtured, projected, masked, and exposed. Suffering, in love, is rarely far away.

About the Editor

ADAM WATT is Professor of French and Comparative Literature at the University of Exeter, where he is Deputy ProVice-Chancellor of the Faculty of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences. His books include Reading in Proust’s A la recherche (2009), The Cambridge Introduction to Marcel Proust (2011), a critical biography of Proust (2013), and, as editor, Marcel Proust in Context (2013) and The Cambridge History of the Novel in French (2021).

UK: June 2026

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The Epic of Christ

MARCO GIROLAMO VIDA

Translated by L. B. T. HOUGHTON, University of Edinburgh

• A major new English translation of Vida’s poem, reflecting the literary texture and nuances of the text

Marco Girolamo Vida’s Christias, or The Epic of Christ, is one of the supreme achievements of sixteenth-century literature. It offers a vivid, energetic retelling of the life of Christ, steeped in the classical tradition of epic poetry as represented chiefly by Virgil’s Aeneid. The familiar Bible stories are recast in the heroic idiom of Latin epic, representing Christ’s mission on earth as a quest for the redemption of humanity. Vida deploys the full resources of classical rhetoric to lend power and pathos to Christian theology, while subtle and intricate allusions to classical texts and other earlier literature deepen the implications of his narrative and the characterisation of major figures from the biblical tradition.

About the Translator

L. B. T. HOUGHTON is Lecturer in Latin at the University of Edinburgh. He is the author of Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue in the Italian Renaissance (2019) and has edited several collections of essays, including Perceptions of Horace (with Maria Wyke, 2009), Neo-Latin Poetry in the British Isles (with Gesine Manuwald, 2012), and Virgil and Renaissance Culture (with Marco Sgarbi, 2018).

UK: October 2026

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OXFORD WORLD’S CLASSICS

Ourika, Édouard, and Olivier

CLAIRE DE DURAS

Edited by PRATIMA PRASAD, University of Massachusetts Boston

Translated by CHRIS MILLER

• Includes the first translation of Olivier into English, and the first modern translation of Édouard

A key figure in the literary world of postRevolutionary Paris, Claire de Duras was a writer of exceptional talent, admired by Sainte-Beuve and Goethe, imitated by Stendhal, and influencing later writers such as Fromentin. This volume presents new translations by Chris Miller of three novellas by Claire de Duras, providing pioneering studies in race, class, and sexuality. The volume includes notes and an introduction by Pratima Prasad, highlighting major themes in the texts.

Imre

A Memorandum

EDWARD PRIME-STEVENSON

Edited by ZSOLT BOJTI, ELTE Eötvös Loránd University, and BROOKE CAMERON, Queen’s University

• A landmark novel about the same-sex relationship between two men

• Presents an authentic and authoritative version of the novel, preserving the author’s idiosyncratic style

Edward Prime-Stevenson’s Imre: A Memorandum (1906), considered one of the first examples of the ‘homosexual’ novel, depicts the developing romantic relationship between Englishman Oswald and dashing Hungarian officer Imre. The volume also includes the short story ‘The Lady with the Madonna-Face’, in which Imre returns.

The Empire of the Ants and Other Stories

H. G. WELLS

Edited

By WILL TATTERSDILL, Glasgow University

• Complete with an in-depth scholarly introduction, extensive notes, author biography, and chronology

Wells is best-known today for his science fiction novels and his prophetic writings, but he began his career as a journalist and wrote an extraordinary number of tales, sketches, and thought-experiments, forty of which are collected here. This edition contains many acknowledged classics, but also collects some of the less celebrated gems found in the pages of the magazines and newspapers in which Wells learned his craft.

