Featured Book - "Nudge"

Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein
Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness
Yale University Press, 2008, 300.01 SUN

Economist Richard Thaler and law professor Cass Sunstein have been formulating their ideas about “libertarian paternalism” in various articles for several years, drawing on the works of behavioural economists that explain the irrationality of human behaviour, and suggest new economic models that take these in to account.

Their new book, Nudge, goes beyond explaining our decisions about our own health, wealth and happiness to devising new policies that could, as the title suggests, nudge us towards making better ones. The BBC’s Mark Easton has drawn parallels between their work, current policy debates within the Conservative party and our chief executive Matthew Taylor, and recent review highlighted recent advances in neurology as expanding further still our possibility to understand and control our own decisions.

The RSA has been thinking publically about just possibilities recently, and so it is only fitting that Richard Thaler will be speaking here on Thursday 17 July at 1pm. To borrow a copy of Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness, please contact the RSA Library.

RSA Library Update - June 2008

What follows is a complete list of RSA library acquisitions for the month of June 2008. Fellows are welcome to e-mail the Library if they wish to borrow any of these items.

000s – Generalities

Ruth DeSouza and Andy Williamson
Researching with Communities: Grounded Perspectives on Engaging Communities in Research
Muddy Creak Press, 2007, 001.42 DES
Researching with communities presents a range of personal and grounded perspectives from academics, researchers and practitioners on undertaking research in ways that promote and privilege the voice of the community, is respectful of local or indigenous practices, and is culturally safe.

Adam Greenfield and Mark Shepard
Urban Computing and its Discontents
The Architectural League of New York, 2007, 004 GRE
The first in a series of pamphlets on the merging field of situated technologies, Urban Computing and its Discontents looks at how our experiences of cities is changing, and will continued change, as a result of the increased mobile communication and internet-connected devices. This pamphlet is also freely available online.

100s – Philosophy & Psychology

Astra Taylor
Žižek!
ICA Films, 2008, 150.195 TAY
The author of works on subjects as wide-ranging as Alfred Hitchcock, 9/11, opera, Christianity, Lenin and David Lynch, Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek is one of the most important - and outrageous - cultural theorists working today. This documentary explores the eccentric personality and esoteric work of this incomparable academic and writer.

David Gauntlett
Creative Explorations: New Approaches to Identities and Audiences
Routledge, 2007, 155.2 GAU
Drawing upon an array of disciplines from neuroscience to philosophy, and art to social theory, David Gauntlett explores the ways in which researchers can embrace people's everyday creativity in order to understand social experience. Seeking an alternative to traditional interviews and focus groups, he outlines studies in which people have been asked to make visual things - such as video, collage, metaphorical models of their identities in Lego, and drawing - and then interpret them. This creative reflective method provides insights into how individuals present themselves, understand their own life story, and connect with the social world. Creative Explorations is a lively, readable and original discussion of identities, media influences, and creativity, which will be of interest to both students and academics.

200s – Religion

Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady
Jesus Camp
ICA Films, 2006, 261.7 EWI
A growing number of evangelical Christians believe there is a revival underway in America that requires Christian youth to assume leadership roles in advocating the causes of their religious movement. Jesus Camp follows Levi, Rachael and Tory to Pastor Becky Fischer’s “Kid’s on Fire” summer camp in Devil’s Lake, North Dakota, where children as young as six are taught to become dedicated Christian soldiers in “God’s Army”. The film follows these children at camp as they hone their “prophetic gifts” and are schooled in how to “take back America for Christ”.

300s – Social Sciences

Michael Moynagh and Richard Worsley
Going Global: Key Questions for the Twenty-First Century
A. & C. Black, 2008, 303.482 MOY
'Globalisation' is an extremely popular business buzzword, but people are often unsure about what it actually means - let alone its implications. In this unique book, the authors not only explain how we can make sense of globalisation, but also address the 12 questions most commonly asked about the world today -and tomorrow. Some of the many hot topics scrutinised by the authors include climate change, terrorism, energy supply, population, and business.

Julia Margo, Mike Dixon, Nick Pearce and Howard Reed (eds.)
Freedom’s Orphans: Raising Youth in a Changing World
IPPR, 2006, 305.235 MAR
This report responds to an extensive debate among academics, practitioners and commentators – even the Archbishop of Canterbury – on the ‘problems of modern youth’. Analysing evidence from across the world, it concludes that both the frequent condemnation of teenagers and recent attempts to absolve them from blame are misplaced. It says that changes in the family, local communities and the economy have combined to cause deep inequalities in the transition to modern adult life and leave increasing numbers of young people incapable of growing up safely and successfully.

Alain De Botton
Status Anxiety
Penguin, 2005, 305.5 BOT
We all worry about what others think of us. We all long to succeed and fear failure. We all suffer to a greater or lesser degree, usually privately and with embarrassment from status anxiety. For the first time, Alain de Botton gives a name to this universal condition and sets out to investigate both its origins and possible solutions. He looks at history, philosophy, economics, art and politics and reveals the many ingenious ways that great minds have overcome their worries. The result is a book that is not only entertaining and thought-provoking but genuinely wise and helpful as well.

Christina Julios
Contemporary British Identity: English Language, Migrants and Public Discourse
Ashgate, 2008, 305.800941 JUL
Against the background of an increasingly multicultural British society, this book traces the evolution of British identity in the 20th century. Debates around British multiculturalism and multi-ethnic identity are deconstructed through a linguistic lens, which explores the role played by the English language in these debates. Examination of the expansionism of the 19th century British Empire and the rise of the United States to the position of the world's superpower during the 20th century is provided. The book raises questions about the collective ability and willingness to redress the imbalance between the majority white population and the country's marginalised minority ethnic communities, providing enlightening clues to the likely course that the prevailing public discourse on British identity will take in the 21st century. This item has kindly been donated to the Library by its author, Christina Julios, a Fellow of the RSA.

Leo Hollis
The Phoenix: St. Paul’s Cathedral and the men who made Modern London
Orion, 2008, 307.34160942109032 HOL
Opening in the 1640s, as the city was gripped in tumult leading up to the English Civil War, The Phoenix charts the lives and works of five extraordinary men, who would grow up in the chaos of a world turned upside down: the architect, Sir Christopher Wren; gardener and virtuosi, John Evelyn; the scientist, Robert Hooke; the radical philosopher, John Locke and the builder, Nicholas Barbon. At the heart of the story is the rebuilding of London's iconic cathedral, St Paul's. Interweaving science, architecture, history and philosophy, The Phoenix tells the story of the formation of the first modern city.

Richard Burdett
The Endless City: The Urban Age Project
Phaidon, 2008, 307.76 BUR
If the late twentieth century was the age of economic globalization, the first part of the twenty-first century will be the age of the city; the urban age, where more than half of the earth's population live in urban areas. Questions regarding the shape, size, density and distribution of the city have become increasingly complex and politicized, and the impact of the built environment on social inclusion and quality of life are at the forefront of discussions about urban planning. These are the issues that have led to the creation of The Urban Age Project, a network of organizations, individuals and research projects that focus on sustainable development in the world's cities. It offers a platform from which to discuss how architects, urbanists and politicians should plan infrastructure and development without constraining growth and promote a better social and economic life. This book is the result of the discussions and extensive research produced for these conferences.

Anne Power and John Houghton
Jigsaw Cities: Big Places, Small Spaces
Policy, 2007, 307.760942 HOU
This new book explores Britain's intensely urban and increasingly global communities as interlocking pieces of a complex jigsaw, which are hard to see apart yet they are deeply unequal. How did our major cities become so divided? How do they respond to housing and neighbourhood decay? Jigsaw City examines these issues using Birmingham, Britain's second largest city and pioneer of the modern urban order, as our strongest model of the drive to create public solutions to private squalor is in three parts: the origins of Britain's acute urban decline; the idea that one size doesn't fit all; and the continuing urban flight that traps the poor and pays the rich to move out. This item was kindly donated to the Library by John Houghton, a UK-US Fulbright Humphrey Scholar 2005-06.

Hans Blix
Weapons of Terror: Freeing the World of Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Arms
WMDC, 2006, 327.1747 BLI
Nuclear, biological and chemical arms are the most inhumane of all weapons. They are rightly called weapons of mass destruction and weapons of terror. Designed to terrify as well as destroy, these weapons can, in the hands of either states or terrorists, cause destruction on a vastly greater scale than any conventional weapons. In this report, in independent Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission, chaired by Dr. Hans Blix, confronts this global challenge and presents 60 recommendations on what the world community - national governments and civil society - can and should do.

Hans Blix
Why Nuclear Disarmament Happens
MIT Press, 2008, 327.1747 BLI
This book from the former UN head weapons inspector in Iraq is a plea for a renewed global disarmament movement.In 2002 Dr. Hans Blix, then chief United Nations weapons inspector, lead his team on a search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Before the United States went to war with Iraq the next March, he maintained there were no WMD in Iraq, and history proved him right. For more than forty years Dr. Blix has worked on global disarmament, and with this new book he renews the call for nuclear non-proliferation; it is not a recipe for success for nuclear states to tell the rest of the world that it must stay away from the very weapons that nuclear states claim are indispensable. We will never be able to convince rogue states to halt the pursuit of nuclear weapons programs unless we take the lead in a new nonproliferation and disarmament movement. Why Nuclear Disarmament Matters includes specific suggestions - how the UN can set the stage for a credible multilateral disarmament and nonproliferation process; what kind of treaties would be most helpful - and recommendations for regional policy, including providing the Middle East with enriched uranium for civilian nuclear power production but not allowing uranium enrichment there.

