Book of the Week – “Capitalism as if the World Matters”

Jonathon Porritt
Capitalism as if the World Matters
Earthscan, 2005, 330.122 POR

Chairman of the UK Ecology – now Green – Party from 1978 to 1984, Director of Friends of the Earth from then until 1990, and co-founder of Forum for the Future in 1996, Jonathon Porritt turned his attention in his most recent book, Capitalism as if the World Matters, to arguing for just that: a reorganisation of the capitalist system to take account of the value of the raw natural resources it extracts from the earth, and an environmentalism that acknowledges the reality of capitalism’s widespread, dominant, popular position as “the only economic game in town.”

Instead of what he sees as Green politics’ negative emphasis and traditional refusal to engage with businesses, – preferring to look down on them only as the causes of climate change – Porritt argues for what he has been working to achieve in his role as a consultant to businesses and chair of the Sustainable Development Committee; a constructive engagement with the systems that generate pollution, to find workable solutions to the problems facing the planet today.

Porritt’s goal is a politically engaged green movement that capitalises on the current importance of enviromental issues to electorial politics by talking of the positive benefits that the challenge of climate change could bring society, by providing an opportunity to tackle social inequalities, correct the work-life balance and reorganise communities in line with the principles of sustainable development.

Jonathon Porrit blogs here, and will be presenting a talk on the book at the RSA on Thursday, 25 October. Précis of the book are available from The Observer and openDemocracy, the latter also featuring six responses.

To borrow a copy of Capitalism as if the World Matters, please contact the RSA Library.

Featured books – “The Cult of the Amateur” and “Wikinomics”

Two books this week, highlighting the current debate surrounding “Web 2.0,” the rise in popularity of internet-based media collaborations between disparate, connected individuals, through uploading videos to YouTube, editing encyclopaedia entries on Wikipedia, creating alternative sources of news such as Indymedia, or engaging in political and social commentary and debates through the proliferation of blogs and their comment functions. Combined with the popularity of social networking sites such as Facebook, active individuals are able to use these services to disseminate free content to potentially enormous audiences, and create networks that can share information and act on it with great speed over long distances.

Andrew Keen
The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing our Culture and Assaulting our Economy
Nicholas Brealey, 2007, 303.4833 KEE

Previously recommended by Matthew Taylor himself on his own blog, and the subject of the RSA lecture The Great Digital Seduction, The Cult of the Amateur sees Silicon Valley pundit Andrew Keen outline grave consequences as a result of this new digital media, decrying an avalanche of amateur content threatening our values, economy, and ultimately innovation and creativity itself. Highly topical, provocative and controversial, Keen warns that valued cultural institutions - our professional newspapers, magazines, music, and movies - are being overtaken by an avalanche of amateur, user-generated, free content. In today's self-broadcasting culture, where amateurism is celebrated and anyone with an opinion, however ill-informed, can participate, the distinction between trained expert and uninformed amateur becomes dangerously blurred.

Don Tapscott & Anthony D. Williams
Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything
Portfolio, 2006, 658.046 TAP

In the opposite corner, Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams’ Wikinomics presents a similar argument to James Surowiecki’s The Wisdom of Crowds in demonstrating how, in just the last few years, traditional business collaboration – in a meeting room, a conference call, even a convention center – has been superseded by collaborations on an astronomical scale. Today, encyclopedias, jetliners, operating systems, mutual funds, and many other items are being created by teams numbering in the thousands or even millions. Where Keens fears the heaving growth of these massive online communities, Wikinomics argues this fear is folly. Smart firms can harness collective capability and genius to spur innovation, growth, and success. A brilliant guide to one of the most profound changes of our time, it challenges our most deeply-rooted assumptions about business and will prove indispensable to anyone who wants to understand competitiveness in the twenty-first century. Based on a $9 million research project led by bestselling author Don Tapscott, Wikinomics shows how masses of people can participate in the economy like never before, and describes how the social networking tools created under the banner of “Web 2.0” can be used to host new working practises for groups and institutions to use to generate effective and innovative solutions to the problems they set themselves.