UK: July 2026

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VERY SHORT INTRODUCTIONS

Aerospace Engineering

A Very Short Introduction

JOHN BAKER, University of Alabama

• Defines aerospace engineering and its place within the context of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics)

• Examines Earth’s atmosphere and the environment of space

Aerospace engineering is the engineering of flight, and involves the design and operation of planes and space vehicles. This Very Short Introduction provides an overview of the concepts involved in the creation of systems that fly. Among the topics discussed are aerodynamics, aircraft structures and materials, aircraft propulsion, flight mechanics, and stability and control.

Ancient Women

Philosophers

A Very Short Introduction

DOROTA DUTSCH, University of California

• A genuinely global, comparative history of ancient thought

• A new method that recovers women’s thought from indirect evidence

This Very Short Introduction draws on recent scholarship and a flexible definition of “philosophy,” and follows all who traveled under that sign in antiquity: priestesses, court historians, household advisors, renunciants, Christian teachers, and poets. It reframes philosophy not as a credentialed profession but as a way of life, expressed through weaving, stitching, lamentation, singing, and the management of daily care.

Business Ethics

A Very Short Introduction

NILS OLE OERMANN, Leuphana University of Lüneburg

• Draws on contemporary case studies, such as Amazon or the position of China, to illustrate ethical dilemmas

• Demonstrates the necessity for an increased ethical response within modern industry for true sustainability

This Very Short Introduction draws on a range of contemporary case studies for issues such as accountability and corporate scandal, to illustrate the need for and benefits of ethical reflection in businesses today. Exploring key ethical concepts, including justice, freedom, and responsibility, he encourages a critical response to ethical dilemmas in the industry.

UK: August 2026

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VERY SHORT INTRODUCTIONS

Calvinism

A Very Short Introduction

Second Edition

JON BALSERAK, University of Bristol

• Addresses the challenges Calvinism faces in the twenty-first century— specifically, increased secularism, authoritarianism, and immorality— and discusses different Calvinist responses to these challenges

Calvinism, based on the ideas of John Calvin, is a massive religion today, with widespread church affiliations. It has influenced contemporary thought—especially western thought— on everything from civil government to money, and divorce. Jon Balserak explores the history of the religion and discusses the key ideas in Calvinist theory.

Chamber Music

A Very Short Introduction

LAURA

TUNBRIDGE, University of Oxford

• Showcases key repertoire and ideas from several centuries

This Very Short Introduction explores why chamber music has become so valued by players, scholars, and audiences.

Laura Tunbridge introduces significant aspects of chamber music, its ideals and practices, exemplified by a variety of ensembles, times, pieces, and places. Through concise and accessible examples, Tunbridge explores the many forms and sizes taken by chamber music ensembles and the impact of music publishing, concert programming, recording technologies, and patterns of travel on this repertoire.

Classical Mechanics

A Very Short Introduction

YAHYA MODARRES-SADEGHI, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

• Explains complex concepts without relying on equations

• Introduces concepts that form the baseline of many undergraduate STEM courses

• Utilizes simple diagrams and drawings

Classical mechanics is the science of how objects move: where they are, where they’re going, and how they’re being moved. This Very Short Introduction looks at how mechanics explains how things move in nature. This allows humans to invent machines that have enabled them to fly, go to space, discover life deep in the ocean, and conduct robot-assisted brain surgery.

UK: June 2026

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978-0-19-288890-7

PB | 160pp

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Climate

A Very Short Introduction

Second Edition

MARK MASLIN, University College, London

• Updated information on the science of climate, weather, and climate change, including recent examples of extreme weather events

This Very Short Introduction considers all aspects of the global climate system, exploring and explaining the different components that have controlled climate on Earth throughout its history. Maslin concludes by discussing climate change in the far future and the death of planet Earth.

VERY SHORT INTRODUCTIONS

Contract Law

A

Very Short Introduction

MINDY

CHEN-WISHART, National University of Singapore

• Explores how contract law shapes our daily interactions, from the mundane to the monumental

• Reveals how contract law reflects our evolving values about trust, fairness, and human relationships, making the abstract principles surprisingly personal and immediate

This Very Short Introduction shows how contract law prescribes the conditions for the cooperation and coordination that construct the marketplace by ensuring agreements are voluntary, maintaining reciprocity between parties, and providing remedies when contracts are breached.