Arien Boin, Paul ‘t Hart, Eric Stern and Bengt Sundelius
The Politics of Crisis Management: Public Leadership Under Pressure
Cambridge University Press, 2005, 352.3 BOI
Crisis management has become a defining feature of contemporary governance. In times of crisis, communities and members of organizations expect their leaders to minimize the impact of the crisis at hand, while critics and bureaucratic competitors try to seize the moment to blame incumbent rulers and their policies. In this extreme environment, policy makers must somehow establish a sense of normality, and foster collective learning from the crisis experience. In this uniquely comprehensive analysis, the authors examine how leaders deal with the strategic challenges they face, the political risks and opportunities they encounter, the errors they make, the pitfalls they need to avoid, and the paths away from crisis they may pursue.

James Orbinski
An Imperfect Offering: Humanitarian Action in the Twenty-first Century
Rider, 2008, 361.26092 ORB
In An Imperfect Offering, James Orbinski expands on the theme of his recent RSA Lecture, telling his own extraordinary story of being a doctor, as well as discussing the nature of humanitarian action today and our responsibilities as citizens of the world. Born in Britain in 1960, James Orbinski's family moved to Canada when he was seven years old. As a young man, he became a medic to learn how to help, and deal with, the suffering of others. From then on he was plunged into many highly demanding situations, including being Head of Mission for Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) during the Rwandan genocide; engaging with the politics of humanitarian work as the President of MSF; being in New York when the towers fell on 9/11; co-founding Dignitas International (an AIDS charity); and finally, returning to Rwanda on the 10th anniversary of the crisis there. In An Imperfect Offering, Orbinski not only tells his own inspiring story but is also remarkably provocative about what governments and agencies should and shouldn't be doing to help the world's poor and very sick. At the same time, he addresses what part each of us can play, so that we never lose sight of the dignity of those being helped, or deny them the right to act in their own lives.

Barton Jay Hirsch
A Place to Call Home: After-school Programs for Urban Youth
American Psychological Association, 2005, 362.712 HIR
Across the political spectrum, there is enormous interest in how local community organizations can help raise children who are growing up in poverty. This timely book examines the processes and outcomes at six inner-city Boys & Girls Clubs - one of the leading youth development organizations in the country. Featuring critical analysis and practical guidelines from a well-known authority on early adolescence, this information-packed volume, demonstrates how after-school programs emphasizing staff mentoring can provide critical resources for helping urban youth navigate the tumult of early adolescence.

Damian Tambini and Jamie Cowling (eds.)
From Public Service Broadcasting to Public Service Communications
Institute for Public Policy Research, 2004, 384.540941 COW
Public service broadcasting must change if it is to survive. The licensing and funding arrangements that support it are challenged by long-term technical and market changes including the proliferation of channels and services, the rise of new interactive services and the shift away from mass access to niche services and alternative platforms for content delivery. Although in the short term UK public service broadcasters are in a state of rude health, they neglect these longer-term challenges at their peril.

400s – Language

500s – Natural Sciences & Mathematics

600s – Technology (Applied Sciences)

Jeff Hawkins and Sandra Blakeslee
On Intelligence
Owl Books, 2005, 612.82 HAW
Jeff Hawkins, the man who created the PalmPilot, Treo smart phone, and other handheld devices, has reshaped our relationship to computers. Now he stands ready to revolutionize both neuroscience and computing in one stroke, with a new understanding of intelligence itself. Hawkins develops a powerful theory of how the human brain works, explaining why computers are not intelligent and how, based on this new theory, we can finally build intelligent machines. The brain is not a computer, but a memory system that stores experiences in a way that reflects the true structure of the world, remembering sequences of events and their nested relationships and making predictions based on those memories. Written with acclaimed science writer Sandra Blakeslee, On Intelligence promises to completely transfigure the possibilities of the technology age. It is a landmark book in its scope and clarity.

Sally Goddard Blythe
What Babies and Children Really Need
Hawthorn, 2008, 649.122 GOD
This book represents a milestone in our understanding of child development and what parents can do to provide their children with the best start in life. The author uses the latest scientific research to demonstrate how a baby's relationship with its mother has a lasting and fundamental impact. She argues that changes in society over the past 50 years - such as delayed motherhood, limited uptake of breastfeeding and early return to work - are interfering with the key developmental milestones essential to success and wellbeing in later life. This item was kindly donated to the Library by its author, Sally Goddard Blythe, a Fellow of the RSA.

700s – The Arts

Amir Bar-Lev
My Kid Could Paint That
Sony, 200, 702.874 BAR
In this documentary, Amir Bar-Lev tracks the overnight celebrity of Marla Olmstead, a toddler who creates gallery-worthy paintings on the dining room table of her family home. A media sensation by the age of four, critics compare her work with that of Jackson Pollock, and sales reach $300,000. But when a 2005 60 Minutes profile suggest that Maria had help making her paintings, the finger is pointed at her father, a keen amateur artist. Almost overnight, her family is ensnared in a web of accusation and denial, with the burden of proof placed squarely in their lap: is Maria a child prodigy or an innocent victim of a hoax?

Susan Glyn
The Word and the Image: A Contemporary Artist’s Vision of the Bible
2008, 704.948 GLY
This unpublished monograph pairs images of artworks by Susan Glyn with poems by both herself and Caroline Glyn, created in response to selected Bible passages. It has kindly been donated to the Library by Susan Glyn, a Fellow of the RSA.

Jonathan Black
Dora Gordine: Sculptor, Designer and Artist
Philip Wilson, 2008, 730.92 BLA
In 1938, Dora Gordine was hailed as 'possibly becoming the finest woman sculptor in the world.' For over thirty years she was widely perceived as a major presence in European sculpture; for her contribution to the inter-war art movement known as the rappel a l'ordre, as a prominent member of the Royal Society of British Sculptors and as a founder of the Society of Portrait Sculptors. This book is the first to reveal the reality of her colourful life, containing a wealth of previously unpublished material, as well as providing a comprehensive assessment of her undoubted achievements as a talented and versatile sculptor and artist who, possessed a distinct flair for architectural and interior design. This item has kindly been donated to the Library by Dr. DGC Allen, a Fellow of the RSA.

Steven Heller and Mirko Ilić
Icons of Graphic Design
Thames & Hudson, 2008, 741.60904 HEL
Here is a unique history of graphic design that charts over a century of creative brilliance, showcasing the most influential graphic designs from 1900 to the present. Organized chronologically to illustrate how one great concept can inspire the next, each year features a seminal piece of work by a graphic artist some famous, some anonymous the designs that originally inspired them and later works that show their influence. The evolution of ideas is brought alive through the encyclopaedic format and Steven Heller and Mirko Ilić’s revealing observations highlighting the manner in which graphic styles and artistic devices flow with times, thereby guaranteeing the books appeal to designers and students of design everywhere.

Cynthia E. Smith
Design for the Other 90%
Cooper-Hewitt, 2008, 745.2091724 SMI
Of the world’s total population of 6.5 billion, close to 5.8 billion, 90%, have little or no access to products and services many of us take for granted; nearly half do not have regular access to food, clean water, or shelter. Design for the Other 90% explores more than thirty projects which reflect the growing movement among designers, engineers, students and professors, architects, and social entrepreneurs to design low-cost solutions to meet these needs.

Jasmine Dellal
Gypsy Caravan: When the Road Bends
ICA Films, 2006, 780.91497 DEL
This documentary follows five Gypsy bands from four countries who unite for the “Gypsy Caravan” as they take their show around North America for a sex-week tour, astounding every audience they meet. Their musical styles range from flamenco to brass band, Romanian violin to Indian folk.

Tony Palmer
All You Need is Love
Plastic Head, 2008, 781.63 PAL
Popular music is now an essential part of our daily lives, yet we know comparatively little about it: where it came from; how it developed; how is has influenced or been influenced by social change. Today, the popular music industry controls billions of dollars, yet it depends, ultimately, on the creative talents of a group of remarkable individuals. The story of popular music, therefore, is a story of the struggle by these individuals to survive the demands of an avaricious, thieving and capricious industry. The 17 episodes of this critically acclaimed TV series, originally broadcast worldwide between 1976 and 1980, are featured here, fully restored across 5 DVDs.

Andy Kimpton-Nye
Derek Jarman: Life as Art
400Blows Productions, 2004, 791.43 JAR/KIM
Derek Jarman was the most imaginative, innovative and controversial film-maker in Britain throughout the 70s, 80s and 90s – an extraordinary talent, the like of which we may never see again. This documentary explores his life and career as a film-maker. This otherwise-unavailable documentary was kindly donated to the Library by its director, Andy Kimpton-Nye.

Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno
Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait
Artificial Eye, 2006, 796.33092 GOR
Artists Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno, cinematographer Darius Khondji and 17 movie cameras film Zinédine Zidane for the entirety of Real Madrid vs. Villareal, with the legend’s thoughts and observations on his career and a magnificent score by the band Mogwai.

Douglas Beattie
The Rivals Game: Inside the British Derby
Know the Score!, 2008, 796.3340941 BEA
Why do football supporters choose one club rather than the other in a city where intense, often deep-seated rivalries exist? What made the choice for them; family ties, politics, religion, race, gang membership? Or were the clubs just different in what they stood for on the field as much as off it? Douglas Beattie spent two years getting underneath the skin of mainland Britain's biggest derby rivalries. These are the matches that are built up by the media as passionate, divisive and vitally important for the entire cities they are played in. These are the games that have a history of violence, fueds, social unrest and bigotry. With divisions going back as far as the English Civil War and preconceptions - mostly wrong - littering the landscape, Douglas visited Sheffield, Birmingham, north London, Manchester, Liverpool, the north east, Edinburgh and Glasgow to discover why.

800s – Literature

900s – Geography & History

Alan Mumford
Lordly Cartoons
Burke's Peerage & Gentry, 2003, 929.72 MUM
Burke's Peerage presents here a very different view of Lords and Ladies, through cartoons published over the last 250 years, frequently lending a critical view of events. Beginning with William Hogarth's eighteenth-century depiction of the last Lord to be hanged for treason, they cover amongst other things the activities of the House of Lords and its reform, and many major personalities involved in political life, from the Earl of Beaconsfield (Disraeli) to Asquith, Lloyd George, the Earl of Stockton (Macmillan), Lord Home and Baroness Thatcher.

Stephen Inwood
Historic London: An Explorer’s Companion
Macmillan, 2008, 942.1 INW
There is hardly a city in the world with richer historical and cultural associations than London. It is a place where history has been made for thousands of years, and where it is still being made today. It is not a city frozen in time, preserved in its ancient medieval pomp but a place that has been at or near the centre of national life for a thousand years and at the forefront of international political, cultural and economic history for each of the past five centuries. Here Stephen Inwood offers an explorer's guide to London's past. As you walk the streets of the capital, whether you live in the city or are just visiting it, Inwood will show you London's history all around you: stretches of Roman wall; medieval churches and Tudor houses that survived the Great Fire; monastic buildings that survived the Reformation; street markets first established centuries ago that survive today; Georgian streets and squares that were spared the wreckers' ball; Wren churches; Victorian terraces; and, Inns of Court that survived the Blitz. He takes you to the London of Chaucer and Shakespeare, Samuels Pepys and Johnson; Dickens and Darwin, T.S Eliot and George Orwell. It is the perfect book to have in your pocket or your bag as you go about your business in this most fascinating of cities.

Featured Book - "Complaint"

Julian Baggini
Complaint: From Minor Moans to Principled Protest
Profile, 2008, 302.24 BAG

Julian Baggini, co-founder of The Philosophers’ Magazine and columnist for the Guardian and the Herald, has always taken a practical approach to philosophical problems.

While no fan of bad complaining, his new book is a principled defence of taking it to the level of an artform. From its function as a social glue in the face of a fragmenting society, to the whingeing roots of social reform movements, Baggini outlines how to complain and what’s worth complaining about.

Julian Baggini will be speaking at the RSA on Thursday 19 June, and to borrow a copy of Complaint: From Minor Moans to Principled Protest, please email the RSA Library.

RSA Library Update - May 2008

What follows is a complete list of RSA library acquisitions for the month of May 2008. Fellows are welcome to e-mail the Library if they wish to borrow any of these items.

000s – Generalities

Patrick Russell
Land of Promise: The British Documentary Movement 1930-1950
BFI Video, 2008, 070.18 RUS
Featuring 40 films over four DVDs, this extensive collection is a major retrospective of the British documentary film movement during its period of greatest influence. These films - many of which are available here for the first time since their original release - capture the spirit and strength, concerns and resolve of Britain and its people before, during, and after the Second World War.

Sandhya Suri
I for India
ICA Films, 2008, 070.18 SUR
In 1965, Yash Pal Suri left India for the U.K. The first thing he does on his arrival in England is to buy two Super-8 cameras, two projectors and two reel to reel recorders. One set of equipment he sends to his family in India, the other he keeps for himself, and for 40 years he uses it to share his new life abroad with those back home, while in India, his relatives in turn, respond with their own 'cine-letters' telling tales of weddings, festivals and village life. A bitter-sweet time capsule of alienation, discovery, racism and belonging, I for India is a chronicle of immigration in sixties Britain and beyond, seen through the eyes of one Asian family and their movie camera.

100s – Philosophy & Psychology

Dan Ariely
Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape our Decisions
HarperCollins, 2008, 153.83 ARI
Why do smart people make irrational decisions every day? The answers will surprise you. Predictably Irrational is an intriguing, witty and utterly original look at why we all make illogical decisions. Why is everything relative, even when it shouldn't be? How do our expectations influence our actual opinions and decisions? In this astounding book, behavioural economist Dan Ariely cuts to the heart of our strange behaviour, demonstrating how irrationality often supplants rational thought and that the reason for this is embedded in the very structure of our minds, showing that we can make better decisions in business, in matters of collective welfare, and in our everyday lives from drinking coffee to losing weight, buying a car to choosing a romantic partner.

Geoff Mulgan
Good and Bad Power: The Ideals and Betrayals of Government
Penguin, 2007, 172 MUL
The old democracies of western Europe and north America have achieved a rough balance between being too strong in their control of their citizens, and too weak in their ability to help them, yet still suffer from constant crises of moral purpose. There is a growing trend of anti-politics, manifest in falling turnouts and party membership, and an assumption that politicians represent the worst venality rather than the highest ideals. Something has gone badly wrong in our relationship with power. This book explains why we have arrived at this point, what can be done to change the world, and how the power of governments can be used for good.

200s – Religion

300s – Social Sciences

Paul Kingsnorth
Real England: The Battle Against the Bland
Portobello, 2008, 303.4480942 KIN
We see the signs around us every day: the chain cafés and mobile phone outlets that dominate our high streets; the decline of small farms and the loss of our rural post-offices; the headlines about yet another traditional industry going to the wall In Real England Paul Kingsnorth makes a connection between these isolated, incremental, local changes and the bigger picture of a nation whose identity is being eroded. As he travels around the country meeting fruit-growers, lock-keepers, stall-owners and the inhabitants of London’s Chinatown, Paul Kingsworth records the kind of conversations that are taking place in country pubs and corner shops across the land - while warning people that these quintessentially English institutions may soon cease to exist.

Malcolm McCullough
Digital Ground: Architecture, Pervasive Computing, and Environmental Knowing
MIT, 2005, 303.4834 MCC
Digital Ground is an architect's response to the design challenge posed by pervasive computing. As digital technology becomes invisibly embedded in everyday things, and an ever-increasing number of activities become mediated through electronic interactions, networks extend rather than replace architecture. Malcolm McCullough’s concept of digital ground expresses an alternative to anytime-anyplace sameness in computing, and shows that context not only shapes usability but ideally becomes the subject matter of interaction design and that environmental knowing is a process that technology may serve and not erode.

Dave Eggers, Lola Vollen and Chris Ying (eds.)
Voices from the Storm: The People of New Orleans on Hurricane Katrina and its Aftermath
McSweeney’s Books, 2007, 303.48576335 EGG
Stranded in a city submerged, the narrators of Voices from the Storm survived the devastation brought on by Hurricane Katrina only to find themselves abandoned - and even victimised - by their own government. These thirteen men and women of New Orleans recount, in astonishing and heartrending detail, the worst natural disaster in American history.

Robert J. Shapiro
2020: A Global Blueprint
Profile, 2008, 303.49 SHA
The world is entering an unprecedented age. Rapid technological advances, globalisation, unparalleled demographic changes and the rise of China as a superpower mean that we are entering a unique era of history. Robert Shapiro employs his immense experience in international politics to sketch a blueprint for the coming fifteen years, tracing the path combined global forces may lead us. This is neither hopelessly idealistic nor a tale of woe and Armageddon: Shapiro is persistently lucid, penetrating and even-handed in delineating the world as it stands and predicting the way it will walk.

Matt Mason
The Pirate’s Dilemma: How Youth Culture Reinvented Capitalism
Allen Lane, 2008, 305.235 MAS
What's the connection between the nun who invented disco, and the effect of file sharing? How does hip-hop manage to be an underground movement and a multi-billion dollar business at the same time? And how are pirates, of the kind who started commercial radio in the twentieth century, changing society in the 21st? The Pirate's Dilemma tells the stories of youth culture uncovering, for the first time, what it is that transforms underground scenes into global industries. Matt Mason, a successful entrepreneur, argues that from the youth culture, out on the edges of the mainstream, come the ideas that ultimately change the mainstream itself - whether it's graffiti, piracy, hacking, open source culture or remixing.

