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Pages: 576,
Specialty: Physics,
Publisher: Oxford UP,
Publication Year: 2017,
Cover: Paperback,
Dimensions: 190x245x29mm

The Physical World offers a grand vision of the essential unity of physics that will enable the reader to see the world through the eyes of a physicist and understand their thinking. The text follows Einstein's dictum that 'explanations should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler', to give an honest account of how modern physicists understand their subject, including the shortcomings of current theory. The result is an up-to-date and engaging portrait of physics that contains concise derivations of the important results in a style where every step in a derivation is clearly explained, so that anyone with the appropriate mathematical skills will find the text easy to digest. It is over half a century since The Feynman Lectures in Physics were published. A new authoritative account of fundamental physics covering all branches of the subject is now well overdue. The Physical World has been written to satisfy this need. The book concentrates on the conceptual principles of each branch of physics and shows how they fit together to form a coherent whole. Emphasis is placed on the use of variational principles in physics, and in particular the principle of least action, an approach that lies at the heart of modern theoretical physics, but has been neglected in most introductory accounts of the subject. show more

Weight: 1.16 KG
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Pages: 320,
Specialty: Physics,
Publisher: Oxford UP,
Publication Year: 2013,
Cover: Paperback,
Dimensions: 190x246x16mm

The study of solids is one of the richest, most exciting, and most successful branches of physics. While the subject of solid state physics is often viewed as dry and tedious this new book presents the topic instead as an exciting exposition of fundamental principles and great intellectual breakthroughs. Beginning with a discussion of how the study of heat capacity of solids ushered in the quantum revolution, the author presents the key ideas of the field while emphasizing the deep underlying concepts. The book begins with a discussion of the Einstein/Debye model of specific heat, and the Drude/Sommerfeld theories of electrons in solids, which can all be understood without reference to any underlying crystal structure. The failures of these theories force a more serious investigation of microscopics. Many of the key ideas about waves in solids are then introduced using one dimensional models in order to convey concepts without getting bogged down with details. Only then does the book turn to consider real materials. Chemical bonding is introduced and then atoms can be bonded together to crystal structures and reciprocal space results. Diffraction experiments, as the central application of these ideas, are discussed in great detail. From there, the connection is made to electron wave diffraction in solids and how it results in electronic band structure. The natural culmination of this thread is the triumph of semiconductor physics and devices. The final section of the book considers magnetism in order to discuss a range of deeper concepts. The failures of band theory due to electron interaction, spontaneous magnetic orders, and mean field theories are presented well. Finally, the book gives a brief exposition of the Hubbard model that undergraduates can understand. The book presents all of this material in a clear fashion, dense with explanatory or just plain entertaining footnotes. This may be the best introductory book for learning solid state physics. It is certainly the most fun to read. show more

Weight: 0.69 KG
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Pages: 896,
Specialty: Architecture,
Publisher: Oxford UP,
Publication Year: 2016,
Cover: Paperback,
Dimensions: 135x195x40mm

Containing over 6,000 entries from Aalto to Zwinger and written in a clear and concise style, this authoritative dictionary covers architectural history in detail, from ancient times to the present day. It also includes concise biographies of hundreds of architects from history (excluding living persons), from Sir Francis Bacon and Imhotep to Liang Ssu-ch'eng and Francis Inigo Thomas. The text is complemented by over 260 beautiful and meticulous line drawings, labelled cross-sections, and diagrams. These include precise drawings of typical building features, making it easy for readers to identify particular period styles. This third edition of The Oxford Dictionary of Architecture has been extensively revised and expanded, with over 900 new entries including hundreds of definitions of garden and landscape terms such as Baroque garden, floral clock, hortus conclusus, and Zen garden-design. Each entry is followed by a mini-bibliography, with suggestions for further reading. With clear descriptions providing in-depth analysis, it is invaluable for students, professional architects, art historians, and anyone interested in architecture and garden design, and provides a fascinating wealth of information for the general reader. show more

Weight: 0.61 KG
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Pages: 576,
Specialty: Literature,
Publisher: Oxford UP,
Publication Year: 2010,
Cover: Paperback,
Dimensions: 130x195x32mm

V. S. Pritchett, one our greatest short-story writers, has chosen forty-one stories written in the English language for this volume, producing a collection that successfully displays the wealth and variety of an art that spans some 200 years. Great Britain, America, and especially Eire have fine traditions of short-story writing that have developed from the time of Sir Walter Scott and Nathaniel Hawthorne, while in the last century the art was perfected by Ernest Hemingway, D. H. Lawrence, W. Somerset Maugham, John Updike, and V. S. Pritchett himself. The Irish contribution includes such masters as James Joyce, Frank O'Connor, and Liam O'Flaherty, and stories by Canadian, Indian, New Zealand, and Australian writers show the full range of invention and ability in a genre that continues to flourish. show more

Weight: 0.42 KG
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Pages: 496,
Specialty: Literature,
Publisher: Oxford UP,
Publication Year: 2010,
Cover: Paperback,
Dimensions: 130x195x28mm

