Reading lists

Pre-reading:

You don’t need to do a lot of preparation before you come, but it would be very useful if you could familiarise yourself with some introductory information on cell structure, protein composition, DNA/RNA and the flow of information in cells. The best place to explore that information is from the following website: https://portlandpress.com/essaysbiochem/pages/understanding_biochemistry.

From this website, there are five articles we would like you to read:

Enzymes; Membranes; Essential Chemistry for Biochemists*; Structure and Function of Nucleic Acids; Uncovering Protein Structure.

*This article in particular is important to read.

You might not be able to fully grasp all of this – this is fine. We hope, though, that it will give a nice bridge into the course and give some idea of the topics that you will be studying in detail during the first year at Oxford.

Pre-course Maths resources:

All undergraduates on the Biochemistry course do a Quantitative Biochemistry course in their first year, comprising lectures and departmentally organised problems classes and computing workshops. To help students prepare for these, we have produced a set of Maths resources for you to work through before arriving in Oxford. The lectures and problems classes will assume that you are familiar with all of this material. Please see the letter emailed to you for a link to access this material.

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Textbooks

In general, it’s best to buy these after you come to Oxford, when you may be able to purchase them second hand and you have discovered which books suit your own tastes. Freshers have a £50 book allowance when they enrol, so remember to show your College ID card to get a 10% discount if you are buying them in Oxford.

There are three general texts which you will certainly use during the first year:

• Organic Chemistry, Clayden, Greeves, and Warren (OUP, 2nd ed, 2012)
• Inorganic Chemistry, Weller, Overton, Rourke, and Armstrong, (OUP, 8th ed, 2018)
• Atkins’ Physical Chemistry, Atkins, de Paula, and Keeler (OUP, 12th ed, 2022)

Reading

In order to give you a good background to some of the topics you will encounter in the first year, we recommend that you read the following Oxford Chemistry Primers in advance of your arrival:

• #9, Foundations of Organic Chemistry, Hornby & Peach (OUP)
• #94, Foundations of Inorganic Chemistry, Winter & Andrew (OUP)
• #40, Foundations of Physical Chemistry, Lawrence, Rodger & Compton (OUP)
• #93, Foundations of Physics for Chemists, Ritchie & Sivia (OUP)
• (and #37, Introduction to Quantum Theory and Atomic Structure, Cox (OUP) if you have time)

These can often be found cheaply on second-hand book sites (such as AbeBooks, eBay, World of Books etc.).

Mathematics

At the end of the first year, you will take the Physical Sciences preliminary examination which will consist of a paper in each of the three branches of Chemistry and one in Mathematics. For study in Mathematics, it will be helpful to do some revision in this subject. You will receive a booklet of problems to attempt via email. The recommended textbook is:

• Mathematical Methods for Science Students, Stephenson (Dover, 2nd ed, 2020)

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Economics

The Economics you will be studying, in your first three terms, consists of:

1. Introductory Microeconomics: consumer theory; producer theory; market equilibrium with perfect competition, monopoly and simple oligopoly models; factor markets; general equilibrium, welfare and externalities
2. Introductory Macroeconomics: national income and expenditure; consumption; investment; international trade; the demand for money; banks and the supply of money; inflation; unemployment; business cycles; monetary and fiscal policy; and the financial crisis
3. Elementary Mathematical Economics: applications of functions and graphs, differentiation, partial differentiation, maxima and minima, optimisation subject to constraints.
4. Probability and Statistics

Lectures, tutorials and classes in Michaelmas Term will focus on Microeconomics and on Mathematical Economics.

For Microeconomics we will draw on material from the CORE textbook The Economy, which is available for free online and that you can start exploring. However, much of the analytical and mathematical content – both in the lectures and in the tutorials – will require a more in-depth treatment, of the sort found in more ‘traditional’ textbooks. We recommend using: Frank, R. (or Frank, R. and R. Cartwright), Microeconomics and Behaviour, McGraw-Hill. For Macroeconomics, the textbook is C.I. Jones, Macroeconomics, W.W. Norton. It may be helpful for you to have a look at these in advance (reading the first few chapters), or similar introductory books.

No less importantly though, we encourage some general background reading in Economics and related fields according to your interest.

