What follows is a complete list of RSA library acquisitions for the month of August 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
100s – Philosophy & Psychology
Henk A. M. J. ten Have
Nanotechnologies, Ethics and Politics
UNESCO Publishing, 2007, 174.2 HEN
Public opinion about nanotechnologies is already divided between the hopes nourished by their potential benefits and the fear of their possible harmful effects on the environment and humankind. In the face of this divide,
Nanotechnologies: Ethics and Politics engages in a rare kind of prospective ethical reflection, asking questions such as what health and environmental issues arise with the use of new materials produced by nanoscale technologies? How might nanoscale devices be controlled, and what concerns attend military and biomedical applications of nanotechnologies?
200s – Religion
BonoOn the Move: Remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast, Washington DC, 2 February, 2006W Publishing Group, 2007, 261.8 BON
"The one thing, on which we can all agree, is that God is with the vulnerable and poor. God is in the slums and in the cardboard boxes where the poor play house. God is in the debris of wasted opportunity and lives, and God is with us if we are with them. 6,500 Africans are still dying every day of a preventable, treatable disease, for lack of drugs we can buy at any drug store. This is not about charity, this is about Justice and Equality." This small book, based upon the speech given by Bono at the 2006 NPB, delivers an inspiring and powerful message.
300s – Social Sciences
Anne PhillipsMulticulturalism Without CulturePrinceton University Press, 2007, 305.48 PHI
Public opinion in recent years has soured on multiculturalism, due in large part to fears of radical Islam. In
Multiculturalism without Culture, Anne Phillips contends that critics misrepresent culture as the explanation of everything individuals from minority and non-Western groups do. She puts forward a defence of multiculturalism that dispenses with notions of culture, instead placing individuals themselves at its core, offering a new way of addressing dilemmas of justice and equality in multiethnic, multicultural societies. Perhaps what makes
Multiculturalism without Culture such an important book, is that it has been writen at this critical moment when so many Western countries are poised to abandon multiculturalism.
Imran AhmadUnimagined: a Muslim Boy Meets the West
Aurum, 2007, 305.697 AHM
Part White Teeth, part Adrian Mole,
Unimagined is the captivating memoir of a Muslim boy born in Pakistan, who moves to London aged one and grows up torn between his Islamic identity and his desire to embrace the West. As amusing, touching and uplifting as it is questioning and thought provoking, Imran Ahmad provides deep insight into the life of a Muslim immigrant.
Paul M Sniderman & Louk Hagendoorn
When Ways of Life Collide: Multiculturalism and its Discontents in the Netherlands
Princeton University Press, 2007, 305.697 SNI
In 2004, Dutch film maker Theo van Gogh was brutally murdered on a busy Amsterdam street. His killer was Mohammed Bouyeri, a twenty-six-year-old Dutch Moroccan who was offended by van Gogh's controversial film about Muslim suppression of women. The Dutch government had funded separate schools, housing projects, broadcast media, and community organizations for Muslim immigrants, all under the umbrella of multiculturalism. But the reality of terrorism and radicalization of Muslim immigrants has shattered that dream. In this arresting book, Paul Sniderman and Louk Hagendoorn demonstrate that there are deep conflicts of values in the Netherlands and show how identity politics have contributed to this crisis.
John BergerHold Everything Dear: Dispatches on Survival and ResistanceVerso, 2007, 322.42 BER
One of the most influential intellectuals of our time returns with a meditation on political resistance.
Hold Everything Dear is John Berger's vital response to today's global economic and military tyranny. From Hurricane Katrina, 9/11 and 7/7, to resistance in Ramallah and traumatic dislocation in the Middle East, Berger explores the countless personal choices, encounters, illuminations, sacrifices, new desires, griefs and memories that occur in the course of political resistance to empire and colonialism.
Michael KlareResource WarsHenry Holt and Company, 2002, 355.033 KLA
A much-needed assessment of a changed world,
Resource Wars is a compelling look at warfare in an era of rampant globalisation and intense economic competition. The political divisions of the Cold War, Klare asserts, have given way to a global scramble for oil, natural gas, minerals, and water. And as armies throughout the world define resource security as a primary objective, widespread instability is bound to follow, especially in those areas where competition for essential materials overlaps with long-standing territorial and religious disputes.
Nicholas SeddonWho Cares?: How State Funding and Political Activism Change Charity
Civitas, 2007, 361.7 SED
Charities lie at the heart of a vibrant civil society. They have for a long time been distinguished from the public sector on the one hand and the commercial sector on the other and their independence from both is vital to their success. However, a considerable proportion of charities are now so dependant on state funding that they are effectively more part of the state than civil society and Nick Seddon argues that we need to distinguish between charities that are genuinely part of civil society from those that have become part of the political process in order to preserve the integrity of the sector.
