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Canto Classics draws from the most successful titles published by Cambridge over the past half-century and more, bringing them together in a newly-designed paperback series that offers the very best, most influential and most enjoyable books from the breadth of Cambridge publishing.

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43 results in Canto Classics

Page 1 of 3

The Life of Isaac Newton
  • Richard S. Westfall
  • Published online:
    05 October 2015
    Print publication:
    29 September 2015
  • Isaac Newton was indisputably one of the greatest scientists in history. His achievements in mathematics and physics marked the culmination of the movement that brought modern science into being. Richard Westfall's biography captures in engaging detail both his private life and scientific career, presenting a complex picture of Newton the man, and as scientist, philosopher, theologian, alchemist, public figure, President of the Royal Society, and Warden of the Royal Mint. An abridged version of his magisterial study Never at Rest (Cambridge, 1980), this concise biography makes Westfall's highly acclaimed portrait of Newton newly accessible to general readers.

Governing the Commons
  • The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action
  • Elinor Ostrom
  • Published online:
    05 October 2015
    Print publication:
    23 September 2015
  • The governance of natural resources used by many individuals in common is an issue of increasing concern to policy analysts. Both state control and privatization of resources have been advocated, but neither the state nor the market have been uniformly successful in solving common pool resource problems. After critiquing the foundations of policy analysis as applied to natural resources, Elinor Ostrom here provides a unique body of empirical data to explore conditions under which common pool resource problems have been satisfactorily or unsatisfactorily solved. Dr Ostrom uses institutional analysis to explore different ways - both successful and unsuccessful - of governing the commons. In contrast to the proposition of the 'tragedy of the commons' argument, common pool problems sometimes are solved by voluntary organizations rather than by a coercive state. Among the cases considered are communal tenure in meadows and forests, irrigation communities and other water rights, and fisheries.

When Things Fell Apart
  • State Failure in Late-Century Africa
  • Robert H. Bates
  • Published online:
    05 October 2015
    Print publication:
    29 September 2015
  • In the later decades of the twentieth century, Africa plunged into political chaos. States failed, governments became predators, and citizens took up arms. In When Things Fell Apart, Robert H. Bates advances an exploration of state failure in Africa. In so doing, he not only plumbs the depths of the continent's late-century tragedy, but also the logic of political order, and the foundations of the state. This book covers a wide range of territory by drawing on materials from Rwanda, Sudan, Liberia, and Congo. Written to be accessible to the general reader, it is nonetheless a must-read for scholars and policymakers concerned with conflict and state failure.

Schrödinger
  • Life and Thought
  • Walter Moore
  • Published online:
    05 October 2015
    Print publication:
    06 October 2015
  • Erwin Schrödinger was a brilliant and charming Austrian, a great scientist, and a man with a passionate interest in people and ideas. In this, the first comprehensive biography of Schrödinger, Walter Moore draws upon recollections of Schrödinger's friends, family and colleagues, and on contemporary records, letters and diaries. Schrödinger's life is portrayed against the backdrop of Europe at a time of change and unrest. His best known scientific work was the discovery of wave mechanics, for which he was awarded the Nobel prize in 1933. Schrödinger led a very intense life, both in his scientific research and in his personal life. Walter Moore has written a highly readable biography of this fascinating and complex man, which will appeal not only to scientists but to anyone interested in the history of our times, and in the life and thought of one of the great men of twentieth-century science.

Ecological Imperialism
  • The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900–1900
  • 2nd edition
  • Alfred W. Crosby
  • Published online:
    05 October 2015
    Print publication:
    06 October 2015
  • People of European descent form the bulk of the population in most of the temperate zones of the world - North America, Australia and New Zealand. The military successes of European imperialism are easy to explain; in many cases they were a matter of firearms against spears. But as Alfred W. Crosby maintains in this highly original and fascinating book, the Europeans' displacement and replacement of the native peoples in the temperate zones was more a matter of biology than of military conquest. European organisms had certain decisive advantages over their New World and Australian counterparts. The spread of European disease, flora and fauna went hand in hand with the growth of populations. Consequently, these imperialists became proprietors of the most important agricultural lands in the world. In the second edition, Crosby revisits his now classic work and again evaluates the global historical importance of European ecological expansion.