Matt Frei
Only in America
Fourth Estate, 2008, 306.09753 FRE
Matt Frei, the BBC's Washington correspondent, goes under the skin of America’s capital to discover the paradox of the world's last remaining superpower. It is a place that inspires awe, revulsion or analysis but rarely affection. Every newspaper editor tells his new Washington correspondent to travel outside 'the Beltway', to get under the skin of the real America beyond the 495 Interstate that snakes the city with its glutinous flow of traffic all day long. But after almost four years in Washington, Matt Frei has realised that the key to understanding America lies within the walls of the diamond shaped District of Columbia.

Loïc Wacquant
Urban Outcasts: A Comparative Sociology of Advanced Marginality
Polity, 2007, 307.76 WAC
Breaking with the exoticizing cast of public discourse and conventional research, Urban Outcasts takes the reader inside the black ghetto of Chicago and the deindustrializing banlieue of Paris to show that urban marginality is not the same everywhere. Drawing on a wealth of original field, survey and historical data, Loïc Wacquant shows that the involution of America's urban core after the 1960s is due, not to the emergence of an 'underclass', but to the joint withdrawal of market and state fostered by public policies of racial separation and urban abandonment. In European cities, by contrast, the spread of districts of 'exclusion' does not herald the formation of ghettos, but instead stems from the decomposition of working-class territories under the press of mass unemployment, the casualization of work and the ethnic mixing of populations hitherto segregated, spawning urban formations akin to 'anti-ghettos'.

David Runciman
Political Hypocrisy: The Mask of Power, from Hobbes to Orwell and Beyond
Princeton University Press, 2008, 320.101 RUN
What kind of hypocrite should voters choose as their next leader? The question seems utterly cynical but, as David Runciman suggests, it is actually much more cynical to pretend that politics can ever be completely sincere. The most dangerous form of political hypocrisy is to claim to have a politics without hypocrisy. Written in a lively style, this book will change how we look at political hypocrisy and how we answer some basic questions about politics: What are the limits of truthfulness in politics? And when, where, and how should we expect our politicians to be honest with us, and about what? Political Hypocrisy is a timely, and timeless, book on the problems of sincerity and truth in politics, and how we can deal with them without slipping into hypocrisy ourselves.

Deepak Lal
Reviving the Invisible Hand: The Case for Classical Liberalism in the Twenty-First Century
Princeton University Press, 2006, 320.512 LAL
Reviving the Invisible Hand is an uncompromising call for a global return to a classical liberal economic order, free of interference from governments and international organizations. Arguing for a revival of the invisible hand of free international trade and global capital, eminent economist Deepak Lal vigorously defends the view that statist attempts to ameliorate the impact of markets threaten global economic progress and stability. And in an unusual move, he not only defends globalization economically, but also answers the cultural and moral objections of antiglobalizers. Arguing that the new dirigisme is the thin edge of a wedge that could return the world to excessive economic intervention by states and international organizations, Lal does not shrink from controversial stands such as advocating the abolishment of these organizations and defending the existence of child labour in the Third World. Deepak Lal will be speaking at the RSA on 5 June 2008.

Gerry Hassan (ed.)
After Blair: Politics and the New Labour Decade
Lawrence & Wishart, 2006, 320.94109049 HAS
Analyzing the last 10 years of British parliament, contributors examine the age of Tony Blair as Prime Minister and the time of Labour Party dominance as it comes to an end. Comparing previous Labour Party governments to the current, scholars reflect on the past, present, and future of British politics and whether a Labour dominated government will outlast Blair's period in office. Offering opinions and political forecasting from some of the most respected experts in their fields, Blair's political history is examined and critiqued, contemplating the outcome and effects of his decisions and policies as Prime Minister since 1997.

Colin J. Bennett and Charles D. Raab
The Governance of Privacy: Policy Instruments in Global Perspective
MIT, 2006, 323.4 BEN
This work analyses privacy policy instruments available to contemporary industrial states, from government regulations and transnational regimes to self-regulation and privacy enhancing technologies. Privacy protection, according to Colin Bennett and Charles Raab, involves politics and public policy as much as it does law and technology. Moreover, the protection of our personal information in a globalised, borderless world means that privacy-related policies are inextricably interdependent. In The Governance of Privacy, Bennett and Raab analyse a broad range of privacy policy instruments available to contemporary advanced industrial states, from government regulations and transnational regimes to self-regulation and privacy enhancing technologies. The RSA will hold a symposium on social attitudes to privacy on 19 June 2008.

David J. Rothkopf
The Superclass; The Global Power Elite and the World they are Making
Little, Brown, 2008, 327.10905 ROT
David Rothkopf offers a provocative and trenchant examination of the overlapping international power clusters. He reveals who is a member of the global Superclass and who is likely to be joining it and transforming it in the years ahead. And he will explore how the aggressive pursuit of self-interest by some in this class helped to create a world in which inequity is greater than ever - something that may well threaten international stability in our lifetimes.

Tom Porteous
Britain in Africa: African Arguments
Zed Books, 2008, 327.4106 POR
Why has Africa become such an important priority for Britain's foreign policy under New Labour? What interests and values is the UK seeking to uphold by intervening? Why has aid to Africa more than tripled over the past decade? How has the UK's involvement in the War on Terror affected its efforts there? In Britain in Africa, Tom Porteous seeks to answer these and other questions about Britain's role in Africa since 1997. He provides an account of the key players, the policies they constructed in the shadow of the war in Iraq and the future of Britain's engagement with the continent. This book sets out the balance sheet of what Britain has achieved, and where and why it failed in Africa. A compelling read, whose importance for international politics reaches far beyond Britain or Africa.

Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein
Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness
Yale University Press, 2008, 330.01 THA
Every day we make decisions on topics ranging from the personal investments we select to the schools we pick for our children to the foods we eat to the causes we champion. Unfortunately, as authors Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein astutely observe, we don't always choose well. The reason, the authors explain, is that we all are susceptible to cognitive biases and blunders that make us human, fallible, and prone to error. Thaler and Sunstein expand on their concept of libertarian paternalism (.PDF), inviting us to enter an alternative world, one that recognizes our humanness as a given. They show that the way we think can be used to our advantage: it is possible to design environments - ‘choice architectures’ - that make it more likely for us to act in our own interests.

Dai Rodrik
One Economics, Many Recipes: Globalization, Institutions, and Economic Growth
Princeton University Press, 2007, 338.9 ROD
In One Economics, Many Recipes, leading economist Dani Rodrik argues that neither globalisers nor antiglobalisers have got it right. Rodrik rejects the simplifications of both sides, showing that poor countries get rich not by copying what Washington technocrats preach or what others have done, but by overcoming their own highly specific constraints. And, far from conflicting with economic science, this is exactly what good economics teaches.

Philippe Sands
Torture Team: An Investigation into Deception, Cruelty and the Compromise of Law
Allen Lane, 2008, 341.48 SAN
This is the biography of a one page memorandum signed by Donald Rumsfeld on 2nd December, 2002 authorising 18 techniques of interrogation not previously allowed by the United States. The memorandum was in effect for six weeks during which at least two detainees at Guantanamo and the US airbase at Bagram died and a third was tortured over a period of seven weeks. 18 Techniques traces the life of the memorandum and explores issues of individual responsibility. Four individuals dominate the story: Rumsfeld, US lawyer John Yoo, victim Mohammed al-Qahtani and X, an anonymous European prosecutor.

Dave Eggers and Lola Vollen (eds.)
Surviving Justice: America’s Wrongfully Convicted and Exonerated
McSweeney's Books, 2005, 347.7312 EGG
After spending years behind bars, hundreds of men and women with incontrovertible proof of their innocence have been released from America's prisons. They were wrongfully convicted because of problems that plague many criminal proceedings -- inept defence lawyers, overzealous prosecutors, deceitful interrogation tactics, misidentifications, and more. Finally free, usually after more than a decade of incarceration, the wrongly condemned re-enter society with nothing but scars from prison life only to struggle for survival on the outside. The thirteen men and women portrayed here, and the hundreds of others who have been exonerated, are the tip of the iceberg. By all estimates, there are thousands of innocent victims in prison today. Surviving Justice tells their unimaginable and inspiring stories.

Patrick Diamond
Public Matters: The Renewal of the Public Realm
Politico's, 2007, 351.0941 DIA
The modernisation of public services is one of the central challenges facing any government. There are enormous expectations surrounding the public service reform agenda but also real anxieties - there have been prominent public management failings in recent years and the record of delivery in key areas remains patchy. Public Matters addresses the issues facing the public sector through clear, incisive, empirically rigorous and theoretically informed analysis of the issues from leading experts in the field. It covers general themes (inequality, choice, funding etc.) and specific areas (education, work, environment etc.) with equal authority.

John Seddon
Systems Thinking in the Public Sector
Triarchy, 2008, 351.41 SED
John Seddon here dissects the changes that have been made in a range of services, including housing benefits, social care and policing. His descriptions beggar belief, though they would be funnier if it wasn't our money that was being wasted. In place of the current mess, he advocates a Systems Thinking approach where individuals come first, waste is reduced and responsibility replaces blame. It's an approach that is proven, successful and relatively cheap - and one that governments around the world, and their advisers, need to adopt urgently.