Read the Guardian’s reviews of The Cult of the Amateur and Wikinomics, and get involved by editing Wikinomics’ own Wiki or commenting on Andrew Keen’s blog.

To borrow a copies of The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing our Culture and Assaulting our Economy or Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, please contact the RSA Library.

Featured Book - "The Triumph of the Political Class "

Peter Oborne
The Triumph of the Political Class
Simon & Schuster, 2007, 320.

Subject of a recent ThuRSdAy lunchtime lecture, Daily Mail columnist Peter Oborne’s new book, The Triumph of the Political Class, draws on his experience as a political journalist to diagnose a class of politicians who have left behind the idea of going into politics for that quaintest of reasons: to serve the public Expanding further on previous books and columns, Oborne charges this elite with eroding Britain’s former socio-political divides by bridging the Left-Right gap in favour of presenting the same policies with different spins to an alienated public via a sensationalist media, and reducing politics to a source of personal gain.

Relating these new developments to the history of eighteenth century venality, Oborne asks if, in these allegedly enlightened times, should we not know better? Do we not deserve better from those who seek our electoral approval? Full of revealing and insightful stories and anecdotes to support his case, and with a passionate call for reform, The Triumph of the Political Class is destined to be a much-talked-about political book of 2007, and is supported by a companion documentary in the Dispatches strand, “Nice Work If You Can Get It” at 8PM, Monday 24th September on Channel 4.

To borrow a copy of The Triumph of the Political Class contact the RSA Library.

RSA Library Update - September 2007

What follows is a complete list of RSA library acquisitions for the month of September 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

Daniel Jackson & Martyn Thomas (eds.)
Software for Dependable Systems: Sufficient Evidence?
The National Academies Press, 2007, 005.3 JAC
Adopting a broad perspective towards the subject, Software for Dependable Systems seeks to answer key questions such as, how can software and the systems that rely on it be made dependable in a cost-effective manner, and how can one obtain assurance that dependability has been achieved?

100s – Philosophy & Psychology

Nicola Madge
Children These Days
Policy, 2006, 305.23 MAD
Children These Days draws on the accounts of over two thousand children, and five hundred adults, to examine the present day meaning of childhood and its implications for policy and practice. Key questions addressed by the study include: How is childhood perceived? What is it like to grow up and become an adult? What are the influences and controls on young people? Are young people protected or over-protected? How much do young people and adults respect and talk to each other? And, to what extent is Britain a child-friendly society? The book provides unique evidence on children's and adults' views of childhood, and draws conclusions on the attitudes and policies to be challenged and developed in the 21st century.

200s – Religion

300s – Social Sciences

John J. Macionis & Vincent N. Parrillo
Cities and Urban Life
Pearson Prentice Hall, 2006, 307.76 MAC
Cities and Urban Life, authored by two of the best-known textbook writers in the field, provides a comprehensive introduction to urban sociology, urban anthropology, and urban studies. Primarily sociological in approach, this book incorporates historical, social, psychological, geographical, and anthropological insights. While strong in the classical urban sociology, it also gives extensive attention to the new political economy approach to urban studies.

John Gray
Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia
Allen Lane, 2007, 320.55 GRA
During the last century global politics was shaped by utopian projects. Pursuing a dream of a world without evil, powerful states waged war and practised terror on an unprecedented scale. From Germany to Russia to China to Afghanistan entire societies were destroyed. Utopian ideologies rejected traditional faiths and claimed to be based in science. They were actually secular versions of the myth of Apocalypse - the belief in a world-changing event that brings history, with all its conflicts, to an end. The war in Iraq was the last of these secular utopias, promising a new era of democracy and producing blood-soaked anarchy and an emerging theocracy instead. Black Mass, John Gray's powerful and frightening new book, argues that the death of utopia does not mean peace. Instead it portends the resurgence of ancient myths, now in openly fundamentalist forms. Obscurely mixed with geopolitical struggles for the control of natural resources, apocalyptic religion has returned as a major force in global conflict.