Derrida

A Very Short Introduction

Second Edition

SIMON GLENDINNING, London School of Economics and Political Science

Jacques Derrida had a major influence on 20th century philosophy and the idea of postmodernism. Challenging some of the deepest assumptions of the Western philosophical tradition, he is most renowned-or condemned-for his engagement with the movement that he called ‘deconstruction’.

In this Very Short Introduction, Simon Glendinning explores both the difficulty and significance of the work of Derrida. Glendinning provides a clear sense of the centrality of Derrida’s interest in Europe and his relationship to philosophy, to religious history, and to modern democratic politics.

UK: October 2026

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978-0-19-894381-5

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978-0-19-886280-2

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UK: July 2026

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978-0-19-890751-0

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VERY SHORT INTRODUCTIONS

Documentary Film

A Very Short Introduction

Second Edition

PATRICIA AUFDERHEIDE, American University

• Draws on the author’s five decades of experience as a film scholar and critic

Documentary Film: A Very Short Introduction takes readers on the journey of documentary history and charts the lively, often fierce debates among filmmakers and scholars about the best ways to represent reality and to tell the truths worth telling. The second edition provides new information on recent developments within the field, including the advent of artificial intelligence, digital misinformation, conservative advocacy documentaries, and the rise of streaming services.

Evolutionary Psychology

A Very Short Introduction

MARYANNE L. FISHER, Saint Mary’s University, and T. JOEL WADE, Bucknell University

• Considers the many sources of data evolutionary psychologists draw on today to form a more complete understanding of the complexity of humans

Evolutionary psychology uses our evolutionary heritage as a framework for understanding the nuances of human brains. It suggests that how we respond to situations emotionally, our thoughts, and our behaviours, reflect strategies that enabled our ancestors to survive.

This Very Short Introductions draws on a wide range of data to shed light on the complexity of humans.

Free Will

A Very Short Introduction

Second Edition

THOMAS PINK, Emeritus Professor, King’s College London

• Significantly revised with new conclusions, Thomas Pink provides an original introduction to this perennially fascinating subject

This Very Short Introduction looks at a range of issues surrounding the question of free will and explores this fundamental philosophical issue through the ideas of thinkers from Greek philosophers to present-day. Throughout, Pink examines the history, changing culture, and future of free will.

UK: October 2026

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978-0-19-779826-3

PB | 176pp

10 B&W halftones

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UK: September 2026

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978-0-19-882793-1

PB | 192pp

7 B&W images

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UK: January 2027

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978-0-19-886282-6

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French Literature

A Very Short Introduction

Second Edition

JOHN D. LYONS, University of Virginia

• Gives more consideration of the two French novelists who have received the Nobel Prize for literature since 2010 (Patrick Modiano and Annie Ernaux)

• Presents writers of distinction, such as Laurent Binet, Marie NDiaye, Leila Slimani, Hélène Grémillon, and Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, who have emerged in the past decade

This Very Short Introduction is a guide to the most distinctive works from the Middle Ages through the Renaissance and into the Baroque and Enlightenment periods, and then into the explosion of writings and movements from Romanticism to the twenty-first century.

Hayek

A Very Short Introduction

PETER BOETTKE and SCOTT KING

• Communicates key Hayekian ideas from the various stages of his career in plain English

Friedrich A. Hayek (1899-1992) was one of the twentieth century’s most influential thinkers in economics, political philosophy, and social theory. In this Very Short Introduction, Peter J. Boettke and M. Scott King provide an overview of Hayek’s work. Importantly, they argue that nearly all of Hayek’s work can be read as an effort to help us understand how social coordination is possible without central command. Thus, they present a unifying framework for understanding Hayek’s seemingly disparate contributions.