Management

In Management, there is no textbook and your first year will be taken up by eight different subjects taught over sixteen weeks. These subjects are, in no particular order, Accounting, Employment Relations, Finance, Information Management, Marketing, Organisation Behaviour, Strategic Management, and Technology & Operations Management. There is no expectation of any prior knowledge in any of these management topics.

More than preparing these particular subjects, it is useful for you to do some general background reading.  The most useful reading is the business press in publications such as The Economist and the Financial Times.  These will allow you to follow the current economy and to provide yourself with case studies of managerial behaviour.

While they are not required, we also suggest several books, some of which are classics that were written decades ago but remain relevant today, and some of which are more recent.  These are:

• Michael Lewis, Liar’s Poker
• Marc Levinson, The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger
• Chris Miller, Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology

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Please note:

All English and Joint Schools offer holders should have received their reading lists from Prof. Eltis and Prof. Palfrey. Below is the (optional) advance reading for the Approaches to Literature and Language papers.

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Language:

• Ronald Carter and Walter Nash, Seeing through language : a guide to styles of English writing (Oxford : Basil Blackwell, 1990)
• Jonathan Culpeper, History of English (London: Routledge, 2005)
• The Language, Society, and Power Reader  ed., Annabelle Mooney et.al (London: Routledge, 2011).

Literature:

• Andrew Bennett and Nicholas Royle, An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory (Harlow: Pearson Longman, 2009), 4th.edn.
• John Lennard, The Poetry Handbook: a guide to reading poetry for pleasure and practical criticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005)
• Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan (editors), Literary theory: an anthology (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002)

You may also find the following books very useful: 

• Jonathon Culler, Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction (1997)
• R.Selden, Practising Theory and Reading Literature: An Introduction (1989)
• M.Short, Exploring the Language of Poems, Plays and Prose (1996)
• J.Wolfreys, Glossolalia: An Alphabet of Critical Keywords (2003)
• Clare Connors, Literary Theory: a beginner’s guide (2010)
• David Calder, Literature in the Modern World (1990)
• John Lennard and Mary Luckhurst, The Drama Handbook: a guide to reading plays (2005)
• David Lodge, ed., Modern Criticism and Theory: A Reader (2nd edn revd. Nigel Wood, 2000)
• —————–, Twentieth Century Literary Criticism: A Reader (1988)
• Martin Meisel, How Plays Work (2007)
• M.Montgomery, Ways of Reading (2000)
• Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan, Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics (1983, rept. 1996)

These are not set texts: they are just suggestions of books that contemporary art students often find useful or stimulating. You are not expected to have read them all before commencing your studies. We do encourage Freshers to read about and look at contemporary art before and throughout their studies.

• Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida (Vintage, 1993)
• Alice Correia (ed.), What is Black Art? (Penguin, 2022)
• Maja Fowkes and Reuben Fowkes, Art and Climate Change (Thames & Hudson, 2022)
• Dan Hicks, Every Monument Will Fall: A Story of Remembering and Forgetting (Penguin, 2026)
• Linda Nochlin, Why have there been no great women artists? 50th anniversary edition (Thames & Hudson, 2021)
• Alice Proctor, The Whole Picture: the colonial story of the art in our museums and why we need to talk about it (Cassell, 2020)
• Legacy Russell, Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto (Verso, 2020)
• Terry Smith, What is Contemporary Art? (Chicago, 2009)
• Susan Sontag, On Photography (Penguin, 1979)
• Julian Stallabrass, Contemporary Art, 2nd edition (Oxford, 2020)
• Hito Steyerl, Medium Hot: Images in the Age of Heat (Verso, 2025)
• Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World (Princeton, 2021)

We also recommend books that are published in these two series (here you might like to follow your own interests and chose one artwork or theme to explore in more depth):

• Afterall’s One Work
• Whitechapel/MIT’s Documents of Contemporary Art

It is also very rewarding to read art magazines such as Frieze, Art Monthly, and e-flux. The Tate Modern website has links to articles and videos on contemporary art and artists.

French

Many students begin the course without having had the opportunity to undertake much formal study of French literature. Both literature papers require you to undertake a close reading in the original French of a range of literary texts selected from different periods and different genres so that you will gradually build up your reading speed and learn how to write critical commentaries and essays. This will provide a sure grounding for the literary study you will do from the second year onwards.

It is imperative to have read at least all of the texts for study in Michaelmas term (marked MT) BEFORE you arrive at College. It is also a good idea to read more widely around these set books: find other texts by the same authors, and novels, poems or plays written at the same times as those set, in French or English (or your other language).