Wyn Derbyshire
Money & Work: an Essential Guide
Spiramus Press, 2007, 332.024 DER
This guide to money and work seeks to demystify finance, starting with the operation of bank accounts, through to pensions, property-owning and how taxes are calculated. Aimed at young people but useful for all, this book provides all the necessary practical information and teaches many skills that our education system often fail to provide, including credit cards, bank accounts, mortgages and pensions.

Stephen Hall (ed.)
Sustainable Development indicators in your pocket 2007
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, 2007, 338.927 DEF
Published by Defra to provide an overview of the country’s progress in tackling key economic, social and environmental issues, Sustainable Development indicators in your pocket 2007 contains 68 indicators covering a wide range of topics of everyday concern such as health, housing, jobs, crime, education, and our environment.

Amitai Etzioni
Security First: for a Muscular, Moral Foreign Policy
Yale University Press, 2007, 355.033 ETZ
'Rarely have more profound changes in American foreign policy been called for than today', begins Amitai Etzioni in the preface to this book. Yet Etzioni's concern is not to lay blame for past mistakes but to address the future. The author asserts that providing basic security must be the first priority in all foreign policy considerations, even ahead of efforts to democratize. He sets out essential guidelines for a foreign policy that makes sense in the real world, builds on moral principles, and creates the possibility of establishing positive relationships with Muslim nations and all others. Etzioni's conclusions fall into no neat categories, neither liberal nor conservative, for he is guided not by ideology but by empirical evidence and moral deliberation. His proposal rings with the sound of reason, and this important book belongs on the reading list of every concerned leader, policy maker, and voter in America.

Nick Bosanquet, Henry de Zoete & Emily Beuhler
The NHS in 2010: Reform or Bust
Reform Research Trust, 2005, 362.11 BOS
This study by independent think-tank Reform warns that by 2010, the NHS will cost up to £20 billion more than it should for its level of performance. The study finds that in coming years the NHS will deliver a better service and that the Government's waiting times targets will be met, but that overall a failure to introduce reform means that improvements will be bought at a huge and unnecessary cost.

400s – Language

500s – Natural Sciences & Mathematics

600s – Technology (Applied Sciences)

700s – The Arts

800s – Literature

900s – Geography & History

RSA Screens – "Murder Most Foul"

Sir Antony Sher & Jon Blair.

Thursday 20 September sees the return of RSA Screens - a series of events that pairs the screenings of new and acclaimed documentary films with live commentary and discussion from those involved in the making of the films.

‘Murder Most Foul’ is a documentary by Oscar winning South African filmmaker Jon Blair that asks potent questions and raises serious concerns about the levels of violence within South African society. The film features acclaimed South African born actor Sir Antony Sher and focuses on the murders of actor Brett Goldin and fashion designer Richard Bloom in April 2006.

First screened publicly in Cape Town in July 2007, ‘Murder Most Foul’ is being presented by RSA Screens in association with Channel 4, who will give the film it’s first UK airing on their More4 channel, five days after the RSA screening, as part of their ongoing “True Stories” documentary series.

Read articles about both Sir Antony Sher's involvement in ‘Murder Most Foul’ and the murders of Brett Goldin and Richard Bloom from Cape Town based newspaper, Cape Times.

RSA participates in London Open House

Open House
Open House London: Architecture in the Flesh - 15-16 September 2007
Open House Press, 2007, 720 OPE

On Sunday 16th September the doors of 8 John Adam Street will be opened up to the public as the RSA once again takes part in the annual London Open House weekend.

“Open House” is an architecture education organisation that runs a public programme of events which aims to raise the standard of London’s built environment and encourage people to experience and engage with good design. The premier event on their calendar, the annual London Open House weekend is London’s largest architectural ‘exhibition’ and gives everyone the opportunity to visit over 600 buildings old and new across London – many of which are normally closed to the public.

