What follows is a complete list of RSA library acquisitions for the month of February 2008. 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
Nicholas DaviesFlat Earth News: An Award-Winning Reporter Exposes Falsehood, Distortion and Propaganda in the Global MediaChatto & Windus, 2008, 070.4 DAV
'Finally I was forced to admit that I work in a corrupted profession.' When award-winning journalist Nick Davies decided to break Fleet Street's unwritten rule by investigating his own colleagues, he found that the business of reporting the truth had been slowly subverted by the mass production of ignorance. Working with a network of off-the-record sources, Davies uncovered the story of the prestigious Sunday newspaper which allowed: the CIA and MI6 to plant fiction in its columns; the newsroom which routinely rejects stories about black people; the respected paper that hired a professional fraudster to set up a front company to entrap senior political figures; and the newspapers which support law and order while paying cash bribes to bent detectives. Davies names and exposes the national stories which turn out to be pseudo events manufactured by the PR industry, and the global news stories which prove to be fiction generated by a new machinery of international propaganda. He shows the impact of this on a world where consumers believe a mass of stories which, in truth, are as false as the idea that the Earth is flat - from the millennium bug to the WMD in Iraq - tainting government policy, perverting popular belief. He presents a new model for understanding news.
100s – Philosophy & Psychology
Oliver JamesThe Selfish Capitalist: Origins of AffluenzaVermilion, 2008, 155.9 JAM
In
Affluenza, world-renowned psychologist Oliver James introduced us to a modern-day virus sweeping through the English-speaking world. He met those suffering from it and demonstrated how their obsessive, envious tendencies made them twice as prone to depression, anxiety and addictions than people in other developed nations. Now,
The Selfish Capitalist provides more detailed substantiation for those claims. It looks deeper into the origins of the virus and outlines the political, economic and social climate in which it has grown. James points out that, since the seventies, the rich have got much, much richer, yet the average person's wage has not increased at all. He provides a wealth of evidence to show that we have become more miserable and distressed since this time, and suggests that this is a direct consequence of Thatcherite/Blairite 'Selfish Capitalism', whose most significant act has been to rob the poor to give to the rich. A rallying cry to the government to reduce our levels of distress by adopting a form of unselfish capitalism, this hard-hitting and thought-provoking work tells us why our personal well-being must take precedence over the wealth of a tiny minority if we are to cure ourselves of this disease.
Richard WisemanThe Luck FactorArrow, 2004, 158.1 WIS
Why do some people lead happy successful lives whilst others face repeated failure and sadness? Why do some find their perfect partner whilst others stagger from one broken relationship to the next? What enables some people to have successful careers whilst apparently similar others find themselves trapped with jobs they detest? And can unlucky people do anything to improve their luck - and lives? Ten years ago, Dr. Richard Wiseman decided to search for the elusive luck factor by investigating the actual beliefs and experiences of lucky and unlucky people...Looking at the results, Wiseman was able to identify four main factors which explained living a lucky and unlucky life. He was then able to show a group of people that considered themselves unlucky, how to think and behave like lucky people. The results were astounding with almost all participants reporting significant life changes: including increased levels of luck, self-esteem, physical well-being, confidence, and success.
200s – Religion
300s – Social Sciences
Robert PestonWho Runs Britain? How the Super-rich are Changing our LivesHodder & Stoughton, 2008, 303.30941 PES
Who makes the decisions in this country? Who is the power behind the throne? Who's really in charge? Let the BBC's business correspondent Robert Peston take you through the looking glass on a behind-the-scenes tour of Britain's hidden power brokers and the reasons behind their rise. There's a new elite in town - and it's not who you might think…
Who Runs Britain? is essential reading for anyone who wants to know what's really happening in this country, and why.
Doug McKenzie-Mohr and William SmithFostering Sustainable Behaviour: An Introduction to Community-Based MarketingNew Society, 2000, 303.484 MCK
Our consumption patterns are threatening to outstrip Earth's ability to support humanity and other species. A sustainable future will require sweeping changes in public behaviour. While conventional marketing can help create public awareness, social marketing identifies and overcomes barriers to long-lasting behaviour change. This ground-breaking book is the primary resource for the emerging new field of community-based social marketing, and an invaluable guide for anyone involved in designing public education programs with the goal of promoting sustainable behaviour, from recycling and energy efficiency, to alternative transportation.