Eugene Jarecki
Why we Fight
Axiom Films, 2008, 355.0213 JAR
Released as the American military continues to make its presence felt in Iraq and across the globe, Eugene Jarecki's Why we Fight asks some pertinent questions about the economic necessities of war. Speaking to a number of key figures including Republican Senator John McCain and author Gore Vidal, Jarecki's film is a bipartisan treatise that was inspired by Dwight Eisenhower's 1961 farewell address to the nation, warning against the military-industrial complex.

Tess Kingham
The Good Campaigns Guide: Campaigning for Impact
NCVO, 2005, 361.70681 KIN
The Good Campaigns Guide enables campaigners to use their skills, judgement and energy to transform available resources into positive social change, Using a range of newly developed tools, this guide examines how to achieve maximum impact.

Misha Glenny
McMafia: Crime without Frontiers
Bodley Head, 2008, 364.106 GLE
For three years, Misha Glenny has been recording the stories of gun runners in Ukraine, money launderers in Dubai, drug syndicates in Canada, cyber criminals in Brazil, racketeers in Japan and many more. During his investigation of the dark side, he has spoken to countless gangsters, policemen and victims of organised crime while also exploring the ferocious consumer demand for drugs, trafficked women, illegal labour and arms across five continents. This consistently riveting account unveils the nature of crime in today's world but it also offers profound insights into the pitfalls of a globalisation where the rules dividing the legal from the illegal are often far from clear. It also argues that conventional policing methods are no longer appropriate to deal with a problem whose roots lie in global poverty and the ever widening divisions between rich and poor.

René Allio
I, Pierre Rivière, Having Slaughtered My Mother, My Sister and My Brother
Tartan Video, 364.1523 ALL
Based on documents compiled by Michel Foucault, this unique and original film charts the gruesome events which took place in a Normandy village in 1835, when a young man, Pierre Rivière, murdered his mother, sister and brother before fleeing to the countryside. With a cast made up of real-life villagers from the area where the events took place, the detailed re-enactments and careful attention to the gestures of their ancestors serve to create an intense and sometimes disturbing atmosphere of hyper-realism. Radical, bold and uncompromising, director René Allio's extraordinary work at once an ethnographic enquiry, an historical reconstruction, and an unflinching portrait of psychopathology and its aftermath. The RSA Library also holds Back to Normandy, a documentary about I, Pierre Rivière… by Nicolas Philibert, Allio's assistant on the film.

Colleen McLaughlin
Networking Practitioner Research
Routledge, 2007, 370.72 MCL
This book provides readers with a strong theoretical framework for school-based research as well as valuable advice on the ways in which networks of specialist groups can work together to create a broad-ranging approach to educational research. Through a critical examination of existing research and current thinking, the authors draw out implications for the effective policy and practice of school-based research. Illustrated throughout with case studies and including a full and detailed literature review, this book will be a vital resource for all academics pursuing research into education.

Julia Flutter and Jean Rudduck
Consulting Pupils
RoutledgeFalmer, 2004, 371.59 FLU
In this book, Jean Rudduck and Julia Flutter consider the potential benefits and implications of talking to students about teaching and learning in schools. Using examples of pupil consultation initiatives in primary and secondary schools, the authors demonstrate how an agenda for change based on pupils perspectives on teaching and learning can be used to improve classroom practice. This book will be a valuable resource for practitioners, students and researchers interested in exploring pupils' perspectives on teaching and learning.

Colleen McLaughlin
Researching Schools
Routledge, 2006, 378.103 MCL
There has been a debate in both academic and educational policy arenas around the generation and use of educational knowledge. In the UK, this has led to many recent and far-reaching initiatives, which aim to enhance the relationship between universities and schools and develop new ways of supporting practitioner research and enquiry. This book presents the work of a highly innovative partnership between the University of Cambridge, Faculty of Education, and eight secondary schools. This networked learning community has helped to define the use and production of educational knowledge and research within and between various partners. This book explores the central questions and gives examples of the outcomes of the development that will assist any researchers, especially teachers undertaking research, to develop school-university partnerships.

400s – Language

Steven Pinker
The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature
Allen Lane, 2007, 401.9 PIN
Steven Pinker analyses what words actually mean and how we use them, and he reveals what this can tell us about ourselves. He shows how we use space and motion as metaphors for more abstract ideas, and uncovers the deeper structures of human thought that have been shaped by evolutionary history. He also explores the emotional impact of language, from names to swear words, and shows us the full power that it can have over us. And, with this book, he also shows just how stimulating and entertaining language can be. Steve Pinker will be talking at the RSA on 5 June 2008.

500s – Natural Sciences & Mathematics

George Johnson
The Ten most Beautiful Experiments
Bodley Head, 2008, 507.8 JOH
From the universally praised New York Times science writer George Johnson), an irresistible book on the ten most fascinating experiments in the history of science - moments when a curious soul posed a particularly eloquent question to nature and received a crisp, unambiguous reply. George Johnson will be talking at the RSA on 2 June 2008.

600s – Technology (Applied Sciences)

Paul M. Churchland
Neurophilosophy at Work
Cambridge University Press, 2007, 612.801 CHU
Paul Churchland explores the unfolding impact of the several empirical sciences of the mind, especially cognitive neurobiology and computational neuroscience on a variety of traditional issues central to the discipline of philosophy. Representing Churchland's most recent research, they continue his research program, launched over thirty years ago which has evolved into the field of neurophilosophy. Topics such as the nature of consciousness, the nature of cognition and intelligence, the nature of moral knowledge and moral reasoning, neurosemantics or world-representation in the brain, the nature of our subjective sensory qualia and their relation to objective science, and the future of philosophy itself are here addressed in a lively, graphical, and accessible manner. Throughout the volume, Churchland's view that science is as important as philosophy is emphasised. Several of the color figures in the volume will allow the reader to perform some novel phenomenological experiments on his/her own visual system.

700s – The Arts

Douglas Wolk
Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and what they Mean
Da Capo Press, 2007, 741.53 WOL
This is the first serious, readable, provocative, canon-smashing book of comics criticism by the leading critic in the field. Suddenly, comics are everywhere: a newly matured art form, filling bookshelves with brilliant, innovative work and shaping the ideas and images of the rest of contemporary culture. In Reading Comics, critic Douglas Wolk shows us why this is and how it came to be. Wolk illuminates the most dazzling creators of modern comics and introduces a critical theory that explains where each fits into the pantheon of art. Reading Comics is accessible to the hardcore fan and the curious newcomer; it is the first book for people who want to know not just what comics are worth reading, but also the ways to think and talk and argue about them.

David Friend and Terence Pepper
Vanity Fair Portraits
National Portrait Gallery, 2008, 770 FRI
Vanity Fair Portraits traces the cultural history of twentieth century portrait photography and celebrates the acknowledged masters of this great art form, from Edward Steichen and Cecil Beaton to Annie Leibovitz and Mario Testino. The catalogue sets out the two eras of Vanity Fair's life. The first period from 1913 to 1936 covers subjects drawn from art, dance, music, film and architecture including personalities such as Pablo Picasso, Fred and Adele Astaire, Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn. The second period-from the reincarnation of the magazine in 1983 up to the present day-includes stars of film and theatre as well as writers, athletes, style icons, and business titans with portraits of Robert De Niro, Arthur Miller, Demi Moore, Margaret Thatcher and Lance Armstrong amongst many others. With forewords by Graydon Carter and Sandy Nairne, and essays by Christopher Hitchens and the exhibition curators, David Friend and Terence Pepper, the catalogue explores the power of the magazine that once promised to 'ignite a dinner party at fifty yards' as well as the history of celebrity portraiture.

Amy Raphael
Mike Leigh on Mike Leigh
Faber, 2008, 791.430233092 RAP/LEI
Five-time Oscar nominee and BAFTA winner, the only British director to have won the top prize at both Cannes (for Secrets and Lies) and Venice (for Vera Drake), Mike Leigh is unquestionably one of world cinema's pre-eminent figures. Now, in this definitive career-length interview, he reflects on all that has gone into the making of his unique body of work. Leigh's work has always reflected its times, whether the harsh studies of Meantime and Naked or the humor of the now-legendary Abigail's Party and Nuts in May. Above all, Leigh is an accomplished storyteller, and these films deal with universal themes: births, marriages and deaths, parenthood and failed relationships, families and their secrets and lies.

800s – Literature

Frank Luntz
Words that Work: It’s not what you Say, It’s what People Hear
Hyperion, 2008, 808.042 LUN
Communications expert Luntz offers a behind-the-scenes look at how the tactical use of words and phrases affects what we buy, who we vote for, and even what we believe in. Luntz has used his knowledge of words to help more than two dozen Fortune 500 companies grow. He tells us why Rupert Murdoch's six-billion-dollar decision to buy DirectTV was smart because satellite was more cutting edge than digital cable, and why pharmaceutical companies transitioned their message from treatment to prevention and wellness. If you ever wanted to learn how to talk your way out of a traffic ticket or talk your way into a raise, this book is for you.

