Books by Scholars
Recent and forthcoming books written and edited by Rhodes Scholars.
For a full list of books by Scholars, please visit the Rhodes Scholars Library Catalogue. To add a book to this list or the catalogue, email connect@rhodeshouse.ox.ac.uk.
In this debut collection, Robert McGill explores the heartaches and joys of people who are desperate to uncomplicate their complicated world. Through stories taking the form of YouTube monologues, pet-care instructions, school reports, or the unspoken thoughts of a young scholar obsessed with a famous Canadian writer, Simple Creatures also shows us the sometimes hilarious, often poignant ways in which our use of language shapes our relationships with others and ourselves.
We meet a teenager who wants to live among a community of Bigfoot that he claims to have discovered in the woods; the widow of a famous endocrinologist after she gains custody of a chimpanzee from his lab; a boy whose fledgling hockey career is troubled by the fact that his name is Leo Gretzky; and a divorcee seeking out the mysterious author of a viral environmental pledge. Through their lives, Simple Creatures offers an acute, sympathetic portrait of our time.
An eye-opening exploration of one of the little-known levers that controls our world—zoning codes—and a call-to-arms for using them to improve American society at every level.
Zoning codes dictate how and where we can build housing, factories, restaurants, and parks. They limit how tall buildings can be and where trees can be planted. They have become the most significant regulatory power of local government, ultimately determining how we experience our cities. Yet zoning remains invisible.
In Key to the City, legal scholar and architect Sara C. Bronin examines how zoning became such a prevailing force and reveals its impact—and its potential for good. Outdated zoning codes have maintained racial segregation, prioritized cars over people, and enabled great ecological harm. But, as Bronin argues, once we recognize the power of zoning, we can harness it to create the communities we desire, and deserve. Drawing on her own experience leading the overhaul of Hartford’s zoning code and exploring the efforts of activists and city planners across the country, Bronin shows how new codes are reshaping our cities—from Baltimore to Chicago, Las Vegas to Minneapolis, and beyond. In Boston, a law fought for by a passionate group of organizers, farmers, and beekeepers is transforming the city into a haven for urban farming. In Tucson, zoning codes are mitigating the impacts of climate change and drought-proofing neighborhoods in peril. In Delray Beach, Florida, a new code aims to capture and maintain the town’s colorful spirit through its architecture.
Have you ever questioned why, despite the avalanche of self-help books and optimization hacks, we remain embroiled in multiple global health crises? Populations worldwide are gaining life-shortening excess weight (even in poorer countries), and water contamination is rampant (even in richer countries). In such dire circumstances, a gratitude journal won’t help.
The stark reality is that we’ve been sold a monumental lie. The obsession with individual health optimization has distracted us from the real game-changer: holding governments accountable for policies that can significantly extend our lifespans. How Not to Die (Too Soon) is a vital, transformative guide that shifts the focus from individual responsibility to societal accountability. It’s time to demand the changes that will save lives.
Polls show that over 50% of us don’t believe racism exists. In a world made for White people, The Science of Racism uses clear scientific research to expose what we know about racism, exactly how we know it, and what we can do about it
British police are nine times more likely to use their tasers on Black people.
An item being advertised on eBay will sell for approximately 20% less if a dark-skinned hand is shown in the photos.
Black Caribbean applicants have to apply for around 50% more jobs in order to receive a positive response.
Professor Keon West cuts through the divisive anecdotes and rhetoric with decades’ worth of clear, factual, rigorous science – the data that reveals truths about racism that are shocking and tragic, but also (somehow) funny and entertaining.
Statues around the world have become lightning rods for public debates over the meaning of our imperial past and postcolonial present. The Psychic Lives of Statues is an insightful exploration of these global controversies, demonstrating that beneath their surface lie deeper struggles over race, caste and the politics of decolonisation.
Rahul Rao takes readers on an international journey, revealing how these controversies have dramatically rearranged anticolonial political thought through the multifaceted lenses of justice, cultural memory and belonging.
The Psychic Lives of Statues explores both the toppling of colonial statues and the erection of postcolonial ones, illuminating how statues remain powerful and compelling forms of memorialisation. Engaging with artists, scholars and activists, Rao offers a fresh and exciting perspective on how we understand our past and present through iconography.
How colleges can foster growth mindsets among students—and why this approach matters.
We live in an era of escalating, tech-fueled change. Our jobs and the skills we need to work and thrive are constantly evolving, and those who can't keep up risk falling behind. That's where college comes in. In Mindset Matters, Daniel R. Porterfield advances a powerful new argument about the value of residential undergraduate education and its role in developing growth mindsets among students.
