Book Review: Peter Cappelli, <i>Our Least Important Asset: Why the Relentless Focus on Finance and Accounting is Bad for Business and Employees</i> CappelliPeterOur Least Important Asset: Why the Relentless Focus on Finance and Accounting is Bad for Business and EmployeesOxford; New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2023, £23.99 hbk, (ISBN: 9780197629802), 240 pp.

Glenn Dynner, The Light of Learning. Hasidism in Poland on the Eve of the Holocaust. Oxford, Oxford University Press 2024

Objective: This study aimed to compare the accuracy of two large language models (LLMs)—ChatGPT (version 3.5) and Google Gemini (formerly Bard)—in answering dental caries-related multiple-choice questions (MCQs) using a simulated student examination framework across seven examination lengths. Materials and Methods: A total of 125 validated dental caries MCQs were extracted from Dental Decks and Oxford University Press question banks. Seven examination groups were constructed with varying question counts (25, 35, 45, 55, 65, 75, and 85 questions). For each group, 100 simulations were generated per LLM (ChatGPT and Gemini), resulting in 1400 simulated examinations. Each simulated student received a unique randomized subset of questions. MCQs were answered by each LLM using a standardized prompt to minimize ambiguity. Outcomes included mean score, passing rate (≥60%), and performance differences between LLMs. Statistical analyses included independent t-tests, one-way ANOVA within each LLM, and two-way ANOVA examining interactions between LLM type and question count. Results: Across all seven examination formats, Gemini significantly outperformed ChatGPT (p &lt; 0.001). Gemini achieved higher passing rates and higher mean scores in every examination length. One-way ANOVA revealed significant score variation with increasing exam length for both LLMs (p &lt; 0.05). Two-way ANOVA demonstrated significant main effects of LLM type and question count, with no significant interaction. Randomization had no measurable effect on Gemini performance but influenced ChatGPT scores. Conclusions: Gemini demonstrated superior accuracy and higher passing rates compared to ChatGPT in all simulated examination formats. While both LLMs struggled with complex caries-related content, Gemini provided more reliable performance across question quantities. Educators should exercise caution in relying on LLMs for automated assessment or self-study, and future research should evaluate human–AI hybrid models and LLM performance across broader dental domains.

Quatremère de Quincy: Art and Politics during the French Revolution. By DavidGilks. Oxford University Press, 2024. 288 pp. £90.00.

Book Review: <i>“Gifted Children” in Britain and the World: Elitism and Equality since 1945</i> by Crane, Jennifer CraneJennifer. 2025. “Gifted Children” in Britain and the World: Elitism and Equality since 1945. Oxford University Press, 240 pp.$110 (Hardcover), ISBN 9780198928850.

Abstract We document how mechanical buying by CRSP-index-tracking funds 5 days post-IPO affects stock returns and IPO deal structure. Using a difference-in-differences design, we show that expected indexer demand causes Fast-Track IPOs to outperform their non-Fast-Track counterparts by over five percentage points, peaking at the index inclusion date and reverting significantly within 3 weeks. Anticipated CRSP index inclusion also affects IPO terms, with Fast-Track IPOs raising 6% more capital than their non-Fast-Track counterparts. Our findings support a proposed index rule change to eliminate a $5.8 billion “shadow tax” paid to intermediaries by index fund investors and firms raising capital through IPOs. (JEL G12, G14) Received: 14 March 2025; Editorial decision: September 9, 2025Editor: Joel PeressAuthors have furnished an Internet Appendix, which is available on the Oxford University Press Web site next to the link to the final published paper online.

ABSTRACT This paper examines temporal externalism, a theory asserting that facts about what happens in the future can retrospectively determine the meaning of words, setting it in contrast with traditional forms of externalism (e.g. Kripke, Putnam, Burge). I critique Ball's, D. 2024 (Definition and Dispute: A Defense of Temporal Externalism. Oxford University Press) abductive argument supporting temporal externalism, challenging the necessity of temporal externalism by showing that traditional externalist theories can similarly explain definitional disputes through epistemic deference without invoking retrospective determination. Additionally, I argue that temporal externalism introduces a metaphysical indeterminacy specific to its framework – an indeterminacy not encountered by other externalist theories – presenting a dilemma for temporal externalists who seek to avoid collapsing into social externalism. Together, these two lines of critique provide compelling reasons to reject temporal externalism.