Lois WeisThe Way Class Works: Readings on School, Family and the EconomyRoutledge, 2008, 305.5 WEI
Since the 1980s, the relationship between social class and education has been overshadowed by scholarship more generally targeting issues of race, gender, and representation. Today, with the global economy deeply immersed in social inequalities, there is pressing need for serious class-based analysis of schooling, family life and social structure.
The Way Class Works is a collection of twenty-four groundbreaking essays on the material conditions of social class and the ways in which class is produced on the ground in educational institutions and families, written by the most visible and important scholars in education and the social sciences, these timely essays explore the production of class in and through the economy, family, and school, while simultaneously interrogating and challenging our understandings of social class as linked to race, gender, and nation.
Dave GormanAmerica UnchainedChannel 4 DVD, 2008, 306.0973 GOR
In
Dave Gorman In America Unchained,
recently screened here at the RSA, the multi award-winning performer sets off on a journey to see if it's still possible to live in America without giving any money to 'The Man'. Travelling coast-to-coast, he's not staying in any chain hotels, eating in any chain restaurants, or filling up at any chain gas stations. On this journey, only independent "Mom & Pop" businesses will do. Of course, travelling unchained in a chained world is tricky--when you’re tired you can't just stop at a Starbucks, and when the tank is running empty you can't just pull up at the next gas station. Staying true to the task was always going to be a struggle, but the people facing the real struggle are those working to keep the unchained businesses of America alive.
Michael F. D. YoungBringing Knowledge Back In: From Social Constructivism to Social Realism in the Sociology of EducationRoutledge, 2008, 306.43 YOU
What is it in the twenty-first century that we want young people, and adults returning to study, to know? What is it about the kind of knowledge that people can acquire at school, college or university that distinguishes it from the knowledge that people acquire in their everyday lives everyday lives, at work, and in their families?
Bringing Knowledge Back In draws on recent developments in the sociology of knowledge to propose answers to these key, but often overlooked, educational questions. Michael Young argues for the continuing relevance of the writings of Durkheim and Vygotsky and the unique importance of Basil Bernstein's often under-appreciated work. He illustrates the importance of questions about knowledge by investigating the dilemmas faced by researchers and policy makers in a range of fields, and considers the broader issue of the role of sociologists in relation to educational policy in the context of increasingly interventionist governments. In so doing, the book provides conceptual tools for people to think and debate about knowledge and education in new ways provides clear expositions of difficult ideas at the interface of epistemology and the sociology of knowledge makes explicit links between theoretical issues and practical/policy questions offers a clear focus for the future development of the sociology of education as a key field within educational studies.
Dick PountainCool Rules: Anatomy of an AttitudeReaktion, 2000, 306.40941 POU
This text introduces the reader to a new cultural category. While the authors do not claim to have discovered Cool, they believe they are the first to attempt a penetrating analysis of Cool's history, psychology and significance. The contemporary cool attitude is barely 50 years old, but its roots are older than that. This book traces Cool's origins in European, Asian, and African cultures, its prominence in the African-American jazz scene of the 1940s, and its pivotal position within the radical subcultures of the 1950s and '60s. The authors examine various art movements, music, cinema, and literature, moving from the dandies and flaneurs of the 18th and 19th centuries through to the expropriation of a whole cultural and psychological tradition by the media in the 1980s and '90s.
Christopher B. LeinbergerThe Option of Urbanism: Investing in a New American DreamIsland Press, 2007, 307.760973 LEI
Americans are voting with their feet to abandon strip malls and suburban sprawl, embracing instead a new type of community where they can live, work, shop, and play within easy walking distance. In
The Option of Urbanism, visionary developer and strategist Christopher Leinberger explains why government policies have tilted the playing field toward one form of development over the last sixty years: the drivable suburb. Rooted in the driving forces of the economy - car manufacturing and the oil industry - this type of growth has fostered the decline of community, contributed to urban decay, increased greenhouse gas emissions, and contributed to the rise in obesity and asthma. Highlighting both the challenges and the opportunities for this type of development,
The Option of Urbanism shows how the American Dream is shifting to include cities as well as suburbs and how the financial and real estate communities need to respond to build communities that are more environmentally, socially, and financially sustainable.
