Time for books nine and ten in the RSA Books of the year. Before unveiling them a special mention for Stephen Pinker’s The Stuff of Thought, a wonderful, engaging and authoritative book about the structure, evolution and purpose of language. Unfortunately, although Stephen spoke here in 2008, the book was published in 2007 and so doesn’t really count.
Michael Thompson – Organising and disorganising
Regular readers will have had quite enough of me banging on about cultural theory. Suffice to say that this is a fascinating, quirky and convincing way of getting into the theory and understanding why some people (like me) think it is so powerful.
And number ten and my overall winner is…….
Da da
Clay Shirky – Here Comes Everybody
A lot has been said about this hugely entertaining and visionary book. I will say simply this: there have been a thousand and one books about how the internet changes everything. This may not be the longest or most scholarly, it is certainly not the most over-blown, but it is, for the general reader, simply the best. Why not buy it at the RSA Bookshop!
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