Over 500 people will explore our historic house in a single day, taking the opportunity to experience the unique blend of original period features, artwork and modern architectural design through a leisurely walking tour of the building. All the most attractive and significant rooms of the house will be available for viewing, including the Great Room displaying our celebrated series of paintings by James Barry, the Adelphi Room featuring decorative gouache ceiling panels, and a display of historical items from the RSA Archive.

Other buildings taking part in the event include some of London’s best know and most iconic landmarks, such as The British Airways London Eye, The Trellick Tower, BBC Broadcasting House and St Mary Axe - aka “The Gherkin”.

The full 70 page colour guide to the event can be purchase or downloaded from the Open House website at a cost of £4.00/£3.00. Alternatively, copies are available free of charge from participating London Borough libraries, or for RSA Fellows, from the RSA Library. To plan visit to the house and see which other building in the area will be open, search the Open House interactive map.

The RSA House will be open from 12pm to 5pm on Sunday 16 September, with last entry at 4.30pm, no booking is required. All building taking part in London Open House can be viewed free of charge, however a significant number of them (including all those mentioned above) do require advanced bookings.

Featured Book - "Design Management"

Kathryn Best
Design Management: Managing Design Strategy, Process and Implementation
AVA Publishing, 2007, 745.206 BES

Written by RSA Fellow Kathryn Best and published by AVA Publishing, Design Management is a guide to the key knowledge, practice and skills required when applying design to business. Bringing together the study of these two different disciplines in order to promote a clearer understanding of the relationship between design and management and its importance within a successful organisation, Kathryn Best provides the reader with a clear guide to managing the strategy, the process and the implementation of a project from conception to delivery.

Having established a long-running and successful tradition of projects that celebrate and promote good design, such as our Royal Designer for Industry Faculty and Design Directions competitions, the RSA has a strong commitment to exploring how design can be used to remove the barriers to social progress. Encouraging the effective use of design in business strategy, Design Management makes a vital contribution to our understanding of the potential uses of design and will make valuable reading for students of design, marketing, media communications and business, as wells as all those involved in the management of design within macro or micro organisations.

Read a review of Design Management from Mantex.

To borrow a copy of Design Management contact the RSA Library.

RSA Library Update - August 2007

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

Bono
On the Move: Remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast, Washington DC, 2 February, 2006
W 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 Phillips
Multiculturalism Without Culture
Princeton 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 Ahmad
Unimagined: 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 Berger
Hold Everything Dear: Dispatches on Survival and Resistance
Verso, 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 Klare
Resource Wars
Henry 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 Seddon
Who 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 Crew
The Tenant's Dilemma: Warning - Your Home is at Risk if You Dare Complain
Crosby, 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 Agyeman
Sustainable 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 Bird
Steering Through Change: Winning the Debate on Road Pricing
Institute 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 Black
Water, Life Force
New 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 Miscellany
Profile 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 Aaltonen
The 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 Flesh
London 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 Barrick
Building Sight: a Handbook of Building and Interior Design Solutions to Include the Needs of Visually Impaired People
RNIB, 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 Pearson
Seven 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 Muir
Jean Muir
Leeds 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 Colley
The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh: a Woman in World History
Harper 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 Tinniswood
The Verneys: A True Story of Love, War and Madness in Seventeenth-Century England
Vintage, 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 Hennessy
Having It So Good: Britain in the Fifties
Penguin, 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 Marr
A 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 Shapiro
Allies 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 Obama
The 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 Durkin
The Great Global Warming Swindle
WAG 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.

RSA @ Edinburgh International Book Festival 2007

Linda Colley

The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh: A Woman in World History
Harper Press, 2007, 910.409 COL

Bashabi Fraser

Bengal Partition Stories: An Unclosed Chapter
Anthem Press, 2006, 891.443 FRA

Philip Gourevitch
We Wish to Inform you that Tomorrow we will be Killed with our Families: Stories from Rwanda
Picador, 2000, 967.57 GOU

The RSA will once again have a strong presence at this Year’s Edinburgh International Book Festival, running a series of three high profile RSA lectures.