Hieroglyphs

A Very Short Introduction

Second Edition

PENELOPE WILSON, University of Durham

• Updated throughout to include new discoveries and techniques from the last 20 years

• Provides a renewed appreciation of non-Western studies and perspectives

In this Very Short Introduction Penelope Wilson explores the cultural significance of the script with an emphasis on previously neglected areas such as cryptography, the continuing decipherment into modern times, and examines the powerful fascination hieroglyphs still hold for us today.

UK: November 2026

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978-0-19-897033-0

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UK: January 2027

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VERY SHORT INTRODUCTIONS

Ideology

A Very Short Introduction

Second Edition

MICHAEL FREEDEN, University of Oxford

• Updated due to major changes in concrete ideologies since 2000 and because of a fundamental transformation in the analysis, theory, and awareness of ideology

Ideology has been one of the most controversial terms in our political vocabulary, exciting both denigration and inspiration. This Very Short Introduction considers the reasons for those views and explains why ideologies deserve respect as a major type of political thinking.

Islamic Finance

A Very Short Introduction

ADEEL MALIK, Fellow of St. Peter’s College, Oxford, and USMAN HAYAT, Executive Director of The Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan

• Covers the main debates surrounding Islamic finance’s performance and potential

• Builds connections between Islamic finance and other ethical traditions in finance

With a full scope of financial services, ranging from banking and capital markets to insurance and microfinance, Islamic finance has now become the most prominent form of faith-based finance in the world. This Very Short Introduction sheds light on its core principles and practices, and considers its performance and potential compared with conventional finance.

Judaism

A Very Short Introduction

Third Edition

NORMAN SOLOMON, University of Oxford

• Deals with new developments on issues such as feminism and gender

• Considers recent concessions have been made with regard to marriages contracted abroad

In this Very Short Introduction Normon Soloman explores Judaism as a religion and as a way of life, including its festivals, prayers, customs, and sects. Exploring both how it has developed through the centuries and what defines it as a religion, Solomon explores the key issues and debates of contemporary Judaism in the twenty first century.

UK: October 2027

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UK: December 2026

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illustrations

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UK: June 2026

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978-0-19-893047-1

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Latin American Politics

A Very Short Introduction

JAMES LOXTON, University

of Sydney

• Undertakes an ideologically impartial exploration of the region

The Latin American political landscape has been home to populism, revolutions, dictatorships, democracies, presidentialism, the left, and the right.

James Loxton examines the challenges of governing in the context of high poverty, inequality, violence, regime changes, and wavering democractic practices. This Very Short Introduction offers broader lessons about the fragility of democracy and the danger posed by elected strongmen claiming to be champions of “the people” in their struggle against “the elites.”

VERY SHORT INTRODUCTIONS

Latinx Literature

A Very Short Introduction

FREDERICK LUIS ALDAMA, University of

Texas, Austin

Latinx Literature: A Very Short Introduction invites readers into the richly textured, ever-evolving world of Latinx literary expression. Aldama offers an illuminating overview of the major figures, movements, and themes that have defined Latinx literature across time and place. Rather than attempting a single, all-encompassing narrative, this Very Short Introduction weaves together a layered account that reflects the lived experiences and diverse cultural heritages of authors of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Dominican, Central American, and South American descent.

Letters

A Very Short Introduction

JONATHAN

ELLIS, University of Sheffield

• An original study of letter writing as an art form and genre, including the importance of the letter as a material object

• An up-to-date reflection on contemporary forms of communication, including email

Drawing on a range of examples from classical times to the present, from Cicero to Virginia Woolf to Greta Gerwig, this Very Short Introduction considers why human beings are drawn to exchanging feelings and ideas via letters and why we continue to be fascinated by them today.