Debbie CrewThe Tenant's Dilemma: Warning - Your Home is at Risk if You Dare ComplainCrosby, Formby and District CAB, 2007, 363.5 CRE
The Tenant’s Dilemma highlights the dilemma faced by thousands of tenants - whether to put up with poor housing or exercise their rights to have repairs carried out and risk eviction as a result. Many private tenants are living in poor housing because they fear eviction too much to complain and this report provides evidence that some landlords are using a clause in the law to evict tenants in retaliation to requests for repairs or complaints about their accommodation. This is a particularly valuable study given that Government figures indicate that nearly one million private rented homes currently fail the Government’s decent homes standard.
Julian AgyemanSustainable Communities and the Challenge of Environmental Justice
New York University Press, 2005, 363.7 AGY
Environmental justice refers to any local response to a threat against community health, and according to Julian Agyeman argues is a movement that is compatible the sustainable communities movement are compatible in a number of practical ways. Yet sustainability, which focuses on meeting our needs today while not compromising the ability of our successors to meet their needs, has not always partnered with the challenges of environmental justice, and
Sustainable Communities and the Challenge of Environmental Justice explores the ideological differences between these two groups and shows how they can work together. This book is vital to the efforts of community organizers, policymakers, and everyone interested in a better environment and community health.
Jenny BirdSteering Through Change: Winning the Debate on Road PricingInstitute for Public Policy Research, 2006, 363.7 BIR
This report examines current public attitudes towards road pricing in the UK and what motivates public opposition to the idea: who is opposed, why they are opposed, and what could win them over. The authors investigate how attitudes are likely to change over time and set out how scheme design options and communications could be used to help alleviate public concerns about road pricing.
400s – Language
500s – Natural Sciences & Mathematics
Maggie BlackWater, Life ForceNew Internationalist, 2004, 553.7 BLA
Water, Life Force is a celebration of water and its many roles in the human and natural world. It is also an exploration of one of the most temperamental and powerful substances on earth and of the extraordinary pressures on today's freshwater resources.
600s – Technology (Applied Sciences)
The Economist
Business MiscellanyProfile Books, 2005, 650 ECO
Full of facts and figures about all aspects of business, The Economist
Business Miscellany is designed to inform, amuse, and provide plenty with which to entertain others. The magazine's contributors and researchers clearly had a lot of fun putting this together and readers will share in that fun.
Mika AaltonenThe Third Lens: Multi-Ontology Sense-Making and Strategic Decision-Making
Ashgate, 2007, 658.401 AAL
Advancing new sense-making tools for organizational strategy, this book demonstrates how to deal with asymmetric threats and opportunities. It employs participatory methods and multiple sector strategies to shift strategic thinking into considering disorder complexity and chaos. Written for 21st century strategists,
The Third Lens will benefit people and organizations who struggle daily with multiple co-existing ontological, epistemological and methodological discourses.
Stephen Morse
Successful Product Management: A Guide to Strategy, Planning and Development
Kogan Page, 2000, 658.8 MOR
Product managers often have extensive responsibilities and the expectations of performance are overwhelming. In this second edition of
Successful Product Management, Stephen Morse focuses on the skills and techniques the product manager needs to be effective. He offers a practical approach to the product management system, covering all aspects of the tasks, including product strategy, product planning, new product development, product marketing, product profitability and branding.
700s – The Arts
Open House
Open House London: Architecture in the FleshLondon Open House, 2007, 720 OPE
Open House London: Architecture in the Flesh is a comprehensive guide to this popular annual event which invites the public to experience, explore, and understand architecture, design and the built environment by giving them direct access to over 600 buildings new and old all over London. This year’s event takes place on 15-16 September.
Peter Barker & Jon BarrickBuilding Sight: a Handbook of Building and Interior Design Solutions to Include the Needs of Visually Impaired PeopleRNIB, 1995, 720.87 BAR
Building Sight is an exploration into the particular problems facing visually impaired people in the built environment. It seeks to provide solutions and, in a comprehensive reference section, recommends the type of good design that works to fulfil the needs of, and include, as many people as possible.
David PearsonSeven Hundred Penguins
Penguin, 2007, 741.64 PEA
A collection of Penguin covers from Britain and around the world,
Seven Hundred Penguins is a celebration of jackets that remain visually distinctive and addictive to us today, from the beautiful to the garish, design classics to design oddities. A full-colour, sensuous delight, with one jacket on every page, the featured jackets represent the personal favourites of Penguin staff from offices all over the world, and run from Penguin's birth in 1935 to the end of the twentieth century.
Jean MuirJean MuirLeeds Art Galleries, 1981, 745.2 MUI
Iconic British fashion designer, Jean Muir (1928-1995) will be forever associated with 'the little black dress'. Her signature style married a distinctive purity of line with a soft fluidity on the body, to create the sensuous deceptively simple clothes that became her trademark. Achieving international recognition, not least from the RSA as a member of their “Royal Designer for Industry faculty”, this classic book from 1980 illustrates Muir at her best.