Paper III Short Texts (Note that if you are doing French as part of the Joint School of European and Middle Eastern Languages, you do not take this paper):
This paper will introduce you to the techniques of close reading through the study of four short works. You will certainly need to show that you know the texts well by establishing the context of the passages, but the skill is to show that you can comment pertinently and in detail on the words and ideas in front of you. When commenting on texts written in verse, you are required to show an awareness of the author’s use of versification.

• (i) Montaigne, ‘Des Cannibales’ from Essais, vol. 1 (recommended edition: Essais: ‘Des cannibales’ et ‘Des coches’, ed. by Tarpinian, Éditions Ellipses, 1994) MT
• (ii) Racine, Phèdre (recommended edition by Raymond Picard, Gallimard ‘Folio’, 2015) MT
• (iii) Verlaine, Romances sans paroles (recommended edition by Arnaud Bernadet, GF-Flammarion, 2018 [2012]. MT
• (iv) NDiaye, Papa doit manger (recommended edition Éditions de Minuit, 2003) HT

Paper IV French Narrative Fiction

This paper introduces you to four narrative texts written between the Middle Ages and the twentieth century:

• Anon, La Chastelaine de Vergy in Nouvelles courtoises, ed. S. Méjean-Thiolier and M-F. Notz-Grob, Paris: Livre de Poche, 1997. [ISBN 2-253-066613] HT
• Choderlos de Laclos, Les Liaisons dangereuses, éd. Pomeau, Paris: Flammarion, 1996. HT
• George Sand, Indiana, ed. Flammarion, Folio Classique, 1984. HT
• Maryse Condé, Traversée de la mangrove TT

French Sole (only applicable to those studying BA French)

Paper XI Introduction to French Film Studies

Introductory reading:

• Michael Temple and Michael Witt (eds), The French Cinema Book (British Film Institute, 2004). A detailed introduction to French cinema as an industry.
• David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, Film Art, An Introduction (McGraw Hill, various editions). A very useful introduction explaining all the technical terms that are used to analyse a film.

This paper will introduce you to four twentieth- and twenty-first century French film directors. We discuss the concepts of realism, documentary and avant-garde cinema and introduce the basic tools of film analysis.

In your essay writing, you will be able to engage with the directors’ ideas and with their particular way of realising them. The films under discussion involve a wide range of themes such as love, power, gender relations and autobiography. Each director has a different style of filmmaking. The focus of the course is the question of how the film medium represents contemporary reality. We will look at the way each of these directors uses devices of storytelling to present a particular point of view upon the world we live in. You will be encouraged to watch more films by each of these directors.

The prescribed films are:

• Jean-Luc Godard: Pierrot le fou (1965)
• Maurice Pialat: À nos amours (1983)
• Claire Denis: Beau Travail (1999)
• Céline Sciamma: Portrait de la jeune fille en feu (2019)

The teaching for this paper takes place in Michaelmas Term (first term), with seminars on the prescribed films in weeks 2, 4, 6 and 8. You will be required to submit to your seminar tutor an essay on three of the films and to do a seminar presentation on the fourth. [Normally the three-hour examination in Trinity Term (third term) requires you to answer three questions, each on a different film. There will be a choice of two questions on each film.] In 2026-7, this paper will not be formally examined, but instead certified on the basis of the submission of one of the essays written as part of the course.

In addition to the seminars you must follow the modern languages lecture-series entitled Introduction to Film Studies in weeks 1, 3, 5 and 7 in Michaelmas Term. These lectures present basic concepts of film analysis – montage, story, self-reference, and spectatorship – in four lectures devoted to four international films. These films are used simply as illustrations for the lectures and are not treated as set texts for examination purposes. The films are: Sergei Eisenstein: Potemkin (1925); Alfred Hitchcock: 39 Steps (1935); Michelangelo Antonioni (1967): Blow-up; Claire Denis: Beau Travail (1999).

Please note that in Canvas there is a reading list for this part of the course which includes links to online access or digitized versions of many of the texts. Students in the past have sometimes not understood that the links can be used to access the documents. If you find this complicated, there are some explanations here: https://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/collections-and-resources/reading-lists

Paper XII Introduction to French Literary Theory

This paper will introduce you to four twentieth-century literary critics. In your essay writing you will be able to engage with their ideas about literature and with their particular way of expressing them. You will be encouraged to apply these ideas to your own reading of texts.

