New books

You can find the complete list of new acquisitions on the New books page. The list includes all English-language books bought by the Library in the last two month (and published in the last five years), the books are grouped according to theme and title.

Here you can read selected book recommendations from the list of the new books.

A leadership perspective on decision making

The economic socialisation of young peopleA leadership perspective on decision making / Selart, Marcus
Oslo: Cappelen, 2010. 232 p.


This book is concerned with helping you improve your approach to decision-making. The author examines judgement in a selection of managerial contexts and provides important understanding that can help you make better leadership decisions. This book also pinpoints the in-house politics of organisational decision-making. Drawing on the very latest research, it introduces practical techniques that show you how to analyse and develop your own decision-making style. It will help you to deliver sharp and insightful analyses of your business and develop effective solutions. In addition, it presents simple checklists that will give you vital insights throughout the decision-making process. Students and practitioners of leadership, management, and allied fields will find this book useful in order to understand and implement useful methods.

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business strategy
management

Classical political economy and modern theory

The economic socialisation of young peopleClassical political economy and modern theory: Essays in honour of Heinz Kurz / Christian Gehrke
London: Routledge, 2012. 400 p.


Heinz Kurz is recognised internationally as a leading economic theorist and a foremost historian of economic thought. This book pays tribute to his outstanding contributions by bringing together a unique collection of new essays by distinguished economists from around the world.
Classical Political Economy and Modern Theory comprises twenty essays, grouped thematically into five sections. Part I examines political economy and its critique, Part II looks at entrepreneurship, evolution and income distribution, Part III discusses Cambridge, Keynes and macroeconomics, Part IV explores crisis and cycles, whilst Part V is dedicated to personal reminiscences. The essays in this book will be an invaluable source of inspiration for economists interested in economic theory and in the evolution of economic thought. They will also be of interest to postgraduate and research students specialising in economic theory and in the history of economic thought.
The essays in this book will be an invaluable source of inspiration for economists interested in economic theory and in the evolution of economic thought. They will also be of interest to postgraduate and research students specialising in economic theory and in the history of economic thought.

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economics

The climate casino: Risk, uncertainty, and economics for a warming world

The signal and the noiseThe climate casino: Risk, uncertainty, and economics for a warming world / William Nordhaus
New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 2013. 378 p.

Climate change is profoundly altering our world in ways that pose major risks to human societies and natural systems. We have entered the Climate Casino and are rolling the global-warming dice, warns economist William Nordhaus. But there is still time to turn around and walk back out of the casino, and in this essential book the author explains how.
 
Bringing together all the important issues surrounding the climate debate, Nordhaus describes the science, economics, and politics involved—and the steps necessary to reduce the perils of global warming. Using language accessible to any concerned citizen and taking care to present different points of view fairly, he discusses the problem from start to finish: from the beginning, where warming originates in our personal energy use, to the end, where societies employ regulations or taxes or subsidies to slow the emissions of gases responsible for climate change.
 
Nordhaus offers a new analysis of why earlier policies, such as the Kyoto Protocol, failed to slow carbon dioxide emissions, how new approaches can succeed, and which policy tools will most effectively reduce emissions. In short, he clarifies a defining problem of our times and lays out the next critical steps for slowing the trajectory of global warming.

catalogue 

environmental economics

The signal and the noise

The signal and the noiseThe signal and the noise / Nate Silver
New York: Penguin Press, 2012. 534 p.