Paul CollinsThe Trouble with Tom: The Strange Afterlife and Times of Thomas PaineBloomsbury, 2006, 320.092 COL
The author of
Common Sense and
The Rights of Man, a radical on the run from the law in London, a founding father of the United States of America, a senator of revolutionary France, Thomas Paine alone claims a key role in the development of three modern democracies. He was a walking revolution in human form - the most dangerous man alive. But in death, Paine's story turns truly bizarre - his bones were taken from New York to London and eventually disappeared. In Paris, London and New York, in bars, grocers, shops and national libraries, crossing paths along the way with, among others, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, William Cobbett, Walt Whitman, Charles Darwin and even Lord Bryon, Paul Collins sets himself the challenge of finding out what happened to Paine's bones, and ends up telling one of the most extraordinary stories of modern history.
John PilgerFreedom Next TimeBlack Swan, 2007, 323.49 PIL
John Pilger is one of the world's pre-eminent investigative journalists and documentary film-makers. In
Freedom Next Time, he looks at five countries, in each of which a long struggle for freedom has taken place; in each the people, having shed blood and dreams, are still waiting. In Afghanistan, Iraq and South Africa, there has been the promise of hope, and even an 'official' freedom, but the reality of these divided societies is that they are still waiting for real freedom. In Palestine, the cycle of violence continues with no resolution in sight. And the island of Diego Garcia, in the Indian Ocean, is a microcosm of the ruthlessness of great powers. The island was sold by the British to the American military in the 1960s. The indigenous population, descended from slaves, were forcibly removed to the slums of Port Louis in Mauritius. They have continued to fight for the return of their homeland ever since - three years ago the High Court granted them the right of return, but this has subsequently been blocked. The island remains the US's third biggest military base; a base from which they are able to launch attacks against the Middle East. Once again, John Pilger gives a voice to the people living through these momentous times and, in gripping detail, shows us the lives behind the headlines.
John PilgerThe War on DemocracyLionsgate, 2008, 328.346 PIL
In his latest documentary, John Pilger travels to latin America to uncover the consequences of the United States’ greed. Pilger explores how the US has for decades installed presidents in South and Central America who have kept the rich in palaces and the poor in the desperate poverty of the barrios. Through interviews with ex-CIA chiefs, the people of Latin America themselves and a rare interview with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, John Pilger seeks to prove that you should never believe anything until it’s officially denied.
Gregory ClarkA Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the WorldPrinceton University Press, 2007, 330.9 CLA
Why are some parts of the world so rich and others so poor? Why did the Industrial Revolution - and the unprecedented economic growth that came with it - occur in eighteenth-century England, and not at some other time, or in some other place? Why didn't industrialization make the whole world rich - and why did it make large parts of the world even poorer? In A Farewell to Alms, Gregory Clark tackles these profound questions and suggests a new and provocative way in which culture - not exploitation, geography, or resources - explains the wealth, and the poverty, of nations. The problem, Clark says, is that only societies that have long histories of settlement and security seem to develop the cultural characteristics and effective workforces that enable economic growth. For the many societies that have not enjoyed long periods of stability, industrialization has not been a blessing. Clark also dissects the notion, championed by Jared Diamond in
Guns, Germs, and Steel, that natural endowments such as geography account for differences in the wealth of nations. A brilliant and sobering challenge to the idea that poor societies can be economically developed through outside intervention,
A Farewell to Alms may change the way global economic history is understood.
Muhammad YunusCreating a World without Poverty: How Social Business can transform our LivesPublic Affairs, 2008, 338.7 YUN
The winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize outlines his vision for a new business model that combines the power of free markets with the quest for a more humane world - and tells the inspiring stories of companies that are doing this work today. Over the last two decades, free markets have swept the globe, bringing with them enormous potential for positive change. But traditional capitalism cannot solve problems like inequality and poverty, because it is hampered by a narrow view of human nature in which people are one-dimensional beings concerned only with profit. In fact, human beings have many other drives and passions, including the spiritual, the social and the altruistic. Welcome to the world of social business, where the creative vision of the entrepreneur is applied to today's most serious problems: feeding the poor, housing the homeless, healing the sick and protecting the planet.
Creating a World without Poverty tells the stories of some of the earliest examples of social business, including Yunus's own Grameen Bank. It reveals the next phase in a hopeful economic and social revolution that is already under way - and in the worldwide effort to eliminate poverty by unleashing the productive energy of every human being.
