149 is not A Beginners Guide To Racism or Racism for Dummies. And though you may find trouble explaining this to strangers, it’s important to stress No. Now is a good time to emphasize these are not “How-To” guides. Racism: A Very Short Introduction by Ali Rattansi And of course the pain expert has a last name like “Bodice.” The book is rife with gems like: “While babies certainly do suffer pain, there is no clear way to establish the exact nature of it.” It’s difficult reading only because it was hard not to laugh.
512 in the series stands out as an exceptional concept review, more so because every sentence is hilarious when read out of context. It’s actually quite a challenge to define what Sleep, Risk, and Ethics are until you’re prompted. The majority of the VSI series are concepts approached with academic expertise.
Pain: A Very Short Introduction by Rob Boddice These are the strangest ones to date, but keep an eye out for A Very Short Introduction to Dinosaurs coming out this holiday season. Still, at 544 (and counting), there are some weird titles in the mix. “The dilettante of academia shall guide you.” Yes, the Very Short Intro series promises this validation and more all for the price of £10.99 per subject.Īside from intellectual tourism, the majority of the series are elegant introductions to any sorts of subjects (the slim volumes betray their intellectual weight). “Stow your googling phones my friends,” I’ll say. When drinking with friends, I’ll dominate the conversation with my intellect, informed by a lexicon of hundreds of subjects to which I’ve devoted dozens of minutes. 122 ) by next week,” I say to the Dean of Something as I rehearse my TED talk on crystallography and the Mexican Revolution ( no. “Well of course I can prepare a lecture on Foucault ( no. As if reading all of them will transform me into the renaissance thinker I pretend to be.
The Very Short Introduction series from Oxford University Press has been around for twenty years and their promise has been the same: that the half inch thick volumes can convert anyone into a pedestrian of any academic field.