Students are not expected to have read certain things and we aren’t looking to test knowledge acquired from specific books. Reading, however, is central to learning and broadens anyone’s horizons. Applicants can also get a good sense of what some of the subjects available in HSPS are like by reading some of the books that students encounter while studying these subjects at Cambridge. Here you can find a suggested reading that might give you a flavour of the different types of subjects in the HSPS course. If you want to pursue independent reading from these lists, don't try to cover them all. Pick the subject or several subjects that interest you and read from that list.
POLITICS
Bernard Crick, Democracy: a very short introduction Oxford; Oxford University Press, 2002.
John Dunn, Western political theory in the face of the future revised edition; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
Raymond Geuss, History and illusion in politics; Cambridge University Press, 2001.
David Runciman, The politics of good intentions: history, fear and hypocrisy in the new world order; Princeton University Press, 2006.
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
Chris Brown and Kirsten Ainsley, Understanding international relations (4th edition); Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
Jussi Hanhimaki, Joseph A. Maiolo, Kirsten Schulze, and Anthony Best, An international history of the twentieth century and beyond (2nd edition); London: Routledge, 2008.
Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy; London: Simon & Schuster, 1994.
James Mayall, World politics: progress and its limits; Cambridge: Polity, 2000.
Adam Watson, The evolution of international society; Routledge, 1992.
SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY
Lila Abu-Lughod, Veiled sentiments: honor and poetry in a Bedouin society Berkeley and London; University of California Press, 1986.
Rita Astuti, Jonathan P Parry, and Charles Stafford (editors), Questions of anthropology; Oxford, 2007.
Tom Boellstorff, Coming of age in second life; Princeton, 2008.
T.H. Eriksen, Small places large issues: an introduction to social and cultural anthropology (3rd edition); London: Pluto Press, 2010.
J. Hendry, An introduction to social anthropology: sharing our worlds; Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
Karen Ho, Liquidated: an ethnography of Wall Street; Raleigh: Duke University Press, 2009.
Adam Kuper, Anthropology and anthropologists; Routledge, 1983.
J. Monaghan, and P. Just Social & cultural anthropology: a very short introduction; Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000.
SOCIOLOGY
J.C. Alexander and K. Thompson, A contemporary introduction to sociology: culture and society in transition; London: Paradigm Publishers, 2008.
Zygmunt Bauman, Thinking sociologically (2nd edition); Wiley-Blackwell, 2001.
R W Connell, Gender (2nd edition); Polity, 2009.
R. Crompton, Class and stratification (3rd edition); Cambridge: Polity Press 2008.
A. Giddens, Sociology (6th edition); Cambridge: Polity Press, 2009.
Richard Sennett, The corrosion of character; W W Norton, 1999.
Anthony Smith, Nations and nationalism in a global era; Polity, 1995.
BIOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY
R Boyd and J. Silk, How humans evolved (5th edition); New York: W. W. Norton & Co. 2009.
R. Dawkins, The selfish gene (3rd edition); Oxford: Oxford University Press 2006.
F de Waal, Tree of origin: what primate behaviour can tell us about human social evolution; Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press 2001.
M. Ridley, Nature via nurture: genes, experience and what makes us human; London: Fourth Estate 2003.
Robert Boyd and Joan Silk, How humans evolved (5th edition); W.W. Norton & Co., 2009.
ARCHAEOLOGY
B. Cunliffe, Europe between the oceans 9000 BC-AD 1000; New Haven, Yale University Press 2008.
A. Colin Renfrew and Paul Bahn, Archaeology: theories, methods and practice (6th edition); Thames & Hudson, 2012.
C. Scarre (ed.), The human past; London: Thames and Hudson 2005.
R. Wenke and D.I. Olszewski, Patterns in prehistory (5th edition); Oxford: Oxford University Press 2006.
*AKKADIAN
Jeremy A. Black, A.R. George & J.N. Postgate, A concise dictionary of Akkadian; Harrassowitz, 1999.
Richard Caplice (ed.), Introduction to Akkadian; Pontifico Istituto Biblico, 2002.
John Huehnergard (ed.), A grammar of Akkadian; Eisenbrauns, 2005.
* The books listed here are basic texts used in the first year of language classes; it is not expected that you will have read them before arriving in Cambridge.
* EGYPTIAN
Alan Gardiner, Egyptian grammar (3rd edition); Griffith Institute, 1957.
* The books listed here are basic texts used in the first year of language classes; it is not expected that you will have read them before arriving in Cambridge.
PSYCHOLOGY
Michael W. Eysenck and Mark T. Keane, Cognitive psychology: a student's handbook; Psychology Press, 2010.
C. Fraser and B. Burchell, Introducing Social Psychology; Oxford: Polity, 2001.
Richard J. Gerrig, Philip Zimbardo, Frode Svartdal and Tim Brennen, Psychology and life; Allyn & Bacon, 2012.
Michael Hogg and Graham Vaughan, Essentials of social psychology; Prentice Hall, 2010.
Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, Willem Wagenaar, Barbara Fredrickson and Geoffrey R. Loftus, Atkinson and Hilgard's introduction to psychology; Cengage Learning, 2009.
H Rudolph Schaffer, Key concepts in developmental psychology; SAGE, 2006.