Oxford University Press

Opera was invented at the end of the sixteenth century in imitation of the        supposed style of delivery of ancient Greek tragedy, and, since then, operas based        on Greek drama have been among the most important in the repertoire. This collection        of essays by leading authorities in the fields of Classics, Musicology,...

Emilie Du Chatelet, Mary Somerville and the Newtonian RevolutionThis story of two remarkable women, Emilie du Chatelet and Mary Somerville, whose lives were drawn together by their irresistible desire for mathematical knowledge, reveals the intimate links between the Newtonian revolution and the origins of intellectual and political liberty....

What Everyone Needs to KnowFor nearly 60 years--from its uprising against British rule in the 1950s, to the bloody civil war between Greek and Turkish Cypriots in the 1960s, the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in the 1970s, and the United Nation&'s ongoing 30-year effort to reunite the island--the tiny Mediterranean nation of Cyprus has taken a...

Frank Ormsby's new collection travels among places strange and familiar: from the shaping memories of an upbringing in rural County Fermanagh, to a Belfast reinventing itself in a new century and the exhilarating novelty of America.  In the first part of Fireflies Ormsby explores the past and vibrant present of an area of New York State which he...

Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About ItIn the universally acclaimed and award-winning The Bottom Billion, Paul Collier reveals that fifty failed states--home to the poorest one billion people on Earth--pose the central challenge of the developing world in the twenty-first century. The book shines much-needed light on...

A Very Short IntroductionWhat is 'nothing'? What remains when you take all the matter away? Can empty space - a void - exist? This  Very Short Introduction explores the science and history of the elusive void: from Aristotle's theories to black holes and quantum particles, and why the latest discoveries about the vacuum tell us extraordinary things...