States and Social Revolutions
  • A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China
  • Theda Skocpol
  • Published online:
    05 October 2015
    Print publication:
    29 September 2015
  • State structures, international forces, and class relations: Theda Skocpol shows how all three combine to explain the origins and accomplishments of social-revolutionary transformations. Social revolutions have been rare but undeniably of enormous importance in modern world history. States and Social Revolutions provides a new frame of reference for analyzing the causes, the conflicts, and the outcomes of such revolutions. It develops a rigorous, comparative historical analysis of three major cases: the French Revolution of 1787 through the early 1800s, the Russian Revolution of 1917 through the 1930s, and the Chinese Revolution of 1911 through the 1960s. Believing that existing theories of revolution, both Marxist and non-Marxist, are inadequate to explain the actual historical patterns of revolutions, Skocpol urges us to adopt fresh perspectives. Above all, she maintains that states conceived as administrative and coercive organizations potentially autonomous from class controls and interests must be made central to explanations of revolutions.

Beyond Smoke and Mirrors
  • Climate Change and Energy in the 21st Century
  • 2nd edition
  • Burton Richter
  • Published online:
    05 November 2014
    Print publication:
    06 November 2014
  • Global climate change is one of the most important issues humanity faces today. This updated, second edition assesses the sensible, senseless and biased proposals for averting the potentially disastrous consequences of global warming, allowing the reader to draw their own conclusions on switching to more sustainable energy provision. Burton Richter is a Nobel Prize-winning scientist who has served on many US and international review committees on climate change and energy issues. He provides a concise overview of our knowledge and uncertainties within climate change science, discusses current energy demand and supply patterns, and the energy options available to cut emissions of greenhouse gases. Written in non-technical language, this book presents a balanced view of options for moving from our heavy reliance on fossil fuels into a much more sustainable energy system, and is accessible to a wide range of readers without scientific backgrounds - students, policymakers and the concerned citizen.

The Spanish Labyrinth
  • An Account of the Social and Political Background of the Spanish Civil War
  • Gerald Brenan
  • Published online:
    05 November 2014
    Print publication:
    06 November 2014
  • Gerald Brenan's The Spanish Labyrinth has become the classic account of the background to the Spanish Civil War. Written during and immediately after the Civil War, this book has all the vividness of the author's experience. It represents a struggle to see the issues in Spanish politics objectively, whilst bearing witness to the deep involvement which is the only possible source of much of this richly detailed account. As a literary figure on the fringe of the Bloomsbury group, Gerald Brenan lends to this narrative an engaging personal style that has become familiar to many thousands of readers over the decades since it was first published.

Language Death
  • David Crystal
  • Published online:
    05 November 2014
    Print publication:
    06 November 2014
  • The rapid endangerment and death of many minority languages across the world is a matter of widespread concern, not only among linguists and anthropologists but among all concerned with issues of cultural identity in an increasingly globalized culture. By some counts, only 600 of the 6,000 or so languages in the world are 'safe' from the threat of extinction. A leading commentator and popular writer on language issues, David Crystal asks the fundamental question, 'why is language death so important?', reviews the reasons for the current crisis, and investigates what is being done to reduce its impact. This book contains not only intelligent argument, but moving descriptions of the decline and demise of particular languages, and practical advice for anyone interested in pursuing the subject further.