Nina L. Krushcheva
Imagining Nabokov: Russia between Art and Politics
Yale University Press, 2008, 813.54 KRU
In Imagining Nabokov, Nina Khrushcheva offers the novel hypothesis that because of his migration from Russia to America, the works of Russian-turned-American Vladimir Nabokov are highly relevant to the political transformation underway in Russia today. Khrushcheva, a Russian living in America, finds in Nabokov's novels a useful guide for Russia's integration into the globalized world. Now one of Nabokov's 'Western' characters herself, she discusses the cultural and social realities of contemporary Russia that he foresaw a half-century earlier. In Pale Fire, Ada, or Ardor, Pnin and other works, Nabokov reinterpreted the traditions of Russian fiction, shifting emphasis from personal misery and communal life to the notion of forging one's own 'happy' destiny. In the twenty-first century, Russia faces a similar challenge, Khrushcheva contends, and Nabokov's work reveals how skills may be acquired to cope with the advent of democracy, capitalism, and open borders. Nina Khrushcheva will be speaking at the RSA on 25 June 2008.

900s – Geography & History

Elizabeth Eger
Brilliant Women: 18th Century Bluestockings
National Portrait Gallery, 2008, REF RSA 942.073 EGE
From Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Germaine Greer, influential women have lamented their lack of foremothers. But why has the remarkable group of creative and intellectual women who flourished in eighteenth-century Britain been overlooked? Publicly celebrated in their time, these women's achievements in the worlds of art, literature and even political thought came to symbolize the progress of a civilized and commercial nation. It accompanies an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, 13 March-15 June 2008.

Rosemary Baird
Goodwood: Art and Architecture, Sport and Family
Frances Lincoln, 2007, 942.2262 BAI
The estate of Goodwood is glorious not only for its famous racecourse and motor racing circuit but also for its magnificent art collection. Curator of the Goodwood Collection, Rosemary Baird tells the story of the Dukes of Richmond, from the birth of the 1st Duke (son of Louise de Keroualle and Charles II), who purchased Goodwood. She describes events such as the Duchess of Richmond's famous ball, from which officers were called to fight in the Battle of Waterloo ('some arrived at the field of battle in silk stockings and dancing shoes') and how, with wealth largely derived from a tax on coal leaving Newcastle, the Richmond family developed Goodwood and acquired works of art to adorn it.

Richard Ben Cramer
How Israel Lost: The Four Questions at the Heart of the Middle East Crisis
Free Press, 2005, 956.05 CRA
The ebbing support for Israel among Western governments is a major landmark in the history of the last decade. It is, without doubt, an issue that has already influenced many international events. Richard Ben Cramer, who has won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the Middle East, now presents readers with How Israel Lost, a brilliant polemic looking at four key questions that define this conflict and explaining how the policies of Ariel Sharon have ostracised his country in the eyes of the world. With the same meticulous research and intelligence that has made Richard Ben Cramer one of America's most highly regarded journalists, How Israel Lost is a timely, powerful and important look at one of the most pivotal points of the world -- and in history.

Featured Books - the "Voice of Witness" series

Dave Eggers and Lola Vollen (eds.)
The Voice of Witness Series
McSweeney's


Novelist Dave Eggers and public health doctor Lola Vollen, a member of Physicians for Human Rights, founded the Voice of Witness series as a collaboration between the publisher McSweeney's and the UC Berkley School of Journalism, following Vollen's work on vaccination programmes in Somalia and identifying the bodies in Bosnia's mass graves.

Oral history has long served to highlight and promote otherwise marginalised voices, and preserve eye-witness accounts through recording and preserving interviews. The Voice of Witness series uses these techniques to highlight and illustrate human rights crises, transcribing interviews with their victims and presenting them, as Scott Turow says in a forward, not as "works of lofty philosophy or jurisprudence [but] humble first-person tales told in everyday terms, of how injustice happened, one blunder at a time." These books are a powerful record of the human cost of events and systems, from immigration law to the criminal justice system, that are often discussed in abstract terms, with little thought given to those who suffer at their margins.

There have been three books published so far, recording the experiences of the victims of Hurricane Katrina, wrongful imprisonment and the American immigration system. To borrow copies of these books, please contact the RSA Library.

Featured Book - "Political Hypocrisy"

David Runciman
Political Hypocrisy: The Mask of Power, from Hobbes to Orwell and Beyond
Princeton University Press, 2008, 320.101 RUN

David Runciman doesn’t think about hypocrisy like other people do. He doesn’t, as Strauss did — and as The Power of Nightmares showed the American neocons do — that it serves a Machiavellin purpose in politics that trancendes the society in question. And he doesn’t, like most of us do, think that it is tanatmount to lying, and that lying is the worst thing a politician can do.

In his new book, Political Hypocrisy, as its introduction explains, Runciman shows that Machiavelli has little to do with our reaction to hypocrisy, but that, as a liberal society, we should look to those philosophers who can tell us something about how hypocrisy functions in a society that votes for individuals to fight for their causes at national and international levels.

Whether he’s discussing the 2006 Labour conference or the American Primary season, Runciman shows that it’s not a simple case hypocrisy = bad, but that different kinds of hypocrisies have different effects in different circumstances, and shows that to understand that is to better understand our liberal, democratic society.

David Runciman will be discussing these issues with Matthew Taylor here at John Adam Street on Thursday 15 May, at 1pm, and to borrow a copy of Political Hypocrisy, please email the RSA Library.

Featured Book - "The Kingdom of Infinite Space"

Raymond Tallis
The Kingdom of Infinite Space: A Fantastical Journey Around your Head
Atlantic, 2008, 128.2 TAL

Raymond Tallis — doctor, philosopher, author, and Kirsty young’s favourite Desert Island DJ — spent much of his working life at the practical end of neurology, but has spent his retirement writing a book about all the bits of the head that aren’t the brain.

Apparently once called My Head: Portrait in a Foxed Mirror, The Kingdom of Infinite Space contends that [t]here is no shortage of books on the brain. Indeed, I would venture that there is a serious lack of such a shortage,” and rather then add to the problem by chasing down consciousness in a single, physical organ, it instead carefully thinks through the various concious, preconcious and unconcious inputs our head recieves, via the senses, and signals it sends back out, through kissing, laughing, yawning, crying, and vomiting.

Tallis will be bringing his wide range of interests to the RSA on Tuesday 6th May. You can book your place for the talk here, and borrow a copy of The Kingdom of Infinite Space by emailing the RSA Library.

RSA Library Update - April 2008

What follows is a complete list of RSA library acquisitions for the month of April 2008. Fellows are welcome to e-mail the Library if they wish to borrow any of these items, or search the library catalogue for thousands of other titles....

000s – Generalities

Adam Greenfield
Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing
New Riders, 2006, 004 GRE
Ubiquitous computing is the integration of computers embedded in everyday objects with an ever-present network-moving computing off the desktop and into every aspect of our lives, creating an environment where nearly every object is enabled with surprising new properties, from camera phones to Oyster cards. These ingenious systems offer convenience, innovative product opportunities, and sometimes security; but to function effectively, Everyware comes at a cost of privacy and autonomy. As consumers, we owe it to ourselves to become aware of this trend so that we can have a voice in its development. Through a series of brief, thought-provoking meditations, Adam Greenfield reveals the technologies, practices, innovations, and policies that combine to make Everyware possible. He provides clear explanations of enabling technologies such as RFID (radio-frequency ID) chips, Ipv6, ultra-wideband networking, heads-up displays, and shows how they fit into the everyware puzzle, allowing people to interact with the global network naturally, easily, and even without knowing it.

Ronald Deibert (ed.)
Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering
MIT, 2008, 005.8 DEI
Many countries around the world block or filter Internet content, denying access to information that they deem too sensitive for ordinary citizens - most often about politics, but sometimes relating to sexuality, culture, or religion. Access Denied documents and analyzes Internet filtering practices in more than three dozen countries, offering the first rigorously conducted study of an accelerating trend. Drawing on a just-completed survey of global Internet filtering undertaken by the OpenNet Initiative and relying on work by regional experts and an extensive network of researchers, Access Denied examines the political, legal, social, and cultural contexts of Internet filtering in these states from a variety of perspectives.

Nicolas Philibert
Back to Normandy
Tartan Video, 2008, 070.18 PHI
Thirty years after his film I, Pierre Rivière, Nicolas Philibert returns to Normandy to catch up on that film’s non-professional actors and the last 30 years of their lives.

100s – Philosophy & Psychology

Raymond Tallis
The Kingdom of Infinite Space: A Fantastical Journey Around your Head
Atlantic, 2008, 128.2 TAL
The Kingdom of Infinite Space is a journey around the part of our anatomy to which we feel most attached: our heads. In this unique combination of biological science and philosophical interrogation, Raymond Tallis takes the head apart, piece by piece, in search of the place where our souls, and consciousness, reside. From the act of blushing and the amount of manganese in our tears (tears of pain contain more than tears of distress) to the curiousness of a kiss, The Kingdom of Infinite Space explores the astonishing range of activities that go on inside our heads, most of which are entirely beyond our control. After escorting his readers on a fantastic voyage through every chamber of the head and brain, Raymond Tallis demonstrates that not only does consciousness not reside between our ears, but that our heads are infinitely cleverer than we are.

