Psychology and sociology growing in popularity

At Cambridge psychology and sociology culminate in the Human, Social and Political Sciences course. But what should you be reading if you’re planning on applying?

Anything and Everything

Part of the joy of university study is that there is not one definitive right answer to the questions of what you should read when applying or studying at university. You can read anything you like and it will almost always give you some angle or information that you can use in your essays. With anything you get your teeth into, consider why you’re reading it, what the key takeaways are, and how you can apply this to your understanding of the HSPS sphere. To get you started, here are a few titles that you could consider reading…

Democracy for Realists - Achen, Christopher H. and Bartels, Larry M. (2016)

Democracy for Realists assails the romantic folk-theory at the heart of contemporary thinking about democratic politics and government, and offers a provocative alternative view grounded in the actual human nature of democratic citizens.

The Handmaid’s Tale - Atwood, Margaret (1985)

The Handmaid's Tale is a futuristic dystopian novel by Canadian author Margaret Atwood and published in 1985. It is set in a near-future New England in a patriarchal, totalitarian theonomic state known as the Republic of Gilead, which has overthrown the United States government. Offred is the central character and narrator and one of the "handmaids", women who are forcibly assigned to produce children for the "commanders", who are the ruling class in Gilead.

Ruling the Void - Mair, Peter (2013)

The age of party democracy has passed, argues Peter Mair in Ruling the Void. The major parties have become so disconnected from society that they no longer seem capable of sustaining democracy in its present form.

Age of Anger - Mishra, Pankaj (2017)

Age of Anger: A History of the Present is a 2017 nonfiction book by Indian author Pankaj Mishra. Mishra accounts for the resurgence of reactionary and right-wing political movements in the late 2010s.