Making a New Deal
  • Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919–1939
  • 2nd edition
  • Lizabeth Cohen
  • Published online:
    05 October 2014
    Print publication:
    06 November 2014
  • This book examines how it was possible and what it meant for ordinary factory workers to become effective unionists and national political participants by the mid-1930s. We follow Chicago workers as they make choices about whether to attend ethnic benefit society meetings or to go to the movies, whether to shop in local neighborhood stores or patronize the new A & P. As they made daily decisions like these, they declared their loyalty in ways that would ultimately have political significance. When the depression worsened in the 1930s, workers adopted new ideological perspectives and overcame longstanding divisions among themselves to mount new kinds of collective action. Chicago workers' experiences all converged to make them into New Deal Democrats and CIO unionists. First printed in 1990, Making a New Deal has become an established classic in American history. The second edition includes a new preface by Lizabeth Cohen.

Magic in the Middle Ages
  • 2nd edition
  • Richard Kieckhefer
  • Published online:
    05 October 2014
    Print publication:
    06 November 2014
  • How was magic practised in medieval times? How did it relate to the diverse beliefs and practices that characterised this fascinating period? In Magic in the Middle Ages Richard Kieckhefer surveys the growth and development of magic in medieval times. He examines its relation to religion, science, philosophy, art, literature and politics before introducing us to the different types of magic that were used, the kinds of people who practised magic and the reasoning behind their beliefs. In addition, he shows how magic served as a point of contact between the popular and elite classes, how the reality of magical beliefs is reflected in the fiction of medieval literature and how the persecution of magic and witchcraft led to changes in the law. This book places magic at the crossroads of medieval culture, shedding light on many other aspects of life in the Middle Ages.

'Nature and the Greeks' and 'Science and Humanism'
  • Erwin Schrödinger
  • Published online:
    05 October 2014
    Print publication:
    06 November 2014
  • Nobel laureate Erwin Schrödinger was one of the most distinguished scientists of the twentieth century; his lectures on the history and philosophy of science are legendary. 'Nature and the Greeks' and 'Science and Humanism' makes available for the first time in many years the texts of two of Schrödinger's most famous lecture series. 'Nature and the Greeks' offers a comprehensive historical account of the twentieth-century scientific world picture, tracing modern science back to the earliest stages of Western philosophic thought. 'Science and Humanism' addresses some of the most fundamental questions of the century: what is the value of scientific research? And how do the achievements of modern science affect the relationship between material and spiritual matters? A foreword by Roger Penrose sets the lectures in a contemporary context, and affirms they are as relevant today as when they were first published.

Morality
  • An Introduction to Ethics
  • Bernard Williams
  • Published online:
    05 September 2014
    Print publication:
    29 March 2012
  • In Morality Bernard Williams confronts the problems of writing moral philosophy and offers a stimulating alternative to more systematic accounts which seem nevertheless to have left all the important issues somewhere off the page. Williams explains, analyses and distinguishes a number of key positions, from the purely amoral to notions of subjective or relative morality, testing their coherence before going on to explore the nature of 'goodness' in relation to responsibilities and choice, roles, standards and human nature. A classic in moral philosophy.

What is Life?
  • With Mind and Matter and Autobiographical Sketches
  • Erwin Schrodinger
  • Foreword by Roger Penrose
  • Published online:
    05 September 2014
    Print publication:
    26 March 2012
  • Nobel laureate Erwin Schrödinger's What is Life? is one of the great science classics of the twentieth century. It was written for the layman, but proved to be one of the spurs to the birth of molecular biology and the subsequent discovery of DNA. What is Life? appears here together with Mind and Matter, his essay investigating a relationship which has eluded and puzzled philosophers since the earliest times. Brought together with these two classics are Schrödinger's autobiographical sketches, which offer a fascinating account of his life as a background to his scientific writings.

