Human, Social and Political Sciences reading list
For prospective students
We advise you to read the HSPS page thoroughly. For reading and preparation advice you should find the following sections particularly useful:
For offer holders
Congratulations on your offer of a place at King's. We wish you well in any remaining examinations you still need to take, and we look forward, if all goes well, to welcoming you here to begin your studies in HSPS. Below is a list of suggested readings for the main subjects in the course. Some of these will be new to you, so it is a good idea to use some of the time you have before coming to Cambridge to sample some new subjects. This will help to inform your choice of first-year courses when you arrive. Do not be alarmed by the length of these reading lists. There is no expectation that you will necessarily have read anything like all of the books. They are designed to give you plenty of choice, and to be useful for once you begin your studies here, as well as for general reading in advance. Most should be readily available in paperback, or from a library.
Archaeology
- Clive Gamble. 2000. Archaeology: The Basics. London: Routledge.
- Colin Renfrew and Paul Bahn. 2012. Archaeology: Theory, Methods, and Practice. 6th Edition. London: Thames & Hudson.
- Chris Scarre. 1998. Exploring Prehistoric Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Chris Scarre. 2009. The Human Past: World Prehistory and Development of Human Society. 2nd Edition. London: Thames & Hudson.
Biological Anthropology
- Chris Stringer. 2012. The Origin of our Species. London: Penguin.
- Matt Ridley. 2004. Nature via Nurture. New York: Harper Collins.
- Peter Gluckman and Mark Hanson. 2004. The Fetal Matrix. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Robert Boyd and Joan Silk. 2012. How Humans Evolved. New York: Norton.
Politics
- Benedict Anderson. 1983. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the origins and Spread of Nationalism. London: Macmillan.
- John Dunn. 2005. Setting the People Free: The Story of Democracy. London: Atlantic.
- James Mayall. 2000. World Politics: Progress and its Limits. Cambridge: Polity.
- David Runciman. 2006. Politics of Good Intentions: History, Fear, and Hypocrisy in the New World Order. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
- James C Scott. 1998. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition have Failed. New Haven: Yale University Press.
- Theda Skocpol. 1979. States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.
- Adam Watson. 1992. The Evolution of International Society. London: Routledge.
Social Anthropology
- Rita Astuti, Jonathan Parry, and Charles Stafford. 2007. Questions of Anthropology. Berg: Oxford.
- Thomas Boellstorff. 2008. Coming of Age in Second Life. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
- Michael Carrithers. 1993. Why Humans Have Cultures. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Jean La Fontaine. Speak of the Devil: Tales of Satanic Abuse in Contemporary England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- David Lan. 1985. Guns and Rain: Guerrillas and Spirit Mediums in Zimbabwe. London: James Curry.
- Joel Robbins. 2004. Becoming Sinners: Christianity and Moral Torment in a Papua New Guinea Society. Berkeley: University of California Press.
- Yunxiang Yang. 2009. The Individualization of Chinese Society. Berg: Oxford.
Sociology
- Nicholas Abercrombie. 2004. Sociology. Cambridge: Polity.
- Anthony Giddens. 2006. Sociology (5th edition). Cambridge: Polity.
- J.A. Hughes, W.W. Sharrock, and P.J. Martin. 2003. Understanding Classical Sociology. London: Sage.
- C. Wright Mills. 1959. The Sociological Imagination. New York: Oxford University Press.
- K.J. Neubeck and D.S. Glasberg. 2005. Sociology: Diversity, Conflict, and Change. Boston: McGraw Hill.
- W. Outhwaite (ed). 2003. The Blackwell Dictionary of Modern Social Thought. Oxford: Blackwell.