Tim HarfordThe Logic of Life: The Hidden Economics of EverythingLittle, Brown, 2008, 339 HAR
To Tim Harford, Economics Editor of the Financial Times, drug addicts and teenage muggers can be rational. Suburban sprawl and inner city decay are rational. Endless meetings at the office and the injustices of working life? Rational. Economics explains why your boss is overpaid, whether we should build more prisons, and whether a city like New Orleans can recover from disaster. The book starts with the most intimate decisions - to have sex, to take drugs, to lead an honest life - then zooms out to discuss the logic of the family, of neighbourhoods, large corporations, cities themselves. This is the new economics of everything you never thought was economics, and it will help you see the world in a new way.
Rosemary JayData Protection: Law and PracticeSweet & Maxwell, 2007, 342.410858 JAY
Data protection, and the related areas of privacy, confidentiality, rights of access and powers of surveillance, are now mainstream issues. This fully revised and extended third edition is the essential work for anyone concerned with how this important area of law impaces on their practice. It explains the background to the legislation and gives guidance on how to apporoach interpretation, and provides detailed coverage of the relationship between data protection, the right to private life under the Human Rights Convention and the development of UK case law on privacy rights since October 2000.
Daniel J. SoloveThe Digital Person: Technology and Privacy in the Information AgeNew York University Press, 2004, 342.730858 SOL
Seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day - even as you read this - electronic databases are compiling information about you. Ever since the Internet transformed the way we shop, learn, and communicate, computer databases have collected unprecedented amounts of information about almost every individual in the world. Often these dossiers are used to investigate backgrounds, check credit, market products, and make a wide variety of decisions affecting our lives. This practice has, thus far, gone largely unchecked, and poses a grave threat to our privacy. In this startling revelation of how digital dossiers are created (usually without our knowledge), Daniel J. Solove argues that we must rethink our understanding of what privacy is and what it means in the digital age, and then reform the laws that define and regulate it.
Richard SennettThe CraftsmanAllen Lane, 2008, 306.361 SEN
This book, a philosophically-minded enquiry into practical activity of many different kinds past and present, is about what happens when people try to do a good job. It asks us to think about the true meaning of skill in the 'skills society' and argues that pure competition is a poor way to achieve quality work. Sennett suggests, instead, that there is a craftsman in every human being, which can sometimes be enormously motivating and inspiring - and can also in other circumstances make individuals obsessive and frustrated.
The Craftsman shows how history has drawn fault-lines between craftsman and artist, maker and user, technique and expression, practice and theory, and that individuals' pride in their work, as well as modern society in general, suffers from these historical divisions. But the past lives of crafts and craftsmen show us ways of working (using tools, acquiring skills, thinking about materials) which provide rewarding alternative ways for people to utilise their talents.
Tom Traynor and Alan FrenchA Guide to Major Trusts, 2007-08Directory of Social Change, 2007, REF 361.763202541 TRA
Grant-making trusts are a key source of funding for charitable activity, and this two-volume guide has built a reputation as the definitive source of information in this area. Volume one concentrates on the 400 largest trusts that give over £300,000 a year, and the second volume examines a further 1,200 mainly smaller trusts, which between them give tens of thousands each year. The content is compiled both through contact with the trusts themselves and through independent research. Each entry includes: clear description of the trust's grant-making policies and practices; a yearly grant total; contact details; and, areas or subjects the trusts will not consider.
David LyonSurveillance Studies: An OverviewPolity Press, 2007, 363.232 LYO
The study of surveillance is more relevant than ever before. The fast growth of the field of surveillance studies reflects both the urgency of civil liberties and privacy questions in the war on terror era and the classical social science debates over the power of watching and classification, from Bentham to Foucault and beyond. In this overview, David Lyon, one of the pioneers of surveillance studies, fuses with aplomb classical debates and contemporary examples to provide the most accessible and up-to-date introduction to surveillance available, taking in surveillance studies in all its breadth, from local face-to-face oversight through technical developments in closed-circuit TV, radio frequency identification and biometrics to global trends that integrate surveillance systems internationally. This book is the perfect introduction for anyone wanting to understand surveillance as a phenomenon and the tools for analysing it further, and will be essential reading for students and scholars alike.