800s – Literature
900s – Geography & History
Linda ColleyThe Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh: a Woman in World HistoryHarper Press, 2007, 910.409 COL
From the author of 'Britons', comes the story of Elizabeth Marsh - an extraordinary woman of her time who was caught up in trade, imperialism, war, exploration, migration, growing maritime reach, and new ideas. Linda Colley's new book breaks the boundaries between biography, genealogy and global history. This is a book about a world in a life.
Adrian TinniswoodThe Verneys: A True Story of Love, War and Madness in Seventeenth-Century EnglandVintage, 2007, 941.06 TIN
'To know the Verneys is to know the seventeenth century,' writes Adrian Tinniswood in his brilliant new book - and thanks to the chance survival in an attic of tens of thousands of their letters, we know the Verneys very well indeed. Tinniswood reveals the world of this family of Buckinghamshire gentry in extraordinary detail and intimacy.
The Verneys is narrative history at its very best - fascinating, surprising and enthralling.
Peter HennessyHaving It So Good: Britain in the FiftiesPenguin, 2007, 941.085 HEN
This wonderfully engaging book evokes a Britain emerging from the shadow of war and the privations of austerity and rationing into growing affluence. Peter Hennessy takes his readers into the front-rooms where the Coronation was watched on television, to the classrooms and new coffee bars of 1950s Britain - and also into the secret Cabinet rooms in which decisions about the British nuclear bomb were taken and plans made for the catastrophe of nuclear war. It is not just an account of a period, but a reliving of it.
Andrew MarrA History of Modern Britain
Macmillan, 2007, 941.085 MAC
A History of Modern Britain confronts head-on the victory of shopping over politics. It tells the story of how the great political visions of New Jerusalem or a second Elizabethan Age, rival idealisms, came to be defeated by a culture of consumerism, celebrity and self-gratification. This history follows all the political and economic stories, but deals too with comedy, cars, the war against homosexuals, Sixties anarchists, oil-men and punks, Margaret Thatcher's wonderful good luck, political lies and the true heroes of British theatre. It accompanies a major five-part documentary series for BBC television.
Sarfraz.Manzoor
Greetings from Bury Park: Race, Religion and Rock and Roll
Bloomsbury, 2007, 942.085 MAN
Sarfraz Manzoor was three years old when he emigrated from Pakistan to Britain in 1974 with his mother, brother and sister. They came to join their father, who worked on the production line at Vauxhall, and settled in the Bury Park neighbourhood of Luton. Sarfraz's teenage years were a constant battle to reconcile being both British and Muslim. Frustrated by real life, he sought solace in TV and music. But it was when his best friend introduced him to Bruce Springsteen that his life changed forever. In this perceptive, affectionate and timely memoir, Sarfraz Manzoor retraces his journey from Lahore to Luton to Ladbroke Grove, from the minor frustrations of his childhood to his response and analysis of the tragedies of 9/11 and 7/7.
Phillip H. Gordon & Jeremy ShapiroAllies at War: America, Europe, and the Crisis over Iraq
McGraw-Hill, 2007, 956.704 GOR
A thorough analysis of where U.S./European relations have gone wrong - and how to set them right,
Allies at War is the first and most comprehensive assessment of what went wrong between America and Europe during the crisis over Iraq and is based on extensive interviews with policymakers in the United States and Europe. It puts the crisis over Iraq in historical context by examining US-Europe relations since World War II and shows how the alliance traditionally managed to overcome its many internal difficulties and crises.
Allies At War demonstrates that even after Iraq, the United States and Europe can work together, and indeed must if they wish to effectively address the most pressing problems of our age.
Barack ObamaThe Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream
Canongate, 2007, 973.931 OBA
With intimacy and self-deprecating humour, Barack Obama describes in
The Audacity of Hope, his experiences as a politician, of balancing his family life and his public vocation, and his search for consensus. His respect for the democratic process inform every sentence of the book, and as a senator, a lawyer, a professor and a father, Barack Obama has written a book of transforming power that will inspire people the world over.
Reference
Dave Sharp (ed.)
Annual Abstract of Statistics 2007
Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, 314.109 NAT
Annual Abstract of Statistics is the most comprehensive source of statistics in the UK. Updated annually, and compiled from more than 100 sources, this statistical encyclopaedia includes over 10,000 series of data, covering key aspects of the UK's economic, social and industrial life. The data are presented in easy-to-read tables which are supported by explanatory notes and definitions.
National Council for Voluntary Organisations
Voluntary Agencies Directory 2007
NCVO Publications, 2007, REF 361.763 NAT
The Voluntary Agencies Directory is the established reference guide for journalists, job-seekers, researcher, policy makers, politicians and individuals involved in the voluntary sector. Organised into a user-friendly A-Z format, the directory lists over 2000 national charities and other organisations connected to the voluntary sector.
DVD
Martin DurkinThe Great Global Warming SwindleWAG TV, 2007, DVD DUR
The Great Global Warming Swindle is a provocative documentary that brings together the arguments of leading scientists who disagree with the prevailing consensus that carbon dioxide released by human industrial activity is the cause of rising global temperatures today.
Open House