This collection of short stories, including many new translations, is the first to span the whole of Japan's modern era from the end of the nineteenth century to the present day. Beginning with the first writings to assimilate and rework Western literary traditions, through the flourishing of the short story genre in the cosmopolitan atmosphere of the Taisho era, to the new breed of writers produced under the constraints of literary censorship, and the current writings reflecting the pitfalls and paradoxes of modern life, this anthology offers a stimulating survey of the development of the Japanese short story. Various indigenous traditions, in addition to those drawn from the West, recur throughout the stories: stories of the self, of the Water Trade (Tokyo's nightlife of geishas and prostitutes), of social comment, love and obsession, legends and fairytales. This collection includes the work of two Nobel prize-winners: Kawabata and Oe, the talented women writers Hirabayashi, Euchi, Okamoto, and Hayashi, together with the acclaimed Tanizaki, Mishima, and Murakami. The introduction by Theodore Goossen gives insight into these exotic and enigmatic, sometimes disturbing stories, derived from the lyrical roots of Japanese literature with its distinctive stress on atmosphere and beauty. show more

Weight: 0.36 KG
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Pages: 592,
Specialty: Literature,
Publisher: Oxford UP,
Publication Year: 2010,
Cover: Paperback,
Dimensions: 130x196x34mm

Ireland has long been a nation of story-tellers. What began as a lively form of entertainment has grown into an unrivalled literary genre. Although Ireland may mourn the loss of the seanchai, the old hearthside story-teller, the Irish art of story-telling is by no means lost. This varied anthology traces the development of the Irish short story from the early folk-tales of the oral tradition through Oliver Goldsmith, Maria Edgeworth, James Joyce, and Liam O'Flaherty, and on to the rising stars of the modern generation, such as Bernard Mac Laverty and Desmond Hogan. show more

Weight: 0.43 KG
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Pages: 560,
Specialty: Literature,
Publisher: Oxford UP,
Publication Year: 2009,
Cover: Paperback,
Dimensions: 129x196x31mm

The Gothic tale has been with us for over two hundred years, but this collection is the first to illustrate the continuing strength of this special fictional tradition from its origins in the late eighteenth century. Gothic fiction is generally identified from Horace Walpole's Castle of Otranto and the works of Ann Radcliffe, and with heroes and heroines menaced by feudal villains amid crumbling ruins. While the repertoire of claustrophobic settings, gloomy themes, and threatening atmosphere established the Gothic genre, later writers from Poe onwards achieved an ever greater sophistication, and a shift in emphasis from cruelty to decadence. Modern Gothic is distinguished by its imaginative variety of voice, from the chilling depiction of a disordered mind to the sinister suggestion of vampirism. This anthology brings together the work of writers such as Le Fanu, Hawthorne, Hardy, Faulkner, and Borges with their earliest literary forebears, and emphasizes the central role of women writers from Anna Laetitia Aikin to Isabel Allende and Angela Carter. While the Gothic tale shares some characteristics with the ghost story and tales of horror and fantasy, the present volume triumphantly celebrates the distinctive features that define this powerful and unsettling literary form. show more

Weight: 0.41 KG
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Pages: 480,
Specialty: Literature,
Publisher: Oxford UP,
Publication Year: 2009,
Cover: Paperback,
Dimensions: 129x196x26mm

The Oxford Book of English Short Stories , edited by A. S. Byatt, herself the author of several collections of short stories, is the first anthology to specifically take the English short story as its theme. The 37 stories featured here are selected from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, ranging from Dickens, Trollope, and Hardy to J. G. Ballard, Angela Carter, and Ian McEwan, though many draw ingeniously from the richness of earlier English literary writing. There are all sorts of threads of connection and contrast running through these stories. Their subjects vary from the sublime to the ridiculous, from the momentous to the trivial, from the grim to the farcical. There is English empiricism, English pragmatism, English starkness, English humour, English satire, English dandyism, English horror, and English whimsy. There are examples of social realism, from rural poverty to blitzed London; ghost stories and tales of the supernatural; surreal fantasy and science fiction. There are stories of sensibility, precisely delineated, from Hardy's reluctant bride to the shocked heroine of Elizabeth Taylor's The Blush, from H. E. Bates's brilliant fusion of class, sex, death, and landscape, to D. H. Lawrence's exploration of a consciousness slowly detaching itself from its world. There are exuberant stories by Saki and Waugh, Wodehouse and Firbank, with a particularly English range from high irony to pure orchestrated farce. The very range and scope of the collection celebrates the eccentric differences and excellences of English short stories. Some of A. S. Byatt's choices clearly take their place in the grand tradition of story-telling, while others are more unusual. Many break all the rules of unity of tone and narrative, appearing to be one kind of story before unexpectedly turning into another. They pack together comedy and tragedy, farce and delicacy, elegance and the grotesque, with language as various as the subject matter. As A. S. Byatt explains: 'My only criterion was that those stories I selected should be startling and satisfying, and if possible make the hairs on the neck prickle with excitement, aesthetic or narrative'. show more

Weight: 0.35 KG
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Pages: 336,
Specialty: Classics,
Publisher: Oxford UP,
Publication Year: 2009,
Cover: Paperback,
Dimensions: 130x196x16mm

'Happiness, then, is the best, noblest, and most pleasant thing in the world.' In the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle's guiding question is: what is the best thing for a human being? His answer is happiness, but he means, not something we feel, but rather a specially good kind of life. Happiness is made up of activities in which we use the best human capacities, both ones that contribute to our flourishing as members of a community, and ones that allow us to engage in god-like contemplation. Contemporary ethical writings on the role and importance of the moral virtues such as courage and justice have drawn inspiration from this work, which also contains important discussions on responsibility for actions, on the nature of practical reasoning, and on friendship and its role in the best life. This new edition retains and lightly revises David Ross's justly admired translation. It also includes a valuable introduction to this seminal work, and notes designed to elucidate Aristotle's arguments. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more. show more

Weight: 0.23 KG
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