Anna FunderStasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin WallGranta Books, 2004, 363.2830943155 FUN
In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell; shortly afterwards the two Germanies reunited, and East Germany ceased to exist. In a country where the headquarters of the secret police can become a museum literally overnight, and one in 50 East Germans were informing on their countrymen and women, there are a thousand stories just waiting to get out. Anna Funder tells extraordinary tales from the underbelly of the former East Germany - she meets Miriam, who as a 16-year-old might have started World War III, visits the man who painted the line which became the Berlin Wall and gets drunk with the legendary Mik Jegger of the East, once declared by the authorities to his face to no longer to exist.
Ricardo Bayon, Amanda Hawn and Katherine Hamilton (eds.)Voluntary Carbon Markets: An International Business Guide to what they are and how they WorkEarthscan, 2007, 363.738746 BAY
This groundbreaking business book, written in a fast-paced journalistic style, draws together all of the key information on international voluntary carbon markets with commentary from leading practitioners and business people. The book covers all aspects of voluntary carbon markets in the US, Europe, Australia, Canada and Asia: what they are, how they work and, most critically, their business potential to help slow climate change. It is the indispensable guide for anyone seeking to understand voluntary carbon markets and capitalize on the opportunities they present for economic and environmental benefit. If you want to be ahead of the curve for the next big thing, you need this book.
David King and Gabrielle WalkerThe Hot Topic: How to Tackle Global Warming and Still Keep the Lights OnBloomsbury, 2008, 363.738746 KIN
The Hot Topic is a collaborative work by one of the most respected scientists and one of the most dynamic writers in the field of climate change. Sir David King, world-renowned scientist and the Government's Chief Scientific Adviser, is widely credited with persuading Tony Blair to act on climate change and with getting key international figures around the negotiating table, and Gabrielle Walker is a respected author, journalist and radio presenter, and a regular contributor to New Scientist, whose 8-part series
Planet Earth Under Threat was a major success last year for BBC Radio 4.
The Hot Topic goes beyond a statement of the problem to address in detail what can be done to answer the challenge on a personal, social, national and international level. A clear, short and engaging book that approaches the whole issue - the present problem and the future solutions - in a straightforward way, it is bound to receive massive attention from industry, the media and government alike.
Sudhir Alladi VenkateshGang Leader for a Day: A Young Sociologist Crosses the LineAllen Lane, 2008, 364.1066092 VEN
Sudhir Venkatesh is the young sociologist who became famous in
Freakonomics,
Gang Leader for a Day is a gripping journey of discovery about life on the wrong side of the tracks. When naive sociology student Sudhir Venakatesh went to find out more about urban poverty in Chicago, the last thing he expected was to be held hostage by a gang. And he never guessed that, after being released, he'd want to return to find out more about them, befriend them, and ultimately live amongst them for ten years.
Darius M. RejaliTorture and DemocracyPrinceton University Press, 2007, 364.67 REJ
This is the most comprehensive, and most comprehensively chilling, study of modern torture yet written. Darius Rejali, one of the world's leading experts on torture, takes the reader from the late nineteenth century to the aftermath of Abu Ghraib, from slavery and the electric chair to electrotorture in American inner cities, and from French and British colonial prison cells and the Spanish-American War to the fields of Vietnam, the wars of the Middle East, and the new democracies of Latin America and Europe. As Rejali traces the development and application of one torture technique after another in these settings, he reaches startling conclusions. As the twentieth century progressed, he argues, democracies not only tortured, but set the international pace for torture. Under the watchful eyes of reporters and human rights activists, low-level authorities in the world's oldest democracies were the first to learn that to scar a victim was to advertise iniquity and invite scandal. Rejali makes this troubling case in fluid, arresting prose and on the basis of unprecedented research - conducted in multiple languages and on several continents - begun years before most of us had ever heard of Osama bin Laden or Abu Ghraib.
Robert HillAchieving More Together: Adding Value through PartnershipAssociation of School and College Leaders, 2008, 379.152 HIL
This book is the result of a year-long ASCL research project to find evidence of the concrete benefits – both in terms of innovation and improvement – to be gained from school and college collaboration and to understand the implications for education policy. It makes the educational and practical case for partnership working, and analyse the research evidence on the extent to which partnership working adds value, examines the current scope and form of such collaborative activity among schools and colleges and discusses the barriers to partnership and what can be done to lessen or remove them.