Rita Carter
Multiplicity: The New Science of You
Little, Brown, 2008, 155.2 CAR
In Multiplicity, Rita Carter offers a new and vital understanding of personality. Rita explains that nearly every one of us is a team of personalities, working together, for the most part, to give the impression of a unified self. We are used to thinking of ourselves as one thing or the other - either introvert or extrovert, say - but things are rarely that simple for most of us. That's why we sometimes feel like a different person depending on mood, company and surroundings, why we sometimes suffer unaccountable memory lapses, why we buy something we then decide we didn't want in the first place, or why 'somebody else' turns off the alarm clock in the morning. Importantly, Multiplicity is also a practical guide to building a happy 'household' of personalities, explaining how to identify these different versions of ourselves and how to enable them to co-operate so that we can function successfully in life.

James Garvey
The Ethics of Climate Change; right and wrong in a warming world
Continuum, 2008, 179.1 GAR
James Garvey argues that climate change is largely a moral problem. This book is an introduction to the ethics of climate change; it considers climate science and moral philosophy, ultimately finding a way into the many possible positions associated with climate change. It is also a call for action, for doing something about the moral demands placed on both governments and individuals by the fact of climate change.

Bertrand Russell
History of Western Philosophy
Routledge, 2004, 190.9 RUS
First published in 1946, History of Western Philosophy went on to become the best-selling philosophy book of the twentieth century. A dazzlingly ambitious project, it remains unchallenged to this day as the ultimate introduction to Western philosophy. Providing a sophisticated overview of the ideas that have perplexed people from time immemorial, Russell's History of Western Philosophy is one of the most important philosophical works of all time.

200s – Religion

300s – Social Sciences

Thomas De Zengotita
Mediated: How the Media Shape your World
Bloomsbury, 2007, 302.23 ZEN
Here is the world we think we know presented to us as if for the very first time. From oral sex in the Oval Office to cowboy politics, from Homer Simpson to O. J. Simpson, from Princess Diana's funeral to the aftermath of September 11, from reality TV to hip-hop nation, Mediated takes us on a provocative tour of our media-drunk society. It is a brilliantly satirical treatise on our culture - the real and unreal times in which we live, the cult of celebrity and our own narcissistic response to it. Read this book and nothing that you see or hear can any longer be taken for granted.

George Monbiot
Bring on the Apocalypse: Six Arguments for Global Justice
Guardian Books, 2008, 303.45 MON
In this series of essays on money, religion, war, power, culture and nature, Monbiot explains why we are heading into an uncertain future in which peace and sound politics are paramount to our survival. From his attack on the countries that deny the existence of global warming to his rally against the injustices of the Iraq war, Monbiot turns his gaze on the aspects of modernity that most endanger the prevailing world order.

Jonathan Zittrain
The Future of the Internet: And How to Stop It
Allen Lane, 2008, 303.4834 ZIT
In The Future of the Internet: And How to Stop It, Jonathan Zittrain explores the dangers the internet faces if it fails to balance ever more tightly controlled technologies with the flow of innovation that has generated so much progress in the field of technology. Zittrain argues that today's technological market is dominated by two contrasting business models: the generative and the non-generative. The generative models - the PCs, Windows and Macs of this world - allow third parties to build upon and share through them. The non-generative model is more restricted; appliances such as the XBox, iPod and tomtom might work well, but the only entity that can change the way they operate is the vendor. If we want the internet to survive we need to change. People must wake up to the risk or we could lose everything.

Trenna Cormack
Be the Change: Action and Reflection from People Transforming our World
Love, 2007, 303.4840922 COR
“You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” So Ghandh advised. Today, there’s a growing movement of people who are standing up and taking action to create positive change. Be uplifted by the stories of 28 pioneers, social entrepreneurs, activists and campaigners working in many fields - including the media, education, health, peace, finance, business and the environment.

Imtiaz H. Habib
Black Lives in the English Archives, 1500-1677: Imprints of the Invisible
Ashgate, 2007, 305.89604209031 HAB
Containing an urgently needed archival database of historical evidence, this volume includes both a consolidated presentation of the documentary records of black people in Tudor and Stuart England, and an interpretive narrative that confirms and significantly extends the insights of current theoretical excursus on race in early modern England. Here, for the first time, Imtiaz Habib collects the scattered references to black people - whether from Africa, India or America - in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England, and arranges them into a systematic, chronological descriptive index. He offers an extended historical and theoretical interpretation of the records in six chapters, which serve as an introductory guide to the index even as they articulate a specific argument about the meaning of the records. Both the archival information and interpretive scholarship provide a strong framework from which future historical debates on race in early modern England can proceed.

Elizabeth Farrelly
Blubberland: The Dangers of Happiness
The MIT Press, 2008, 306 FAR
A leading critic examines the connections between obesity and architecture, unchecked sprawl and unchecked appetites, and other forms of insatiability that are hurting our planet and bodies. Blubberland looks at our superfluous superfluity, our huge eco-footprint, and asks why we find it so hard to abandon habits we know to be destructive. As big becomes more and more pervasive, and success is seen in increasingly measurable and material terms, the goal of happiness jeopardizes our survival.

Neil Boorman
Bonfire of the Brands; How I learnt to Live Without Labels
Canongate Books Ltd, 2007, 306.3 BOO
As a product of a generation that has been sold to since birth, Neil examines the social, historical, economic and psychological ways in which brands have gripped our society; as well as documenting his personal trials and tribulations as he tries to live a life without brands. How will he cope without a hit of his Crackberry? Will he feel naked without his Nike, Gucci, and, of course, Marlboro? How do you make your own toothpaste?

Félix Guattari and Suely Rolnik
Molecular Revolution in Brazil
Semiotext(e), 2008, 320.981 GUA
Following Brazil's first democratic election after two decades of military dictatorship, French philosopher Felix Guattari travelled through Brazil in 1982 with Brazilian psychoanalyst Suely Rolnik and discovered an exciting, new political vitality. In the infancy of its new republic, Brazil was moving against traditional hierarchies of control and totalitarian regimes and founding a revolution of ideas and politics. Molecular Revolution in Brazil documents the conversations, discussions, and debates that arose during the trip, including a dialogue between Guattari and Brazil's future President Luis Ignacia Lula da Silva, then a young gubernatorial candidate. Through these exchanges, Guattari cuts through to the shadowy practices of globalization gone awry and boldly charts a revolution in practice. Assembled and edited by Rolnik, Molecular Revolution in Brazil is organized thematically; aphoristic at times, it presents a lesser-known, more overtly political aspect of Guattari's work.

Bill Emmott
Rivals: How the Power Struggle between China, India and Japan will Shape our Next Decade
Allen Lane, 2008, 327.500905 EMM
Bill Emmott is one of the world's most authoritative international commentators. Rivals will be the book which defines the geo-politics of the world's most rapidly evolving economies and nation states, and assesses the challenge to America's global economic and military leadership posed by the emerging Asian superpowers. It is not just, as many seem to argue, a question of the rise of China. For the first time in history, Asia will not be dominated by just one country or by outside powers. It will contain three large, economically powerful countries, all with interests and ambitions that range across the whole region, and the world. The future of the world economy will be determined by the competition between these three countries, as will world politics. Rivals looks at: How the power struggle between China, India and Japan will shape our next decade, will explore the legacies of history, the likely future trajectories of China, Japan and India, and the potential collisions and intersections between them which will shape the 21st century.

Benazir Bhutto
Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy and the West
Simon & Schuster, 2008, 327.549101713 BHU
Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, the chairperson of the Pakistan People's Party, was seen as vital to that country's future. In exile for years, in late 2007 she felt the time had come to actively re-engage and to return to the country she loved. Reconciliation, completed just days before her assassination, was her compelling and convincing prescription for the country at the heart of the so-called 'clash of civilizations'. It argues that democracy, economic development, moderation and modernity are the greatest threats to international terrorism. She pledged to work with the United States and the West to ensure that Pakistan ceased to be the petri dish of international radicals, and to re-establish its bona fides as a realistic and effective moderate alternative for one billion Muslims around the world.

Brooke Harrington
Pop Finance: Investment Clubs and the New Investor Populism
Princeton University Press, 2008, 332.6322068 HAR
During the 1990's, the United States underwent a dramatic transformation: investing in stocks, once the province of a privileged elite, became a mass activity involving more than half of Americans. Pop Finance follows the trajectory of this new market populism via the rise of investment clubs, through which millions of people across the socioeconomic spectrum became investors for the first time. As sociologist Brooke Harrington shows, these new investors pour billions of dollars annually into the U.S. stock market and hold significant positions in some of the nation's largest firms. Drawing upon Harrington's long-term observation of investment clubs, along with in-depth interviews and extensive survey data, Pop Finance is the first book to examine the origins and impact of this mass engagement in investing.