Nate Silver built an innovative system for predicting baseball performance, predicted the 2008 election within a hair’s breadth, and became a national sensation as a blogger—all by the time he was thirty. The New York Times now publishes FiveThirtyEight.com, where Silver is one of the nation’s most influential political forecasters.
Drawing on his own groundbreaking work, Silver examines the world of prediction, investigating how we can distinguish a true signal from a universe of noisy data. Most predictions fail, often at great cost to society, because most of us have a poor understanding of probability and uncertainty. Both experts and laypeople mistake more confident predictions for more accurate ones. But overconfidence is often the reason for failure. If our appreciation of uncertainty improves, our predictions can get better too. This is the “prediction paradox”: The more humility we have about our ability to make predictions, the more successful we can be in planning for the future.
In keeping with his own aim to seek truth from data, Silver visits the most successful forecasters in a range of areas, from hurricanes to baseball, from the poker table to the stock market, from Capitol Hill to the NBA. He explains and evaluates how these forecasters think and what bonds they share. What lies behind their success? Are they good—or just lucky? What patterns have they unraveled? And are their forecasts really right? He explores unanticipated commonalities and exposes unexpected juxtapositions. And sometimes, it is not so much how good a prediction is in an absolute sense that matters but how good it is relative to the competition. In other cases, prediction is still a very rudimentary—and dangerous—science.
Silver observes that the most accurate forecasters tend to have a superior command of probability, and they tend to be both humble and hardworking. They distinguish the predictable from the unpredictable, and they notice a thousand little details that lead them closer to the truth. Because of their appreciation of probability, they can distinguish the signal from the noise.
With everything from the health of the global economy to our ability to fight terrorism dependent on the quality of our predictions, Nate Silver’s insights are an essential read.

catalogue 

economic development

Mass flourishing

The economic socialisation of young peopleMass flourishing / Edmund Phelps
Princeton, US: Princeton Univ. Press, 2013. 378 p

In this book, Nobel Prize-winning economist Edmund Phelps draws on a lifetime of thinking to make a sweeping new argument about what makes nations prosper--and why the sources of that prosperity are under threat today. Why did prosperity explode in some nations between the 1820s and 1960s, creating not just unprecedented material wealth but "flourishing"--meaningful work, self-expression, and personal growth for more people than ever before? Phelps makes the case that the wellspring of this flourishing was modern values such as the desire to create, explore, and meet challenges. These values fueled the grassroots dynamism that was necessary for widespread, indigenous innovation. Most innovation wasn't driven by a few isolated visionaries like Henry Ford; rather, it was driven by millions of people empowered to think of, develop, and market innumerable new products and processes, and improvements to existing ones. Mass flourishing--a combination of material well-being and the "good life" in a broader sense--was created by this mass innovation.

Yet indigenous innovation and flourishing weakened decades ago. In America, evidence indicates that innovation and job satisfaction have decreased since the late 1960s, while postwar Europe has never recaptured its former dynamism. The reason, Phelps argues, is that the modern values underlying the modern economy are under threat by a resurgence of traditional, corporatist values that put the community and state over the individual. The ultimate fate of modern values is now the most pressing question for the West: will Western nations recommit themselves to modernity, grassroots dynamism, indigenous innovation, and widespread personal fulfillment, or will we go on with a narrowed innovation that limits flourishing to a few?

A book of immense practical and intellectual importance, Mass Flourishing is essential reading for anyone who cares about the sources of prosperity and the future of the West.

catalogue 

economics

No-hype options trading

The economic socialisation of young peopleNo-hype options trading: Myths, realities and strategies that really work / Given, Kerry W.
Hoboken: Wiley, 2011. 198 p.

In this guide to sound options-trading strategies, the author’s goal is to teach investors how to profit from the use of options while intelligently managing the risks involved. This book can serve as a reference for money managers with high-net-worth clients and investors seeking to generate income in their portfolios.
Perhaps the most important aspect of the book is Given’s emphasis on creating a plan for trading options and sticking to it. The key to Given’s plan is risk management. His risk management system consists of four parts: stop loss order, adjustment, profit stop, and time stop.

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finance

Willful blindness

The economic socialisation of young peopleWillful blindness: Why we ignore the obvious at our peril / Margaret Heffernan
New York: Walker, 2011. 294 p.