400s – Language
500s – Natural Sciences & Mathematics
Iain StewartEarth: The Power of the PlanetBBC DVD, 2008, 508 STE
In this landmark BBC series, Dr Iain Stewart tells the story of how our planet works and how, over the course of 4.6 billion years, it came to be the remarkable planet it is today. Examining the great forces that shape the earth - volcanoes, the ocean, the atmosphere and ice - the programme explores their central roles in our planet's story. How do these forces affect the earth's landscape, its climate, and its history? This is a series that shows the earth in new and surprising ways. Extensive use of satellite imagery reveals new views of our planet, while time-lapse filmed over many months brings the planet to life.
Peter A. CorningNature’s Magic: Synergy in Evolution and the Fate of HumankindCambridge University Press, 2003, 576.8 COR
Nature's Magic presents a bold new vision of the evolutionary process from the Big Bang to the 21st century. Synergy of various kinds is not only a ubiquitous aspect of the natural world but it has also been a wellspring of creativity and the 'driver' of the broad evolutionary trend toward increased complexity, in nature and human societies alike. But in contrast with the many theories of emergence or complexity that rely on some underlying force or 'law', the 'Synergism Hypothesis', as Peter Corning calls it, is in essence an economic theory of biological complexity; it is fully consistent with mainstream evolutionary biology. Among the many important insights that are provided by this new paradigm, Corning presents a scenario in which the human species invented itself; synergistic, behavioural and technological innovations were the 'pacemakers' of our biological evolution.
600s – Technology (Applied Sciences)
Ronald CohenThe Second Bounce of the Ball: Turning Risk into OpportunityWeidenfeld & Nicolson, 2007, 658.155 COH
In business, everyone can see the first bounce of the ball. It is the second bounce that is uncertain. Ronald Cohen, one of the world's leading private-equity investors, argues that the entrepreneur's aim is to take advantage of that uncertainty: it is only in situations of uncertainty that significant gains can be made.
The Second Bounce of the Ball is the distillation of Cohen's 33-year career building Apax Partners into a firm employing more than 300 people, with offices in eight countries and billions under management, and is essential reading for entrepreneurs, wannabe entrepreneurs and all those who want to apply entrepreneurial approaches in all walks of life.It provides relevant background on the development of entrepreneurship and of the venture-capital and private-equity industry through the prism of Cohen's experience at Apax.
Sarah LewisAppreciative Inquiry for Change Management: Using AI to Facilitate Organizational DevelopmentKogan Page, 2007, 658.406 LEW
Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is one of the most exciting and increasingly recognized concepts in facilitating organizational change. This book studies AI in depth, illustrating the method of asking particular questions and envisioning the future, encouraging staff to consider both the positive and negative systems in place and to recognize the need to implement change. Case studies from organizations that have already integrated conversational methods into their change management practice show you why the processes are valuable, why they are effective and how to promote, create and generate such conversations yourself. Written in jargon-free language, this is an excellent resource for you to discover the benefits that conversational techniques can have on your organization and its performance.
Gerard HastingsSocial Marketing: Why Should the Devil Have all the Best Tunes?Butterworth-Heinemann, 2007, 658.8 HAS
This book explains the principles of social marketing and examines the implications of using techniques devised on Wall Street to further social and health goals. Naomi Kein, Joel Bakan and George Monbiot have each done a great job of telling us what is wrong with corporate capitalism, and this book begins to provide some solutions. It shows how we can borrow the techniques they use to promote consumption, to encourage more socially desirable behaviours, and use rigorous research to enable regulators to constrain the worst excesses of Wall Street. Modern marketing techniques now pervade every aspect of our lives: the government, charities, advocacy groups use it to encourage us to live more healthily, support good causes or be more ecologically sensitive. This book asks whether this works and what does it tell us about the relationship between business and civil society? Highly accessible with clear learning objectives, exercises and worked examples, this is also a text that stretches our understanding of the discipline and raises questions about future directions.
A.S.K. Hollis 2008: The Directory of UK Associations - the Definitive Directory of Associations and Organisations Representing a Membership, a Message and a MissionHollis Publishing, 2008, REF 659.202
Over 6,000 associations, pressure groups, unions, institutes, societies and more are profiled, representing every interest area from abrasives through to zoos, from industrial, professional and business sectors to government, charities and the consumer.