12 August sees American writer Philip Gourevitch, author of We Wish to Inform you that Tomorrow we will be Killed with our Families, a powerful account of the Rwandan genocide of 1994, in conversation with Ramona Koval, a writer and broadcaster on Australian National Radio. Gourevitch is currently working on a ground breaking study of the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

Read a profile of Philip Gourevitch and an account from an Abu Ghraib prisoner, both from The Guardian.

Continuing the current RSA focus on Asia, and following RSA events such as Will China and India rule the world? and The Challenge of India Summit, on 19 August writer and academic Bashabi Fraser will discuss the founding of the modern Indian state and the equally significant Bengali partition which preceded it, creating East Pakistan, later Bangladesh. Bashabi Fraser is the author of Bengal Partition Stories: An Unclosed Chapter as well as an Honorary Research Fellow at the Centre for South Asian Studies, Edinburgh University.

Finally, on 26 August, Linda Colley will be the guest of RSA Chief Executive Matthew Taylor. Colley is an expert on nations and identity and has recently published the book The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh: A Woman in World History which traces an 18th-century woman’s life progress from the Caribbean, to Britain, to the Mediterranean and North Africa, and on to India, as a way of exploring growing connections and collisions between continents and cultures.

Read a review of The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh from The Times and a review of Captives: Britain and the World 1600-1850 from The Guardian.

All of the book mentioned above are available to borrow from the RSA Library.

Featured Items – ‘Future Flooding’

FORESIGHT
Future Flooding - Executive Summary
FORESIGHT, 2004, 363.349 FOR

The severe flooding that has dominated the news over the last week has brought renewed focus to questions of the extent to which climate change is having a tangible impact our lives at present, as well as the efforts being made by government to protect us from an increasingly unstable climate.

Foresight: Future Flooding is a report published in 2004 by the Foresight Programme. The aim of the report was primarily to examine the developing needs of flood and coastal defences between the years 2030 and 2100 in order to inform long-term policy. However it also analysed the flood defence position at the time of publication and estimated that 4 million people were at risk of flooding, constituting a property value of £200 billion.

In terms of current expenditure, the report estimated estimated that "flooding, and managing it, cost the UK around £2.2 billion each year: we currently spend around £800 million per annum on flood and coastal defences; and, even with present flood defences, we experience an average of £1,400 million of damage." Future Flooding was seen as an important warning for government at the time of publication and was given significant media coverage, however three years on government spending on flood defences and flood management remains roughly the same. When fielding questions in Parliament regarding government spending on flood defences and flooding management, new Environment Secretary Hilary Benn pointed to the fact that the government were well ahead of the preset target of increasing spending on flood prevention to £1 billion a year by 2024.

The full report and executive summery are available online through Foresight. A hard copy of the Executive Summery is available to borrow from the RSA library.

View pictures of flood hit areas from The Guardian.

Read a report by the London Assembly Environment committee examining the risk of future flooding in the Thames Gateway, entitled London Under Threat.

For information on the current flood situation, and to view a flood map of your area, visit the Environment Agency.

JRF Report – Transforming Places

Gordon Brown’s decision to include a housing minister in his cabinet gives a strong indication that housing will be a key component of the “new challenges” facing his government. Yet Chief Executive of the National Housing Federation, David Orr, has issued a clear reminder that there is nothing new about the current housing problem facing Gordon Brown’s government. Speaking at yesterday’s thuRSdAy debate entitled “Is our obsession with home ownership bad for Britain?", Mr Orr commented that senior figures within the housing sector had been warning both Labour and Conservative governments about the developing problem since 1995.

Discussing both the need to change public attitudes towards the relative values of home ownership and renting, as well as the need to build more quality affordable homes, Mr Orr argued that the estimated 1.6 million households in Britain currently on council and housing association waiting lists illustrated an institutionalised lack of housing supply. He also discussed the way in which private housing development currently operates, pointing towards larges amounts of land that is owned by private property developers and has been granted planning permission, but is intentionally left undeveloped for long periods to ensure housing demand remains as high as possible.