The Oxford Handbook of Islam and Women (Oxford University Press, 2023), edited by Asma Afsaruddin, offers a rigorous, multidisciplinary inquiry into the politicized discourses surrounding Muslim women. Bringing together leading scholars across fields, the volume interrogates the lived experiences, historical roles, textual interpretations, and global representations of Muslim women (Afsaruddin, 2023). The volume stands as a timely corrective to ideological framings that obscure the complexity, heterogeneity, and historical depth of Muslim women’s realities. This review critically evaluates the work’s contributions to Islamic studies, gender theory, and epistemologies of power, foregrounding its significance in contemporary debates on agency, reform, and religious authority. In recent decades, the figure of the Muslim woman has become both a symbol and a battleground in global ideological discourses—variously framed as a victim of religious patriarchy, a threat to liberal secularism, or a marker of authenticity in postcolonial nation-building. The Oxford Handbook of Islam and Women resists such reductive tropes. It presents instead a nuanced, rigorous, and richly layered account of Muslim women’s roles, voices, and representations across time and space. Comprising 32 chapters, the volume offers an impressive breadth of academic inquiry, encompassing historical, theological, legal, sociopolitical, and literary analyses.

Research on machine translation (MT) started before the discipline of Translation Studies was even named. Although MT lost its popularity as a research topic from time to time, it has been widely researched in the related literature over the last 20 years. On the other hand, children’s literature, as a discrete topic, has a similar research history to MT. This study aims to question the current use of MT in children’s literature and to explore children’s views on recent MT outputs of children’s literature. The present qualitative research used a case study methodology. Two Turkish MT outputs of Robinson Crusoe, published by Oxford University Press for children in 2000, were collected through DeepL and Google Translate. These two MT outputs were read by the participants who were four children aged 10-12. These participants were chosen by adapting the convenience sampling method. Their opinions about the translations of children’s literature were collected through in-depth interviews. The results of the study mainly reveal that the participants preferred the MT output of DeepL for a number of reasons, although they stated that they understood both MT outputs. In the current study, children’s preferences were shown to vary in response to fluency, the use of regular sentences, correct grammar, and punctuation in those MT outputs. In addition, it was uncovered that the older the participants got, the less their need for visuals existed while comprehending the texts. As a result, it was observed that the MT output of DeepL produced promising translation solutions in the genre of children's literature in the Turkish-English language pair.

The English language is considered to be the lingua franca and connecting language worldwide; therefore, it gained recognition as a second language far and wide. With the help of language learning, novel norms, dogmas, and morals of an individual are cultivated. Henceforth, language textbooks should advocate culturally, politically, and gender balanced ideas in a way that influences learners in a constructive approach. Textbooks are fabricators of personality that draw students’ attention towards their content. The investigation on gender representation and language textbooks is done in order to investigate the depiction of females in language textbooks that are taught at private schools. This study is meant to investigate how authors of language textbooks employ naming/ word level, notion of transitivity, and discourse in describing male and female genders. The research is qualitative and descriptive in nature, and the source of data collection is language textbooks published by Oxford University Press, editors taught at grade-9 &amp; 10. The study revealed that transitivity choices made by authors were favouring male; characters of both books were male in the majority, and gender bias can be seen through the professions allocated to males and females. The present investigation is limited to English language textbooks at grade-9 &amp; 10 only. This study suggests that there is a lot of necessity to work on the gender bias in schoolbooks and they should be planned in a way that embodies gender sociable content. The current investigation is significant for policy proposers, the government of Sindh, the curricula committee, and textbook designers.

Review of: Margaret Morgan Grasselli and Elizabeth Savage, eds. Printing Colour, 1700-1830. Histories, Techniques, Functions, and Receptions. Oxford: Published for the British Academy by Oxford University Press, 2025. 448 p. ISBN: 9780197267530.

Book Review: Move slowly and build bridges: Mastodon, the fediverse, and the struggle for democratic social media Robert WGehl. Move Slowly and Build Bridges: Mastodon, the Fediverse, and the Struggle for Democratic Social Media. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2025. ISBN: 9780197776674, 240 pp.