The prescribed authors (note the recommended editions) are:

• Paul Valéry, ‘Questions de poésie’ and ‘Poésie et pensée abstraite’, in Théorie poétique et esthétique, part of Variété: Oeuvres, vol. I (Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade) [both essays are available electronically on Canvas, accessible via Single Sign-On once you get to Oxford]
• Jean-Paul Sartre, Qu’est-ce que la littérature? (Folio) [Sections I and II only]
• Roland Barthes, Critique et vérité (Seuil)
• Hélène Cixous, ‘Le rire de la Méduse’ in Le rire de la Méduse et autres ironies, ed. by Frédéric Regard (Galilée). [essay available electronically on Canvas, accessible via Single Sign-On]

The teaching for this paper takes place in Hilary Term (second term), in weeks 5-8 and Trinity Term weeks 1-4, in a combination of lectures and seminars. You will be required to submit to your seminar tutor an essay on three of the authors, and to do a seminar presentation on the fourth. The three-hour examination in Trinity Term requires you to answer three questions, each on a different author. There will be a choice of two essay questions on each author.

Paper XIII Key Texts in French Thought

This paper will introduce you to four thinkers from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries. In both essay and commentary writing you will be able to engage with their ideas and with their particular way of expressing them.

The prescribed texts (note the recommended editions) are:

• René Descartes, Discours de la méthode, edited by Laurence Renault (Garnier-Flammarion)
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discours sur l’origine de l’inégalité (Folio)
• Simone de Beauvoir, Le Deuxième Sexe (Folio), vol. I, ‘Introduction’; ‘Mythes’; II, ‘La femme mariée’; ‘La mère’. (NB Both the French ‘Idées’ collection and the English translation have sections missing and cannot be relied upon)
• Aimé Césaire, Discours sur le colonialisme, suivi de Discours sur la Négritude (Présence Africaine).

The teaching for this paper takes place in Michaelmas Term weeks 5-8 and Hilary Term weeks 1-4 in a combination of lectures and seminars. You will be required to submit to your seminar tutor an essay or commentary on three of the authors, and to do a seminar presentation on the fourth. Written work should include at least one essay and at least one commentary. The three-hour examination in Trinity Term requires you to answer three questions, each on a different text, one a commentary, the other two essays. There will be a choice of one commentary passage from each text and one essay question on each text.

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Language

For all students:

• Soluzioni: A Practical Grammar of Contemporary Italian, by Denise De Rome (Routledge, 2015), fourth edition.

Those who applied to Beginners Italian should consider purchasing also a copy of:

• The Ultimate Italian Review. Review and Practice, by David M. Stillman (McGraw-Hill, 2013).

At a more Advanced level, we also recommend the following reference books:

• A Reference Grammar of Modern Italian, by Martin Maiden and Cecilia Robustelli (Routledge, 2007; second edition).
• Using Italian Vocabulary, by Marcel Danesi (Cambridge University Press, 2003).

You are strongly advised to acquire a good-sized bilingual dictionary (such as Oxford-Paravia, Zanichelli, Collins), also available in libraries. You may also use the following online dictionaries, but we recommend you always write down the word or expression you’ve looked up in your own vocabulary notebook.

Literature and Cinema

Each of the two papers, studied in the first year, has a set of prescribed texts:

Modern Italian Narrative and Cinema (Paper IV)

Prescribed texts (any edition of the following, in Italian):

1. Primo Levi, Se questo è un uomo [1947] (Einaudi or other publisher)
2. Italo Calvino, Il cavaliere inesistente [1959] (Einaudi)
3. Natalia Ginzburg, Lessico famigliare [1963] (Einaudi)
4. Igiaba Scego, La mia casa è dove sono [2010] (Rizzoli or other publisher)

Prescribed film:

1. Marco Tullio Giordana (director), I cento passi [2000], available on DVD (Medusa, 2001)

N.B. This paper will be studied in the first term, and therefore at least the first three novels must have been read (either in the original Italian or in translation) by the time you come up in October.

They should be read preferably in the order of publication as stated above. The fourth novel, by Igiaba Scego, does not have an English translation and for this reason it will be studied later in the year. The prescribed film, too, will be studied later and does not require any prior preparation.