Mr Orr also made reference to the recent report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, which looked at neighbourhood housing markets throughout the 1990’s and early 2000’s, and found that “new social housing appears more positive than negative in its direct effects on price level and change, particularly at local authority level” and that “new social housing tends to have a positive effect on new private building”.

The issue of how to go about building new affordable good quality homes was addressed by Dr Oliver Marc Hartwich who discussed the need to “incentivise planning” by following the example set by countries such as Germany and Switzerland, in which local communities welcome the building of new homes in their area because the taxes generated by more people living there means more funding to improve public services and potentially even a lower rate of tax in the area. He also argued that residents should be more involved in the planning process in their particular area. Particularly in more rural areas, he suggested that communities would be more receptive to and able to see the benefits of a project to build a hundred more homes in their town or village, rather than a central government dictate to build 250,000 more homes across a particular region.

A copy of the full Joseph Rowntree Foundation report "Transforming Places" is available to download.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has also recently launched a new initiative looking at “social evils” with a lecture at the RSA entitled “What are the 21st Century's Social Evils?".

Both of the RSA Lectures mentioned above will soon be available to download as Audio Files here.

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.

Post War Britain - Ken Russell & David Kynaston

David Kynaston

Austerity Britain: 1945-51

Bloomsbury, 2007, 941.085 KYN

Discussing everything from the nature of 1950’s British society to his transition from stills photography to motion pictures, legendary British film director Ken Russell was in conversation at the RSA yesterday as part of our ongoing programme of lectures.

Russell was prompted to speak at the RSA by the discovery of a large number of negatives from photographs he created in the 1950’s, that until recently were lost. Discovered in the archives of the TopPhoto Picture Library, the images have gradually been scanned, and with the use of digital technology, are now available to view in an online exhibition. The collection of "lost" 1950s photographs can also be viewed in an exhibition hosted by the Proud Galleries, located just down the road from the RSA House on the corner of Buckingham and John Adam Streets.

Chairing and also taking part in the discussion was celebrated historian David Kynaston, who has recently published the book Austerity Britain: 1945-51 which charts the period from the end of WW2 right up to the period captured by Russell’s photographs. Using a variety of anecdotal, visual and historical evidence, these two men were able to paint a vivid picture of a British people at the beginning of a new modern era, still tied to the economic and social constraints of war yet simultaneously looking to the future.

This future was encapsulated for Russell in the faces of “Teddy Girls”, less famous than their male counterparts, but representing a new breed of young modern girls desperately seeking fun and social freedom, having grown up with the constraints of war. Yet his pictures also present a landscape of poverty and even war. Bomb sights, left uncleared for a decade after the falling of the bombs that created them, provided venues for teddy girls to meet and for children, often unsupervised, to play in.

Despite the marginal time gap, many of the subjects of Russell's pictures could well be the faces of the characters described by Kynaston in Austerity Britain. Using specific characters such as Judy Haines (a Chingford housewife) and Henry St John (a civil servant from Bristol), Kynaston creates an almost novelistic narrative that paints a vivid picture of a complex postwar society.

Read reviews of Austerity Britain from The Guardian and The Observer.

Austerity Britain is available to borrow from the RSA Library.

RSA Library Web Pages & New Information Resources Section

The RSA is currently undertaking a complete redesign of our website, the first stage of which is already complete. As part of these changes the Library & Archive pages have been updated, with a focus on a simpler more usable layout, and including a new Information Resources section. This section contains easily assessable information on the long history of the RSA, our historic house and our fellowship. Whether a list of the most famous and notable people who have been fellows of the society, or a time line of our history, all can be found here.

For those with a particular interest in the history of the society, our archive now has its own blog, and the William Shipley Group is an independent body devoted exclusively to the history of the RSA.