700s – The Arts
Alison ChernikMatthew Barney - No RestraintSoda Pictures, 2007, 700.92 BAR/CHE
A documentary portrait of artist Matthew Barney, following him through the process of making
Drawing Restraint No. 9, his 2005 film, using clips from the film, behind-the-scenes interviews, and home-movie footage of Barney playing high-school football, as well as interviews with gallery owner Barbara Gladstone, New York Times art critic Michael Kimmelman, Guggenheim curator Nancy Spector, and Yuko Hasegawa, chief curator of the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, Japan, which presented a major exhibition on the Drawing Restraint series, including a screening of the film, in the summer of 2005.
Stefan Lubomirski de VauxUrban Nature and the Urban BeachLubomirski, 2006, 770 LUB
An eclectic collection of 50 original photographs in colour and black & white, on a theme of nature in an urban setting including the use of parks and river banks as urban beaches. Nature tamed and left free, outdoors and indoors and as an inspiration for art.
Alex JamesBit of a BlurLittle, Brown, 2007, 782.42166092 JAM
For Alex James, music had always been a door to a more exciting life: a way to travel, meet new people and, hopefully, pick up girls. But as bass player of Blur - one of the most successful British bands of all time - his journey was more exciting and extreme than he could ever have predicted. Success catapulted him from a slug-infested squat in Camberwell to a world of private jets and world-class restaurants. Pleasingly unrepentant but nonetheless a reformed man, Alex James is the perfect chronicler of his generation - witty, observant, frank and brimming with
joie de vivre.
800s – Literature
900s – Geography & History
Daniel Lord SmailOn Deep History and the BrainUniversity of California Press, 2007, 901 SMA
When does history begin? What characterizes it? This brilliant and beautifully written book dissolves the logic of a beginning based on writing, civilization, or historical consciousness and offers a model for a history that escapes the continuing grip of the Judeo-Christian time frame. Daniel Lord Smail argues that, in the wake of the decade of the brain and the bestselling historical work of scientists like Jared Diamond, the time has come for fundamentally new ways of thinking about our past. He shows how recent work in evolution and paleohistory makes it possible to join the deep past with the recent past and abandon, once and for all, the idea of prehistory. Making an enormous literature accessible to the general reader, he lays out a bold new case for bringing neuroscience and neurobiology into the realm of history.
Michelle P. BrownManuscripts from the Anglo-Saxon AgeUniversity of Toronto Press, 2007, 941 BRO
The Anglo-Saxons first appeared on the historical scene as Germanic pagan pirates and mercenaries, moving into the declining Roman Empire in the 5th Century AD and forging a series of kingdoms which became ‘England.’ By the time of the Norman Conquest in 1066, Anglo-Saxon England was one of the most sophisticated states in the medieval West, renowned for its ecclesiastical and cultural achievements. The written word was of tremendous importance in this transformation. Within a century of the introduction of Christianity and literacy, the book had become a central element of Anglo-Saxon society, and a rich vehicle for cultural and artistic expression. This new book by a leading export on this period, Michelle P. Brown, provides an authoritative introduction to the art of book production in the Anglo-Saxon period and an historical overview of the period by means of its book culture. It illustrates in colour over 140 examples of the finest Anglo-Saxon books, from the British Library and other major collections.
Edward JamesBritain in the First MillenniumArnold, 2000, 941.01 JAM
The first millennium in British history, a period framed by two invasions and conquests from across the Channel, is given a fresh portrayal in this innovative new account. It is the first time that Britain has been studied over the entire first millennium - or what might be called the 'long' first millennium, from the middle of the first century BC until the end of the eleventh century AD. It was a fundamental period for the historical and cultural development of Britain. The incomplete nature of the Roman Conquest lies behind the separate development of Ireland and northern Scotland, and perhaps Wales. The events of the fifth and sixth centuries, the so-called Migration Period, led to the re-making of the linguistic map. The arrival of Christianity was a major unifying event of the period in cultural terms. The arrival of the Vikings ultimately brought about the unification of the English kingdom, and aided in the unification of the kingdom of Scotland, the two most significant political developments of the latter part of the period, while the Norman Conquest inextricably tied subsequent medieval English monarchs into the politics of France.