Lieber, Laura S. (2023). Staging the Sacred. Theatricality and Performance in Late Ancient Liturgical Poetry. Oxford: Oxford University Press / Friesen, Courtney (2024). Acting Gods, Playing Heroes, and the Interaction between Judaism, Christianity, and Greek Drama in the Early Common Era. London &amp;amp; New York: Routledge.

North, John A. (ed.) (2023). The Religious History of the Roman Empire. The Republican Centuries. Oxford: Oxford University Press

Over the last three decades, scholars have produced a large body of work showcasing how people have engaged with the environments of Aotearoa New Zealand culturally, politically, intellectually, and economically. This diversity in perspective is perhaps best exemplified by the 2002 anthology Environmental Histories of New Zealand edited by Eric Pawson and Tom Brooking, and of which a new edition, Making a New Land: Environmental Histories of New Zealand, was published in 2013.[i] Nevertheless, there remain perspectives largely absent in New Zealand environmental historiography. Foremost among them are matters of toxins and toxicity. Indeed, while the Waitangi Tribunal has shed light on the impacts of toxins in some of its reports, for example how sewage discharge and industrial waste have polluted traditional fishing grounds, scholarship conducted outside the Waitangi Tribunal has been largely limited to expose the hypocrisy of marketing slogans like “100% Pure New Zealand” by showcasing how agricultural and industrial practices have polluted and continue to pollute lands, lakes and rivers.[ii] [i] Eric Pawson and Tom Brooking, eds., Environmental Histories of New Zealand (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2002); Eric Pawson and Tom Brooking, eds., Making a New Land: Environmental Histories of New Zealand (Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2013). See also Tom Brooking, Eric Pawson, et. al., Seeds of Empire: The Environmental Transformation of New Zealand, new edition (London: Bloomsbury, 2020). [ii] See, for example: Jonathan West, “Mirrors on the Land: Histories of New Zealand Lakes,” Journal of New Zealand Studies NS30 (2020): 2-37; Catherine Knight, Beyond Manapouri: 50 Years of Environmental Politics in New Zealand (Christchurch: Canterbury University Press, 2018); Catherine Knight, New Zealand’s rivers: An Environmental History (Christchurch: Canterbury University Press); Terry Hearn, “Mining the quarry,” in Making a New Land: Environmental Histories of New Zealand, ed. Eric Pawson and Tom Brooking (Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2013), 106-121; Tom Brooking and Vaughan Wood, “The grassland revolution reconsidered,” in Making a New Land: Environmental Histories of New Zealand, ed. Eric Pawson and Tom Brooking (Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2013), 193-208; Nicola Wheen, “An updated history of New Zealand environmental law,” in Making a New Land: Environmental Histories of New Zealand, ed. Eric Pawson and Tom Brooking (Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2013), 277-292; Michael J. Stevens, “Ngāi Tahu and the ‘nature’ of Māori modernity,” in Making a New Land: Environmental Histories of New Zealand, ed. Eric Pawson and Tom Brooking (Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2013), 293-309. For instances where the Waitangi Tribunal have studied the impact of toxins, see, for example Waitangi Tribunal, The Report of the Waitangi Tribunal on the Motunui-Waitara claim (Wai 6), second edition (Wellington: The Tribunal, 1989) and Waitangi Tribunal, Report of the Waitangi Tribunal on the Manukau claim (Wai 8), second edition, (Wellington: The Tribunal, 1989).

Samuel Scheffler, One Life to Lead: The Mysteries of Time and the Goods of Attachment. (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2024), pp. xi + 251

CLASSICAL DRAMA AND MODERN POLITICS - Vasileios Balaskas, Revivals of Classical Drama in Greece and Spain (1860s–1970s). Theatre in the Realm of Ideology. Pp. xxii + 249, ills. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2025. Cased, £99, US$130. ISBN: 978-0-19-892989-5.

Conversations in Critical Psychiatry by Awais Aftab; Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2024, 384 pages

The Secularization of Medicine: Ritual, Salvation, and Prophecy, by Nathan Carlin : Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2025.

Abstract This paper replies to critical commentaries on my book, How to Take Skepticism Seriously (Oxford University Press, 2024), presented by Hilary Kornblith, Krista Lawlor, and Ram Neta at the 2025 Pacific American Philosophical Association conference. Kornblith and Neta’s commentaries are published in this journal. Lawlor’s commentary is published separately in Analysis .