Rob Hopkins
The Transition Handbook: From oil dependency to local resilience
Green, 2008, 333.7913 HOP
We live in an oil-dependent world and most people don't want to think about what happens when the oil runs out but The Transition Handbook shows how the inevitable and profound changes ahead can have a positive effect. They can lead to the rebirth of local communities, encourage the development of local currencies and can unleash a local 'skilling-up', so that people have more control over their lives. The Transition Handbook is the manual which will guide communities to begin this 'energy descent' journey.

Jeffrey Sachs
Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet
Allen Lane, 2008, 338.9 SAC
This is a book about how we should address the great, and interconnected, global challenges of the twenty-first century. Our task, Sachs argues, is to achieve truly sustainable development, by which he means finding a global course which enables the world to benefit from the spread of prosperity while ensuring that we don't destroy the eco-systems which keep us alive and our place in nature which helps sustain our values. How do we move forward together, benefiting from our increasing technological mastery, avoiding the terrible dangers of climate change, mass famines, violent conflicts, population explosions in some parts of the world and collapses in others, and world-wide pandemic diseases? How do we steer global politics when there are now so many who believe they are entitled to a hand on the steering wheel? In answering these questions, Common Wealth examines, digests and judges vast quantities of information from many different fields of study which bear on each of the interconnected areas of politics, economics and ecology. It is a book which appeals equally to both head and heart, and one which no globally thinking person can ignore.

Joseph H. Hulse
Sustainable Development at Risk: Ignoring the Past
Cambridge University Press, 2007, 338.927 HUL
Over the past half-century, the idea of sustainable development has evolved and rooted itself in the lexicon of international development. But what is it? Are development agencies truly committed to long-term sustainable solutions to development issues? Are we learning from our past successes and failures? Sustainable Development at Risk seeks to help us do just that.

Basil Gelpke and Ray McCormack
A Crude Awakening
Artificial Eye, 2008, 363.73874 GEL
A wake-up call for energy like An Inconvenient Truth was for the environment, A Crude Awakening is an urgent warning that the age of abundant oil is over. Featuring testimonies from the world’s top experts, this startling documentary reaches an ominous yet logical conclusion - the Earth’s oil supplies are peaking, threatening our ill-prepared, fossil-fuel addicted civilisation with a crisis of global proportions.

400s – Language

500s – Natural Sciences & Mathematics

600s – Technology (Applied Sciences)

Bruce Sterling
Shaping Things
MIT, 2005, 620.82 STE
Shaping Things is about created objects and the environment, which is to say, it's about everything. Bruce Sterling offers a brilliant, often hilarious history of shaped things. We have moved from an age of artefacts, made by hand, through complex machines, to the current era of gizmos. New forms of design and manufacture are appearing that lack historical precedent, he writes; but the production methods, using archaic forms of energy and materials that are finite and toxic, are not sustainable. And the future will see a new kind of object - we have the primitive forms of them now in our pockets and briefcases: user-alterable, baroquely multi-featured, and programmable - that will be sustainable, enhanceable, and uniquely identifiable. Shaping Things is for designers and thinkers, engineers and scientists, entrepreneurs and financiers - and anyone who wants to understand and be part of the process of technosocial transformation.

700s – The Arts

Documentary Essentials: Music
Tartan Video, 2007, 780 DVD
This box-set collects three new music documentaries:
Mayor of the Sunset Strip, the compelling story of music, celebrity and the pursuit of fame through the eyes of pop impresario Rodney Bingenheimer. The Devil and Daniel Johnson Considered by many to be one of the world s finest musicians and once described by Kurt Cobain as 'the greatest songwriter on earth', Daniel Johnston is a man whose life has been defined not only by his musical talent but by his struggle with mental illness. Exploring the sometimes chaotic mix of genius and madness, this insightful and sensitive documentary looks at the music and the man behind it.
The End of the Century Starting with the band's origins in Forest Hills, gives a fascinating background portrait of the eccentric group of individuals who came together to be one of the most influential punk bands in history: The Ramones.

Andrew Bailey
Cinema Now
Taschen, 2007, 791.4302330922 BAI
Cinema Now examines the work and key themes of 60 filmmakers working around the world today, from the cream of the crop of young Hollywood to the new wave of Asian mavericks to burgeoning auteurs from Europe and Latin America. Cinema Now is packed with stunning full-colour photos and exclusive on-set photography supplied by the filmmakers and comes with a supplementary DVD.

800s – Literature

John Kerrigan
Archipelagic English: Literature, History, and Politics 1603-1707
Oxford University Press, 2008, 820.90040941 KER
Seventeenth-century 'English Literature' has long been thought about in narrowly English terms. Archipelagic English corrects this by devolving Anglophone writing, showing how much remarkable work was produced in Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. This book also shows the significance of a whole series of authors who were prominent during their lifetimes but who have since become neglected because they do not fit the Anglocentric paradigm.

Norma Clarke
Queen of the Wits: A Life of Laetitia Pilkington
Faber, 2008, 821.5 CLA
Prostitute and poetess, fallen woman and society wit, Laetitia Pilkington spent her life as close to fame as she was near to ruin. Favoured by, among others, the celebrated Jonathan Swift, she was divorced by her husband after being exposed as an adulteress. In London, she survived through her humour and her intelligence - and her skilful use of scandal - on the very fringes of respectability. Norma Clarke's hugely rich and enjoyable biography is the story of celebrity, sex and literature in the early eighteenth century. Above all, it brings to life a woman who embodied the scandal, energy and sadness of a time when literature, gossip and the lives they described were inseparable.

Simon Armitage
Gig: The Life and Times of a Rock-Star Fantasist
Viking, 2008, 821.914 ARM
From punk to mod to New Romantic, and eventually to acclaimed poet, Simon Armitage writes about a life where music and poetry have been core. And about a place, the village of Marsden in west Yorkshire, where he can stand and look out across a huge circumference of inspiration and influence: Joy Division, the Smiths and The Fall to the west, the Comsat Angels and Pulp to the south, Andrew Marvell and Larkin way out east, Ted Hughes and Plath just to the north. Gig is a warm, vivid, wonderful book about music, poetry, family and, always, the North.

J.G. Ballard
Miracles of Life
Fourth Estate, 2008, 823.914 BAL
'Miracles of Life' opens and closes in Shanghai, the city where J.G. Ballard was born, and where he spent the most of the Second World War interned with his family in a Japanese concentration camp. Beginning with his early childhood spent exploring the vibrant surroundings of pre-war Shanghai; Ballard charts the course of his remarkable life from the deprivations and unexpected freedoms of the Lunghua Camp to his return to a Britain physically and psychologically crippled by war.

Robert Fisk
The Age of the Warrior: Selected Essays
Author(s): Fisk, Robert.
Fourth Estate, 2008, 824.914 FIS
A selection of Robert Fisk's finest 'Comment' pieces from the Saturday Independent Robert Fisk has amassed a devoted readership over the years, with his insightful, witty and always outspoken articles on international politics and mankind's war-torn recent history. He is best known for his writing about the Middle East, its wars, dictators and international relations, but these 'Comment' articles cover an array of topics, from his soldier grandfather to handwriting to the titanic - and of course President Bush, terrorism and Iraq.

900s – Geography & History

Owen David
In Sickness and in Power: Illness in Heads of Government during the Last 100 Years
Methuen, 2008, 909.8290922 DAV
In Sickness and in Power is a unique study of illness in heads of government between 1901 and 2007. It considers how illness and therapy - both physical and mental - affect the process of government and decision-making, leading to acts of folly, in the sense of stupidity or rashness. The author is particularly interested in leaders who were not ll in the conventional sense, and whose cognitive faculties functioned well, but who developed what he calls a ‘hubris syndrome,’ which powerfully affected their performance and their actions. Such leaders suffer a loss of capacity and come excessively self-confident and contemptuous of advice that runs counter to what they believe, or even of any advice at all.

Tony Benn
More Time for Politics: Diaries, 2001-2007
Hutchinson, 2007, 941.086092 BEN
When Tony Benn left Parliament after 51 years he quoted his wife Caroline's remark that now he would have 'more time for politics'. And so this has proved: in the first seven years of this century he has helped reinvigorate national debate through public meetings, mass campaigns and appearances in the media, passionately bringing moral and political issues to wide audiences. And throughout, as ever, he has been keeping his diaries. Commenting on the demise of the New Labour project from the re-election of Tony Blair in 2001 to the ultimate foreign policy disasters of Afghanistan and Iraq, he gives other prescient accounts of the government's by-passing of Cabinet, parliament and the party, of the 'war on terror', the debate about Islam, globalisation and the changes in British society.

Jonathan Powell
Great Hatred, Little Room: Making Peace in Northern Ireland
Bodley Head, 2008, 941.60824 POW
As Tony Blair’s Chief of Staff and chief negotiator, Jonathan Powell was in the front line of the talks at each crucial stage. He came to know the key players on all sides, as he strove to win their trust and move the process forward. His account combines unparalleled access with an acute historical understanding, shrewd working assessments of the participants with an unerring eye for the telling human detail.