Ian MortimerThe Perfect King: The Life of Edward III, Father of the English NationPimlico, 2007, 942.037092 MOR
He ordered his uncle to be beheaded; he usurped his father's throne; he taxed his people more than any other previous king, and he started a war which lasted for more than a hundred years. Yet for centuries Edward III (1327-77) was celebrated as the most brilliant of all English monarchs. In this first full study of his character and life, Ian Mortimer shows how under Edward the feudal kingdom of England became a highly organised nation, capable of raising large revenues and deploying a new type of projectile-based warfare, culminating in the crushing victory over the French at Crecy. Yet under his rule England also experienced its longest period of domestic peace in the Middle Ages, giving rise to a massive increase of the nation's wealth through the wool trade, with huge consequences for society, art and architecture. It is to Edward that England owes its system of parliamentary representation, its local justice system, its national flag and the recognition of English as the language of the nation. Nineteenth century historians saw in Edward the opportunity to decry a warmonger, and painted him as a self-seeking, rapacious, tax-gathering conqueror. Yet as this book shows, beneath the strong warrior king was a compassionate, conscientious and often merciful man - resolute yet devoted to his wife, friends and family. He emerges as a strikingly modern figure, to whom many will be able to relate - the father of both the English people and the English nation.
Timothy Carton AshThe File: A Personal HistoryVintage Books, 1998, 943.1 ASH
In an account of Cold War espionage and treachery, the author describes his discovery that the East German secret police had compiled a secret file on his activities and of his efforts to track down the truth about that file.
Joe SaccoThe Fixer: A Story from SarajevoJonathan Cape, 2004, 949.74203 SAC
In his remarkable new book Joe Sacco returns to Bosnia, the setting for his first masterpiece,
Safe Area Goražde. In 2001 he went back to Sarajevo to meet up with his old 'fixer', an army veteran called Neven who, for the right price, could arrange anything for the visiting journalist. Sacco gradually realized that Neven's own story - a microcosm of the Balkan conflict itself - might be the most compelling of all. Through Neven, Sacco tells the story of the warlords and gangsters who ran the country during the war, but all the time he - and the reader - never know whether Neven is telling the truth.
Benny Morris (ed.)Making IsraelUniversity of Michigan Press, 2008, 956.04 MOR
Benny Morris is the founding father of the New Historians, a group of Israeli scholars who have challenged received wisdom about the origins of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Their research rigorously documented crimes and atrocities committed by the Israeli armed forces, including rape, torture, and ethnic cleansing. In Making Israel, Morris now offers the first collection of translated articles on the New History by leading Zionist and revisionist Israeli historians, providing Americans with a firsthand view of this important debate, and enabling a better understanding of how the New Historians have influenced Israelis' awareness of their own past. The book includes contributions from eminent partisans and moderates on both sides (including Mordecai Bar-On, Uri Ram, Avi Shlaim, Anita Shapira, and Morris himself), and is well-adapted for use in courses on politics, history, and Middle Eastern and Jewish studies.
James Miller and Sarah ShahDeath in GazaWarner Home Video, 2006, 956.94 MIL
Directed and filmed by James Miller and written and reported by Sarah Shah, in spring 2003, they set out to Gaza to "understand how people learn to hate so deeply they’re prepared to die in order to kill". Their focus is the next generation, "the children who will make either peace or war" told through the tainted eyes of three Palestinian children indoctrinated into Jihad.
Death in Gaza culminates with Miller’s own; filming the sustained attack of Israeli tanks on suspected militant residences Miller and Shah are trapped inside a house, and wait until the fighting ceases to make their move. Attempting to leave the area by waving a white flag through the darkness, Miller assumes that the Israeli soldiers will recognise him as a journalist and let his team pass. Instead, shots ring out, killing Miller instantly, the tragedy being captured by a local film crew.
Phil GrabskyEscape from LuandaSeventh Art Productions, 2008, 967.3 GRA
This film spans a year in the life of the only music school in Luanda, the capital of Angola, and follows these three students, each striving to make it through their course. Following a 27-year civil war, Angola is still one of the world s poorest and most dangerous places and the students often have to go hungry and face difficult opposition so that they can follow their musical ambition.
Escape from Luanda is a moving, funny and enlightening story, showing above all that where there is music, there is life...
Edward Lucas
