RSA Library Update - July 2007

What follows is a complete list of RSA library acquisitions for the month of July 2007. Fellows are welcome to e-mail library@rsa.org.uk if they wish to borrow any of these items, or search the library catalogue for thousands of other titles....

000s – Generalities

Derek M. Powazek
Design for Community: the Art of Connecting Real People in Virtual Places
£23.50, 2002, 005.72 POW
As community features keep cropping up on even the simplest Web site, it's important for Web designers and developers to understand how these features work and the best way to--or not to--implement them. The Web site for the book www.designforcommunity.com serves as an interactive example and legitimate online community for readers of this book. It incorporates all the examples and suggestions outlined in the text and fosters a direct online community, not only between readers, but between the author and readers as well. Each chapter opens with an in-depth explanation of a single issue, from practical issues like email and list moderation to more conceptual issues like trust and intimacy. These discussions lay the groundwork and provide an even-handed explanation of the issues, as well as advocate for the right way to solve the problems, based on the author's years of experience.

100s – Philosophy & Psychology

Jerome Bindi (ed.)
The Future of Values: 21st Century Talks
UNESCO Publishing/Berghahn Books, 2004, 121.8 BIN
The second anthology originating from UNESCO's “21st-Century Talks”, The Future of Values brings together 50 scientists and researchers from all over the world to redefine and anticipate the values of tomorrow, and reflect on the direction these values may lead humanity.

Arlene Judith Klotzko
A Clone of Your Own?: The Science and Ethics of Cloning
Oxford University Press, 2005, 174.29 KLO
Describing the new world of possibilities that can be glimpsed over the horizon, the author explains that the technology to create clones of living beings already exists, inaugurated in 1996 by Dolly the sheep, the first mammal cloned from a single adult cell, and shows why the prospect of human cloning triggers our hopes.

200s – Religion

300s – Social Sciences

Arun Maira
Remaking India: One Country, One Destiny
Response Books, 2005, 306.309 MAI
In this book, one of India's foremost business consultants provides an invaluable insight into India's current economic problems and how they can be resolved. Taking a close look at the current scenario as well as analyzing the future, The Remaking of India discusses various critical issues including: planning and legislating for holistic growth and development; what businesses need from the government to grow in the right direction; the need for collaboration between business and government; and corporate responsibility and its role in growth and development.

Anna Coote & Jo Lenaghan
Citizens' Juries: Theory into Practice
IPPR, 1997, 323.042 COO
This influential IPPR report examines the benefits of greater public involvement in decision-making and the role that Citizens’ Juries can play in this.

Clare Delap
Making Better Decisions: Report of an Ippr Symposium on Citizens
Institute for Public Policy Research, 1998, 323.042 DEL
Making Better Decisions reports the reactions to IPPR’s pilot citizens’ juries and their implications for democratic practice. It is a useful introduction to work in the area of public involvement in decision-making.

Miranda Lewis
States of Reason: Freedom, Responsibility and the Governing of Behaviour Change
IPPR, 2007, 323.042 LEW
Public behaviour has long been the concern of government. States need to maintain order, prevent citizens from harming each other and promote the public good. In this report IPPR asks what the rationale is for state interventions in public behaviour and what principles should guide public policy when the state seeks to act. The report develops a framework setting out when and how government intervention in public behaviour is justified. It brings together insights from different policy areas but focuses in particular on three examples: anti-social behaviour, climate change, and personal finance.

Paddy Ashdown
Swords and Ploughshares: Bringing Peace to the 21st Century
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2007, 327.172 ASH
The men and women of the British armed forces are currently engaged in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Balkans in 'peacekeeping operations'. How do we avoid these kind of missions turning into long-term entanglements, like the current disaster that is Iraq? How do we bring our soldiers home? And what do we do about 'failed states' that are havens for gangsters and terrorists?

Larbi Bouguerra
Water Under Threat
Zed, 2006, 333.91 BOU
Water Under Threat asks the big questions about the enormously important political and geo-strategic issue of water. Does water have a price? Is it a right or a need? Is there a water crisis? Will wars be fought over water? Should we be worried about water pollution? Can the available technological solutions keep it under control? This richly documented book makes the case for a society that is more economical with water, and calls for global management of water resources, in a spirit of solidarity, openness and respect for the rules of democracy.

Adam Marshall & Ben Harrison
Connecting Cities: Local Transport, National Connectivity and Economic Growth
Centre for Cities, 2007, 354.76 MAR
Connecting Cities reflects the views of local stakeholders in five of England's regional cities, where local transport has been the subject of intense debate in recent months. The report is based on a series of five seminars and brings together a range of messages for national decision-makers.