The growth mindset, according to Porterfield, is the belief that we can enhance our core qualities or talents through our efforts, strategies, and education, and with assistance from others. People with growth mindsets have faith in self-improvement. They tend to be goal oriented and optimistic, confident that they can master new challenges because they've done so in the past. Feedback is their friend, errors their opportunities to begin again. For students like this, college is a multiyear process of self-creation and self-emergence, a becoming that unfolds because they are applying themselves in a place rich with stimulating people, happenings, resources, and ideas.
An urgent rethinking of the Western approach to mental health, which treats the symptoms rather than the exploitative systems causing our distress—by a Rhodes Scholar and Harvard Medical School physician-anthropologist—offering lessons from the rest of the world.
What if the mainstay of mental health care involved cancelling onerous debt, giving poor people free housing, and paying reparations to the descendants of slavery and colonialism? In Empire of Madness, Dr. Khameer Kidia re-evaluates the Western approach to mental health, which medicates symptoms instead of changing the structures that harm the human psyche. A physician and researcher whose own family suffers from the psychological effects of colonialism, Kidia highlights the limitations of the Western mental health model by reporting from the front lines of mental health crises at home, in the clinic, and during a decade of fieldwork.
Clear-eyed and openhearted, Kidia asks the nuanced questions unaddressed by our current mental health model: How do history, culture, and politics shape mental distress? Are hoarding and burnout medical diagnoses or social problems? Why are schizophrenia outcomes sometimes better in poor countries without antipsychotics? Can a traditional healer treat mental illness better than a Western-trained clinician? For those living in poverty, can cash replace pills?
Raised in 1980s Madrid in the streets of San Blas, which bore the devastating scars of heroin addiction and crime, Jonathan Tepper’s childhood was anything but ordinary.
Born into a family of American missionaries driven by unwavering faith, Jonathan’s home became a sanctuary for society’s most broken – addicts, conmen, even murderers – pulled from the streets with the fragile hope of recovery. While others recoiled, Jonathan found friendship and family in those who joined his parents’ centre, standing loyally beside them as they battled their demons.
San Blas may have been Europe’s heroin capital, but it was not the drugs, the alcohol or the violence that took so many lives. AIDS hit Spain a few years after it exploded in New York and, like an invisible plague, it claimed countless lives – including those who Jonathan came to love as brothers and sisters in the family rehabilitation centre. Unable to do anything but helplessly stand by, Jonathan, from a young age, had to confront the raw reality of grief and the fleeting nature of life itself.
A powerful and deeply moving exploration of love, loss and faith, Shooting Up is also an enduring love letter to old friends and family, and a welcome reminder on how hope can unexpectedly arise in even the darkest places.
When life throws a curveball, this book helps us reimagine who we can be.
After an incident in her own life left her reeling, pioneering cognitive scientist Maya Shankar managed the uncertainty by dedicating herself to researching the mind. Now, her powerful book invites us to rethink our relationship with change altogether.
Sharing the riveting stories of others who have also gone through remarkable disruption, Maya unpicks scientific insights to illuminate the universal lessons hidden within them. Exploring our complex reactions to all kinds of change, from denial and guilt to rumination and stagnation, we’re offered practical tools and strategies to unlock our full potential in the face of upheaval.
Change isn't something to just endure. It doesn't have to leave us feeling stuck, hopeless or broken. Approached in the right way, it can lead us to uncover new abilities, perspectives and values, transforming us in extraordinary ways.
Whether you're processing a past change, grappling with a present one, or bracing for a future one, discover who you can become on the other side of change.
When maps come up short and the path ahead is uncertain, how do we find our way? Visionary climate leader Katharine K. Wilkinson offers a compassionate and empowering guide to navigating from ache to action, doubt to possibility.
Through transformational programs and books, including the national bestseller All We Can Save, Wilkinson has inspired hundreds of thousands of climate journeys. In Climate Wayfinding, she shares a proven process for looking inward with care, outward with curiosity, and forward with courage. Ultimately, readers chart a course toward playing their unique part in our collective healing.
The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries forged a powerful image of England – Shakespeare's 'scepter'd isle', proud and apart, defined by royal spectacle and myth. But beneath this familiar narrative of ruffs and gowns, kings and queens, lies a more complex and connected reality.
England at this time was far from insular. Travelling in and out of the country were Venetian glassmakers with English wives, African innkeepers and Native American envoys. There were people like the Flemish artist Levina Teerlinc, probably the only painter to be employed by four English monarchs. There was William Adams, a Kentish navigator who became Japan's first English samurai. And there was Elizabeth Key, daughter of an enslaved mother in the colony in Virginia, who battled in the courts for herself and her son.