UK: May 2027

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UK: November 2026

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978-0-19-766376-9

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UK: January 2027

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978-0-19-883265-2

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VERY SHORT INTRODUCTIONS

Moral Responsibility

A Very Short Introduction

PAUL RUSSELL, Lund University and Professor Emeritus, University of British Columbia

• Provides readers with a stimulating overview of how matters of moral responsibility relate to and illuminate other areas and fields of study and practice

This Very Short Introduction book provides the general reader with an overview of the main issues that arise relating to matters of moral responsibility such as ethics, free will, punishment, moral education and development, social justice and theology. It is this philosophical dimension of moral responsibility that this study is especially concerned with.

Politics

A Very Short Introduction

ATUL KOHLI, Princeton University

• Offers a balanced account of politics in both the Global North and the Global South

• Highlights the importance of democracy and economic equality for the well-being of citizens across the world

• Renders complex political issues in an accessible way

Politics is ubiquitous. In this Very Short Introduction, Atul Kohli provides an overview of politics in modern nationstates. He conceives of politics as struggle for power. Who wins power struggles and why are then deeply consequential for understanding our contemporary human condition.

Rock ‘n’ Roll

A Very Short Introduction

ELIJAH WALD, Musician and Writer

The 800th VSI in the series

UK: August 2026

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978-0-19-888125-4

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• Integrates rock ‘n’ roll’s role during a period of mass influence, societal, and technological change

• Explores the genre’s complex musical styles and evolution of social symbolism

This Very Short Introduction explores the genre of high-energy, electrically amplified music of young dancers and listeners that rose to popularity from 1955-1965 and became emblematic of great social change including racial integration, sexual freedom, and youthful rebellion. Widely disseminated by a period of sweeping technological shifts, rock ‘n’ roll styles and musicians became symbols beyond the music.

UK: October 2026

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978-0-19-775674-4

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The Russian Economy

A Very Short Introduction

Second Edition

RICHARD

CONNOLLY, University of Birmingham

• Discusses the huge changes in the structure of the economy caused by the decision to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022

• Considers the imposition of Western (and allied) sanctions on Russia

For many, Russia’s political influence far exceeds its weight in the global economy. Richard Connolly demonstrates that in fact Russia’s economy affords it global power, and explores how its socialist past has shaped its economic system into a unique blend of state and market.

Satire

A Very Short Introduction

JUDITH HAWLEY, Professor Emerita, University of London

• Provides a workable definition of a difficult genre

• Provides a history of the genre across different time periods, continents, and forms

• Directly confronts the moral problems raised by the critical nature of satire

Satire is essentially a form of criticism that points out faults and failings in others. This Very Short Introduction describes satire as a complex cultural phenomena, appearing in many forms and different national traditions across the ages.

The Spanish Civil War

A Very Short Introduction

Second Edition

HELEN GRAHAM, Royal Holloway, University of London

• Takes account of new historical scholarship but also of the very dramatic shifts in global politics since 2005 which impact directly on how the ‘forever-near’ war of 1936-39 in Spain is interpreted everywhere.

This Very Short Introduction offers an explanation of the war’s complex origins and course, and explores its impact on a personal and international scale. It also provides an ethical reflection on the war in the context of Europe’s tumultuous twentieth century, highlighting why it has inspired some of the greatest writers of our time, and how it continues to resonate today in Britain, continental Europe, and beyond.

UK: August 2026

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978-0-19-892199-8

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UK: November 2026

A$24.95

NZ$28.99

TE | 174x111mm

978-0-19-885605-4

PB | 160pp

Available as an Ebook

UK: November 2026

A$24.95

NZ$28.99

TE | 174x111mm

978-0-19-898882-3

PB | 160pp

Available as an Ebook

VERY SHORT INTRODUCTIONS

The Vikings

A Very Short Introduction

Second Edition

JULIAN D. RICHARDS, University of York

• Extensively revised and updated, based on the latest archaeological discoveries, particularly in Scandinavia and the British Isles, and including the authors’ own groundbreaking research on the Viking Great Army in England

• Interpretations have also been updated to take account of the latest scientific methods, including the use of Ancient DNA analysis, and recent theoretical concepts that have been applied to the Vikings, including the relevance of piracy and organizational structures aboard Viking ships

This Very Short Introduction presents all that is new and exciting about Vikings in a short and accessible volume. It reviews who they were, where they came from, and why, and it also seeks to demonstrate why they have retained their importance to historians.