Thomas Pogge (ed.)
Freedom From Poverty as a Human Right: Who Owes What to the Very Poor?
Oxford University Press, 2007, 362.556 POG
Collected here in one volume are fifteen cutting-edge essays by leading academics which together clarify and defend the claim that freedom from poverty is a human right with corresponding binding obligations on the more affluent to practice effective poverty avoidance. The nature of human rights and their corresponding duties is examined, as is the theoretical standing of the social, economic and cultural rights.

400s – Language

500s – Natural Sciences & Mathematics

R.F Streater
Lost Causes in and Beyond Physics
Springer, 2007, 530 STR
Lost Causes in and Beyond Physics deals with a selection of research topics mostly from theoretical physics that have been shown to be a dead-end or continue at least to be highly controversial. Nevertheless, whether it is about Bohmian mechanics, physics from Fisher information or the quantum theory of the brain, small but dedicated research communities continue to work on these issues. R.F. Streater, renowned mathematical physicist, describes in this series of essays the work and struggle of these research communities, as well as the chances of any breakthrough in these areas.
Fellows’ Donation.

600s – Technology (Applied Sciences)

Atul Gawande
Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance
Profile Books Ltd, 2007, 617.092 GAW
The struggle to perform well is universal, but nowhere is this drive to do better more important than in medicine. In his new book, Atul Gawande explores grippingly how doctors strive to close the gap between best intentions and best performance in the face of obstacles that sometimes seem insurmountable. Unflinching but compassionate, Gawande's investigation into medical professionals and their progression from good to great provides a detailed blueprint for success that can be used by people in every area of human endeavour.

John Maeda
The Laws of Simplicity: Design, Technology, Business, Life
MIT, 2006, 650.1 MAE
This title presents ten laws of simplicity for business, technology, and design that teach us how to need less but get more. We sometimes find ourselves caught up in the simplicity paradox: we want something that's simple and easy to use - but also does all the complex things we might ever want it to do. Confronting this problem, John Maeda offers guidelines, ten laws for balancing simplicity and complexity in business, technology, and design - for needing less and actually getting more.

The Mind Gym
The Mind Gym: Give Me Time
Time Warner, 2006, 650.11 MIN
The problem of not having enough time is as old as time itself, and so are most of the proposed cures. The trouble is, they don't seem to work. The Mind Gym: Give me time proposes a radically different approach to time and how we use it. Combining extensive psychological research with five years of testing amongst The Mind Gym's 100,000 members, this book offers practical solutions that will make you feel great about how your time is spent.

Thomas W. Malone
The Future of Work: How the New Order of Business Will Shape Your Organization, Your Management Style, and Your Life
Harvard Business School, 2004, 658.402 MAL
From a renowned visionary on organizational theory, The Future of Work provides the first workable model for creating and managing within the organization of the future. Malone shows us that our current notions about decentralization and empowerment merely scratch the surface of what will be possible as technological and economic forces render command and control management obsolete. In its place will be a coordinate and cultivate approach that will spawn entirely new types of decentralized organizations - from internal markets to democracies to loose hierarchies that reap the scale and knowledge efficiencies of large organizations while enabling the freedom, flexibility, and human values that drive smaller firms.

Mark Earls
Herd: How to Change Mass Behaviour by Harnessing our True Nature
John Wiley, 2007, 658.834 EAR
Understanding that unless you have a good explanation of mass behaviour, you'll have little chance of altering it, Herd reveals that most of us in the West have completely misunderstood the mechanics of mass behaviour because we have misplaced notions of what it means to be a human being. With a host of examples from Peter Kay and urinal etiquette to Apple and Desmond Tutu, Mark Earls offers the most radical, controversial and significant new theory of consumer behaviour in a generation.

700s – The Arts

Architecture for Humanity (ed.)
Design Like You Give a Damn: Architectural Responses to Humanitarian Crises
Thames & Hudson, 2006, 720.869 ARC
Design Like You Give a Damn is the first book to gather projects conceived and executed by architects and designers under the aegis of Architecture for Humanity, a relief organization dedicated to promoting architectural and design solutions to global, social and humanitarian crises. The book showcases about forty projects from the past decade, including schemes in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iran, with detailed descriptions for each, illustrated by stunning colour photographs and architectural drawings.