Background Reading:
A very useful introduction to Italian history and culture is Christopher Duggan, A Concise History of Italy (Cambridge UP, 1994). An excellent introduction to modern Italian literature is Robert Gordon, Introduction to Twentieth-Century Italian Literature (Duckworth, 2005). For film studies, you might want to familiarise yourself with the subject through the following: David Bordwell and Kirstin Thompson, Film Art: An Introduction (London: McGraw Hill, 2008, 8th ed).

Lyric Poetry (Paper III)

This is an anthology of lyric poems, which span the period from the Middle Ages to the present day and include a range of poets, styles, and metrical forms. The lyric anthology will allow you to trace several thematic developments across texts and time periods, studying both language and form in depth, while learning about the history of Italian literature and the history of ideas, knowledge which will help you make more informed choices about the later part of your Italian course. The Lyric anthology is produced by the Italian Sub-Faculty and a copy will be available at the Faculty Office or on Canvas.

N.B. This paper will be studied in the second term, starting in January, and it requires no preparatory reading at this stage.

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We hope you are looking forward to starting the medical course. You will probably be in need of a good break before you start, but if you can make time for a little gentle reading, you will find it helpful to lay some foundations for your studies here.

The following books provide a useful broad introduction to some of the topics you will be studying here. You should aim to read at least two of the titles listed below. Please note the ISBNs refer to paperback editions, but they are also available as e-books.

• Andrew Dilnot & Michael Blastland, The Tiger That Isn’t: Seeing Through a World of Numbers (Profile books 2008. ISBN: 9781846681110). A general overview of how to interpret (and misinterpret) numerical data. Strongly recommended.
• Fran Ashcroft, The Spark of Life (Penguin, 2013. ISBN: 9780141046532). An informal and very gentle introduction to the neurophysiology that you will be studying in the first term.
• Lewis Wolpert, “How We Live and Why We Die: the secret lives of cells” (Faber & Faber; ISBN-13:978-0571239122).
• Denis Noble, “Dance to the Tune of Life: Biological Relativity”. (Cambridge University Press; ISBN-13:978-1107176249#)
• Martin Wehling, “Principles of Translational Science in Medicine: From Bench to Bedside” ISBN: 9780128204931, eBook ISBN: 9780323999625

You will receive some additional material from the Medical Faculty Office, including advice about more specific and more technical preparatory reading.

We hope that you will enjoy reading some of these books. Please remember this reading is not essential, so only read what time and resources allow for.

Please read the relevant section below, as well as the initial overview. 

The textbook for the logic component of the first-year course which will be the main part of our philosophy work in Michaelmas Term will be Volker Halbach’s The Logic Manual.  This can be purchased from Amazon and elsewhere, and you will need your own copy for the course.  You are very strongly advised to get hold of this in advance and to start working through it; this is where we will start, and you need to ‘hit the ground running’!  You might well find working through the (older, rather more informal) text ‘Logic’ by Wilfrid Hodges in preparation for this part of the course helpful as well; local libraries might have copies of this, should you have access to them.

In addition to a selection of the books mentioned below, an excellent resource for guidance in philosophical thinking, reading and writing, well worth a look (but honestly not worth £20!), is

Clare Saunders, et al   Doing Philosophy: A practical guide for students (Continuum/Bloomsbury)

There are second-hand copies on the World of Books website (https://www.worldofbooks.com/en-gb)  at the moment; a rather different good book with the same title by our colleague Tim Williamson is also available there, though it’s not directly designed to help you write essays and read philosophy, and it’s the Clare Saunders one you want for that purpose.

Take time to read some of the following carefully.  Don’t try more than three at most, do spend time reflecting and thinking as you go, and please don’t spend lots of money on them.  You’ll be able to get the items that are on-line for free (and may not need to move much beyond those) and borrowing from libraries is fine where this is possible.  But you will need to own a copy of the book ‘The Logic Manual’ by Volker Halbach at some point before too long.  The list’s in alphabetical order by author surname, not of ‘importance’ (about which even your tutors may disagree).

For a general overview, and not at all a substitute for the books above,

Nigel Warburton         Philosophy: The Basics (Routledge), any edition; I think the latest is the 4th, also his Philosophy: The Classics (Routledge)

The Warburton books direct you to further reading.  There’s a large selection of philosophical texts to explore, with a small amount of commentary (including some of them texts suggested by Warburton) on the excellent website by the late Jonathan Bennett at: http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/.

