Oxford University Press

What is the purpose of a work of art? What drives us to make art? Why do we value art and consume it? Nick Zangwill argues that we cannot understand the nature of art without first having answers to these fundamental questions. On his view, which he dubs 'the Aesthetic Creation Theory', a work of art is something created for a particular aesthetic...

Sumerian is the world's oldest written language, first written down, in ancient Iraq, some 5000 years ago. These translations into modern English are the most comprehensive collection available of the world's first literature, encompassing narrative myths, lyrical hymns, proverbs, and love poetry,...

In the mid 1960s, C. Vann Woodward was asked to organize a program of broadcast        lectures on US history for the Voice of America as part of a longer series designed        to acquaint foreign audiences with leaders in American arts and sciences. Reasoning        that a comparative approach "e;was peculiarly adapted to the interests and...

How Hitler's Henchmen Fled JusticeThe story of how Nazi war criminals escaped from justice by fleeing through the Tyrolean Alps to Italian seaports at the end of the Second World War and the role played by the Red Cross, the Vatican, and the Secret Services in smuggling them away from prosecution in Europe to a new life in South America....

Inconstant and forbidding, the arctic has lured misguided voyagers into the cold        for centuries--pushing them beyond the limits of their knowledge, technology, and        endurance. A Fabulous Kingdom charts these quests and the eventual race for the        North Pole, chronicling the lives and adventures that would eventually throw...

Fletcher Henderson (1897 - 1952) is a major figure in the history of jazz. He led the premier black jazz band of the 1920s and the early 1930s, and wrote the swing arrangements that helped make Benny Goodman the 'King of Swing'.    The Uncrowned King of Swing is the first interpretive study of his music and career, using the full range of sources...