Simon Bradley
St Pancras Station
Profile, 2007, 725.31 BRA
An iconic London landmark of Gothic dream palace and futuristic train shed - built in the 1860s for the new Midland Railway line into London, St. Pancras is soon to be reincarnated as the main international gateway from London to the Continent. Simon Bradley examines this fascinating story of changes in taste and of our understanding of the past. This book is a reminder of the revolutionary effects of the railway and of how the innovations of the Industrial Revolution have weathered subsequent technological change. St. Pancras demands to be understood for the continuing thrall in which great urban monuments can hold us.

Rod Sheard
The Stadium: Architecture for the New Global Culture
Tuttle, 2005, 725.827 SHE
Through recent high-profile work of HOK Sport, the world's leading stadium architects, this book examines the increased significance and value of the stadium as an architectural icon.

Arnold Schwartzman
London Art Deco
Aurum, 2007, 745.2 SCH
The style that subsequently became known as Art Deco first came to prominence at the Paris Exposition of 1925. The version that then developed and flourished in Britain was less florid than the French or American strands, and reflected, in particular, the British love of decorative detail. For this survey of London's rich trove of Art Deco treasures, RDI faculty member Arnold Schwartzman has photographed not just landmark buildings like the Savoy Hotel and the Hoover factory, but also department stores, cinemas and theatres, underground stations and many other buildings in which stunning exteriors or interiors survive, in whole or in part, to remind us of the city's rich legacy from the Deco period.

Alastair Fuad-Luke
The Eco-Design Handbook: a Complete Sourcebook for the Home and Office
Thames & Hudson, 2006, 745.4 FUA
The Eco-Design Handbook is the first book to present the best-designed objects for every aspect of the home and office, including the most environmentally sound materials and building products. The book contains three essential components. An introduction puts forward the history and latest thinking in green design strategies. Its core comprises two sections devoted to detailed illustrated descriptions of objects for domestic living and products for the office or work-related activities. The third element is a vast reference source, defining available materials, from organic to specially developed eco-sensitive composites and then providing detailed information on manufacturers, design studios, green organizations and online information.

800s – Literature

900s – Geography & History

Simon Jenkins
Thatcher and Sons: A Revolution in Three Acts
Allen Lane, 2006, 941.085 JEN
The history of Britain in the last thirty years, under both Conservative and Labour governments, has been dominated by one figure - Margaret Thatcher. Her election marked a decisive break with the past and her premiership transformed not just her country, but the nature of democratic leadership. In his 'argued history', Simon Jenkins analyses this revolution from its beginnings in the turmoil of the 1970s through the social and economic changes of the 1980s. Was Thatcherism a mere medicine for an ailing economy or a complete political philosophy? And did it eventually fall victim to the dogmatism and control which made it possible? This is the story of the events, personalities, defeats and victories which will be familiar to all those who lived through them, but seen through a new lens. It is also an argument about how Thatcher's legacy has continued down to the present. Not just John Major, but Tony Blair and Gordon Brown are her heirs and acolytes. And as the Conservative party reinvents itself as a viable political force once again, is the age of Thatcher finally over?

David Kynaston
Austerity Britain, 1945-1951
Bloomsbury, 2007, 941.085 KYN
In Austerity Britain, David Kynaston weaves a sophisticated narrative of how the victorious 1945 Labour government shaped the political, economic and social landscape for the next three decades, while also telling the stories of specific characters such as Judy Haines (a Chingford housewife) and Henry St John (a civil servant from Bristol). Deeply researched, often amusing and always intensely entertaining and readable, this volume offers an entirely fresh perspective on Britain during those six momentous years.

Paul Linebarger
Sun Yat Sen and the Chinese Republic
Read Books, 2006, 951.3 LIN
This edition of Sun Yat Sen and the Chinese Republic is a republishing of this classic and valuable Chinese history text from the early 1900’s.

Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Imperial Life in the Emerald City
Bloomsbury, 2007, 956.704 CHA
From a walled-off enclave of towering plants, smart villas and sparkling swimming pools - a surreal bubble of pure Americana known as the Green Zone - the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority, under imperial viceroy L. Paul Bremer III, attempted to rule Iraq in the first twelve months after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime. Drawing on hundreds of interviews and internal documents, Rajiv Chandrasekaran tells the memorable story of this ill-prepared attempt to build American democracy in a war-torn Middle Eastern country.

Reference

International Who’s Who: 2008
Europa Publications, 2007, REF 920.009
First published in 1935, The International Who's Who 2008 is the ultimate source of biographical information on the world's most eminent figures.