The surprising reasons we turn a blind eye to problems - and how to see more clearly to prevent pitfalls and disasters in our personal, professional, and civic lives.
How could the Catholic Church not see its abusing priests? How could economists miss the housing bubble? Why do spouses think their adultery won't hurt anyone? How could mortgagees take on so much debt? The answer to all these questions is the same: willful blindness. The biggest threats and dangers we face aren't secret or hidden. They're the ones we choose to overlook.
Distinguished businesswoman and writer Margaret Heffernan examines the phenomenon of willful blindness, tracing its imprint in our social lives, love lives, and working lives. What is it that makes us prefer ignorance? Why, after every major accident and blunder, do we look back and say, How could we have been so blind? Why do some people see more than others? And how can we change? Drawing on studies by psychologists and neuroscientists, and interviews with business leaders, whistleblowers, and white collar criminals, Heffernan explores the mechanisms that render individuals and groups blind to personal tragedies, corporate collapses, engineering failures - even crimes against humanity. Human beings turn a blind eye in order to feel safe, avoid conflict, reduce anxiety, and protect prestige. Financial concerns, oppressive workloads, and information overload also make it hard to see (or to admit to ourselves or our colleagues) the issues and problems in plain sight.
By understanding the many psychological, social, and organizational reasons we are blind, we may begin to take practical steps to see more clearly. We can challenge our biases, encourage debate, discourage conformity, and not back away from difficult or complicated problems. Only when we confront facts and fears can we achieve real power and unleash our capacity for change.

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psychology

The value of nothing: How to reshape market society and redefine democracy

The economic socialisation of young peopleThe value of nothing: How to reshape market society and redefine democracy / Raj Patel
New York: Picador, 2009. 250 p.

Opening with Oscar Wilde's observation that "nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing," Patel shows how our faith in prices as a way of valuing the world is misplaced.  He reveals the hidden ecological and social costs of a hamburger (as much as $200), and asks how we came to have markets in the first place.  Both the corporate capture of government and our current financial crisis, Patel argues, are a result of our democratically bankrupt political system.
 
If part one asks how we can rebalance society and limit markets, part two answers by showing how social organizations, in America and around the globe, are finding new ways to describe the world's worth.  If we don't want the market to price every aspect of our lives, we need to learn how such organizations have discovered democratic ways in which people, and not simply governments, can play a crucial role in deciding how we might share our world and its resources in common.
 
This short, timely and inspiring book reveals that our current crisis is not simply the result of too much of the wrong kind of economics.  While we need to rethink our economic model, Patel argues that the larger failure beneath the food, climate and economic crises is a political one.  If economics is about choices, Patel writes, it isn't often said who gets to make them.  The Value of Nothing offers a fresh and accessible way to think about economics and the choices we will all need to make in order to create a sustainable economy and society.

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politics

The great financial crisis in Finland and Sweden : The Nordic experience of finanical liberalization

The economic socialisation of young peopleThe great financial crisis in Finland and Sweden : The Nordic experience of finanical liberalization /  Lars Jonung
Cheltenham: Elgar, 2009. 337 p.

Following World War II, Nordic countries were commonly regarded as successful and stable economies. This perception was, however, shattered in the early 1990s when Finland and Sweden encountered severe financial crises. Here, the authors explore the symptoms of financial crisis - decreasing real income, soaring unemployment and exploding public deficits - and their devastating effects. The book compares and contrasts the experiences of Finland and Sweden, then adopts an international perspective, encompassing the experiences of Asia, Latin America, Denmark and Norway. Lessons from the 1990s crisis are drawn, and possible solutions prescribed. The conclusion is that long-term effects of financial crises - financial liberalization and integration - are not as dramatic as the short-term effects, but may prove to be of greater importance over time. Only the future will show whether these long-term benefits will balance or even outweigh the enormous short-term costs of the crises.
 
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economic development

The economic socialisation of young people

The economic socialisation of young peopleThe economic socialisation of young people / Adrian Furnham
London: SAU, 2008. 208 p.

All parents want their children to be 'savvy' about money. All governments want their citizens to be informed, sensible and responsible when it comes to earning, saving, spending and investing money. In his latest book, Professor Adrian Furnham investigates the economic socialisation of children and adolescents. He looks at how, when and why some people become economically literate and others do not, and attempts a comprehensive and critical evaluation of the scattered interdisciplinary research in this much neglected and important field.

This is a book that will be welcomed by many different groups of people—not least parents bewildered by the complexities and pitfalls of pocket-money systems.
 

 

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sociology

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