Drawing on extensive archival research, attentive to the textures of daily life, yet alive to the sweep of history, This Little World offers a startlingly new, globally resonant vision of England's past and what it meant to be English. It is a story of a nation in the making – on the cusp of empire – told through the traces of those often written out of it. In reframing England's story within a wider world, it challenges us to rethink some of our most fundamental ideas: about nationhood, about identity, and above all, about belonging.
From New York Times bestselling author T. A. Barron comes this captivating exploration of how human cultures across time and geography have described the living world around them. From the poetic to the practical, the reverent to the resourceful, every language holds unique insights into how we perceive and relate to nature.
Drawing on etymology, folklore, and linguistic nuance, this richly illustrated volume uncovers the meanings behind the names we give to animals and plants — from the “unstoppable one” (elephant in Tsawna and Tsonga) to the delicate metaphors for butterflies and birds in ancient and modern tongues. Whether rooted in mythology, survival, or awe, these words reveal the deep interconnection between language and landscape.
Featuring gorgeous illustrations sourced from the Bodleian’s archives, Naming Nature is a celebration of cultural and ecological diversity — and a beautiful gift for nature lovers, word enthusiasts, and anyone curious about the ways we speak of the wild.
Polarization is a defining feature of politics in the United States and many other democracies. Yet although there is much research focusing on the effects of polarization on domestic politics, little is known about how polarization influences international cooperation and conflict. Democracies are thought to have advantages over nondemocratic nations in international relations, including the ability to keep foreign policy stable across time, credibly signal information to adversaries, and maintain commitments to allies. Does domestic polarization affect these “democratic advantages”? In this timely book, Rachel Myrick argues that polarization reshapes the nature of constraints on democratic leaders, which in turn erodes the advantages democracies have in foreign affairs.
It's one thing to fill your house with gorgeous plants; it's another to keep them happy for weeks, months and years. Medical doctor and passionate plant lover Nora Mutalima offers a simple, science-driven guide to creating your own indoor jungle and keeping it thriving with minimal effort.
A compelling, stirring narrative of the Starbucks and Tesla unionization efforts, telling the broader story of the new, nationwide labor movement unfolding in our era of political and social unrest. As one of the exciting new faces of the American Labor Movement, Jaz Brisack argues that while workers often organize when their place of work is toxic, it’s equally important to organize when you love your job. Here, Brisack delivers practical advice on how workers can and should stand up for their rights, especially when electoral politics seem to have failed us.
An approachable guide to the political, social, and demographic changes happening in Africa and why they matter for the rest of the world.
Africa is undergoing an astounding transformation that will usher in a new era of political volatility and experimentation in the coming years. The region is in the midst of a historically unprecedented demographic surge that has skewed the median age in most countries to below twenty years old. This demographic moment coincides with three factors likely to amplify the political agendas of African youth: rapid urbanization, dramatically increased digital connectivity, and increasing recognition that old political narratives are no longer fit for purpose.
An urgent critique of the market-fundamentalist ideals undermining democratic politics, pointing the way to principled reforms.
Democracy has been hollowed out by capitalism. A narrow view of markets and their aims—prioritizing efficiency, profit, and growth—now dominates thinking about democracy itself. Citizens are ignorant of the deep principles of self-governance, having long since adopted a facile equation between democracy and voting as a consumer choice. Lisa Herzog argues that democracy is still possible, but only if democratic values get embedded in everyday experience—including economic experience. That requires new ways of thinking about markets and their goals.
In face of historical injustices such as war, colonialism, slavery, and genocides, what responsibilities, if any, do the present generations owe – and to whom are such responsibilities owed? Drawing upon methods of political theory, empirical politics, legal philosophy, and applied ethics, this book advances the novel account of Collective Moral Debt Reparative Justice.
It aims to establish that descendants of victims inherit claims to reparation by which they can hold inheritors of perpetrators responsible for discharging. This argument applies particularly well to collectives meeting the threshold for group agency and complicit agents. Not only does the concept of “moral debt” serve as an emphatic metaphor for the distinctive ways by which perpetrators and victims, descendants and inheritors are connected – it also provides the compelling explanation hitherto missing as for why claims of reparative justice do not go away merely in virtue of the passage of time.
Freedom of speech has never been more important—or more controversial. From debates about what's permissible on social media, to the politics of campus speakers and corporate advertisements, the First Amendment is incessantly in the news and constantly being held up as the fundamental principle of American democracy. Yet, in reality, it has contributed more to eroding our democracy than supporting it.
In Fearless Speech, Dr. Mary Anne Franks emphasizes the distinction between what speech a democratic society should protect and what speech a democratic society should promote.