About the Author

JULIAN D. RICHARDS is Professor of Archaeology at the University of York and founding Director of the Archaeology Data Service and Heritage Science Data Service. He has directed excavations of several Anglo-Scandinavian settlements, and of a cemetery of members of the Viking Great Army at Heath Wood (Derbyshire), and their winter camp at Torksey (Lincolnshire).

October 2026 A$24.95 | NZ$28.99 | TE | 174x111mm

Walter Benjamin

A Very Short Introduction

ELI ZARETSKY, Professor Emeritus, The New School for Social Research

• Shows the unity and coherence of Benjamin’s complex and multidisciplinary work

• Highlights Benjamin’s close friendships with other GermanJewish thinkers

Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) is now generally recognized as one of the most influential thinkers of the last century. This Very Short Introduction explores his extraordinary life and thought. His complex system of criticism is difficult for many readers, but it is coherent in its combination of a Judaic theological perspective with cultural Marxism. Benjamin’s distinctive approach considered literary criticism, visual media, and the impact of cosmopolitanism. This innovative messianic understanding of history would go on to inspire countless critics and even entire schools of academia.

About the Author

ELI ZARETSKY is the author of Political Freud (2015), Why America Needs a Left (2012), and Secrets of the Soul (2005). He is also the editor of the 1984 abridged version of The Polish Peasant in Europe and America.

WHAT EVERYONE NEEDS TO KNOW®

Religion and Violence

What Everyone Needs to Know®

MARK JUERGENSMEYER, Professor Emeritus University of California, Santa Barbara

In this book, Mark Juergensmeyer, one of the world’s leading experts on religion and violence, offers authoritative answers to pressing questions about religion and violence. Drawing on decades of research, case studies, and firsthand experience with groups ranging from ISIS and Hamas to Christian militias and Buddhist extremists in Myanmar, Juergensmeyer provides a nuanced, evidence-based introduction to a topic that shapes global politics and everyday life. Written in an engaging question-andanswer format, this book equips readers to understand the roots of religious violence and its impact on the modern world.

Volcanoes

What Everyone Needs to Know®

TAMIE J. JOVANELLY, Berry College

• Written in an accessible question and answer format

Volcanoes: What Everyone Needs to Know® guides the reader through one of nature’s most fascinating and powerful forces, explaining essential geological concepts critical to understanding how and where volcanoes form before examining their physical structure and associated processes. Through real-world examples-from the explosive history of Mount Vesuvius to the colossal eruption of Yellowstone Supervolcano-Jovanelly uncovers mind-blowing facts about how volcanoes have shaped our planet, impacted the climate, and altered the course of civilizations.

Yoga

What Everyone Needs to Know®

MARK

SINGLETON, University of London

Yoga has a long and complex history that spans thousands of years, yet its story is often misunderstood or oversimplified.

Yoga: What Everyone Needs to Know® offers a clear, accessible, and nuanced introduction to yoga’s development from its earliest roots in ancient South Asia to its modern global presence. Written in an engaging question-and-answer format by a leading scholar of yoga, it is ideal for beginners and anyone seeking deeper insight into this influential tradition.

UK: April 2027

A$TBC | NZ$TBC TA | 210x140mm

978-0-19-781305-8

PB | 224pp

Available as an Ebook

UK: October 2026

A$34.95

NZ$39.99

TA | 210x140mm

978-0-19-781747-6

PB | 328pp

Available as an Ebook

Yoga

What Everyone Needs to Know®

Mark Singleton

UK: May 2027

A$TBC | NZ$TBC TA | 210x140mm

978-0-19-779600-9

PB | 224pp

Available as an Ebook

Cover coming soon