A Mathematician's Apology
  • G. H. Hardy
  • Foreword by C. P. Snow
  • Published online:
    05 August 2014
    Print publication:
    26 March 2012
  • G. H. Hardy was one of this century's finest mathematical thinkers, renowned among his contemporaries as a 'real mathematician … the purest of the pure'. He was also, as C. P. Snow recounts in his Foreword, 'unorthodox, eccentric, radical, ready to talk about anything'. This 'apology', written in 1940, offers a brilliant and engaging account of mathematics as very much more than a science; when it was first published, Graham Greene hailed it alongside Henry James's notebooks as 'the best account of what it was like to be a creative artist'. C. P. Snow's Foreword gives sympathetic and witty insights into Hardy's life, with its rich store of anecdotes concerning his collaboration with the brilliant Indian mathematician Ramanujan, his idiosyncrasies and his passion for cricket. This is a unique account of the fascination of mathematics and of one of its most compelling exponents in modern times.

Mr Tompkins in Paperback
  • George Gamow
  • Foreword by Roger Penrose
  • Published online:
    05 August 2014
    Print publication:
    26 March 2012
  • Since his first appearance over sixty years ago, Mr Tompkins has become known and loved by many thousands of readers as the bank clerk whose fantastic dreams and adventures lead him into a world inside the atom. George Gamow's classic provides a delightful explanation of the central concepts in modern physics, from atomic structure to relativity, and quantum theory to fusion and fission. Roger Penrose's foreword introduces Mr Tompkins to a new generation of readers and reviews his adventures in light of recent developments in physics.

The Trial of the Templars
  • 2nd edition
  • Malcolm Barber
  • Published online:
    05 August 2014
    Print publication:
    26 March 2012
  • Malcolm Barber's classic The Trial of the Templars recounts the dramatic demise of this elite military force in the fourteenth century. Having fought against Islam in the crusades in the East for nearly two centuries, in October 1307 the members of this respected Order were arrested on the order of Philip IV, King of France and charged with serious heresies, including homosexuality and the denial of Christ. Finding resonances between the fourteenth-century trial and contemporary events, Barber's classic account endeavours to tackle the unresolved controversies surrounding the consequences of the trial and includes discussions in the context of new work on the crusades, heresy, the papacy and the French monarchy.

The Conquests of Alexander the Great
  • Waldemar Heckel
  • Published online:
    05 August 2014
    Print publication:
    29 March 2012
  • In this book, Waldemar Heckel traces the rise and eventual fall of one of the most successful military commanders in history. In 325 BCE, Alexander and his conquering army prepared to return home, after overcoming everything in their path: armies, terrain, climate, all invariably hostile. Little did they know that within two years their beloved king would be dead and their labours seemingly wasted. Tracing the rise and eventual fall of one of the most successful military commanders in history, Heckel engagingly and with great detail shows us how Alexander earned his appellation, The Great.

Nations and Nationalism since 1780
  • Programme, Myth, Reality
  • 2nd edition
  • E. J. Hobsbawm
  • Published online:
    05 July 2014
    Print publication:
    26 March 2012
  • Nations and Nationalism since 1780 is Eric Hobsbawm's widely acclaimed and highly readable enquiry into the question of nationalism. Events in the late twentieth century in Eastern Europe and the Soviet republics have since reinforced the central importance of nationalism in the history of the political evolution and upheaval. This second edition has been updated in light of those events, with a final chapter addressing the impact of the dramatic changes that have taken place. Also included are additional maps to illustrate nationalities, languages and political divisions across Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The Theft of History
  • Jack Goody
  • Published online:
    05 July 2014
    Print publication:
    29 March 2012
  • In The Theft of History Jack Goody builds on his own previous work to extend further his highly influential critique of what he sees as the pervasive Eurocentric or occidentalist biases of so much western historical writing and the consequent 'theft' by the West of the achievements of other cultures in the invention of (notably) democracy, capitalism, individualism and love. Goody, one of the world's most distinguished anthropologists, raises questions about theorists, historians and methodology and proposes a new comparative approach to cross-cultural analysis which allows for more scope in examining history than an East versus West style.

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