The Descartes and the Mill, mentioned above, are both sufficiently represented on that site for this introductory purpose, so, with the Russell available too, you really can do quite a bit of reading without needing to buy any books at all.

Particular suggestions for PPE (Philosophy, Politics and Economics)

In addition to the suggested philosophy reading, for politics you might like to look at

Robert A Caro, Working (Vintage Press, 2021)

Caro has written what might reasonably be called legendary books, particularly on and around the political career of Lyndon B Johnson; but this (much, much shorter) book will appeal to those whose interests in the course are in various ways focused on empirical politics and the narrating of it.  On political theory, there’s

Jonathan Wolff, An Introduction to Political Philosophy (OUP, various editions)

Available second-hand quite cheaply at the moment from World of Books and elsewhere; you really shouldn’t need to spend £30 on a new copy, and any edition will be helpful.

There are also a number of works worth looking at on the website of the Institute for Economics Affairs.  They are apologists for a free market approach to economics and ideas, though of a kind which on most issues still sees a role for government and regulatory bodies.  There’s a paper from this May on the ‘space economy’ (that is, the economy of the space industry), as well as another on the use of space in a different sense (planning law); there’s a collection of papers on Hayek’s receipt of the Nobel prize 50 years ago.  Lots of things to think about, anyway.  The website is here: http://www.iea.org.uk/.

Look under ‘research’ and for any item that takes your fancy you may need to spool to the end of the article under the link to find the download option, but these really are often substantial and argumentative works.

Particular suggestions for PPL (Psychology, Philosophy and Linguistics) and for PML (Philosophy and Modern Languages)

The Logic book by Hodges contains a good deal of interesting material on the boundaries of logic, language and linguistic analysis, and Philosophy and Linguistics applicants might be especially interested in that.

For Psychology and Philosophy applicants, two books may be particularly interesting.  Sir Roger Penrose is one of Oxford’s Nobel Laureates; Sir Roger is a mathematician, and his

Roger Penrose, The Emperor’s New Mind (Oxford University Press, 1989 and later versions)  is a discussion of the possibilities and limits of a science of the mind.

Then another Oxford figure, Iain McGilchrist of All Souls College, has written an ambitious work which slightly defies classification,

Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World (Yale University Press, 2019 second edition)

You can probably find enough about them by skimming reviews on Amazon or the like to find out if either of these is actually of any interest to you.  But they might be; what attracted you to the subject may well be the kinds of very big questions being addressed by books such as these, and the patient topic-by-topic foundation-laying which you will meet with in your termtime studies may feel a long way away from these kinds of work.  You will not be ready to write a work like these for many years – you may well never be!  But it’s not a bad thing to acknowledge that there are big questions worth thinking and talking about, and to see where the laying of foundations can lead you to.

Particular suggestions for Physics and Philosophy

It is unlikely that you will study anything in the area of ethics in your degree, so the John Stuart Mill suggestions for vacation reading will not be as relevant to you as they will to those studying PPE, PPL and Philosophy & Modern Languages.  A book which might provide a more useful preparation for the Physics and Philosophy course, including a more historical approach than you may meet with in tutorials, is

John Losee, A Historical Introduction to the Philosophy of Science (Oxford University Press)

This exists in four editions, the earliest from the 1970s, the latest from 2002; the 2002 edition, at around £28, is greatly over-priced, especially as once you are in Oxford you can read it for free online, but there are cheap second-hand copies of earlier editions available through various sellers if you search for it on bookinder.com, and a copy of (say) the 1993 third edition for £3.50 or less might well be worth the price.

Particular suggestions for Mathematics and Philosophy

The more technical aspects of philosophy introduced in some of the books listed above will serve well for M&P; like those studying Physics and Philosophy it’s not likely that ethics or political theory will play much part in your degree.  If you have looked at and worked through the logic books by (perhaps) Hodges and (certainly) Halbach you would like to extend your reading and thinking about logic into more mathematical territory, this book:

David Bostock, Intermediate Logic (Oxford University Press, 1997) is designed to let you do that.  Working through it will serve to anticipate some of the logical work you are likely to be doing in the second term of your first year, and will be good background for some second-year mathematical work too.

The list is divided into three parts covering Philosophy, Politics and Economics.

Philosophy

Please see above (under Philosophy including PPE and all Joint Schools).

Politics

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Economics

Please see above (under Economics and Management).

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