This book is a riotous, irreverent account of the people and events that have shaped Britain. Always get those kings and queens confused? Never sure what happened when? You need this book. Inside you'll find rip-roaring stories of power-mad kings, executions, invasions, high treason, global empire-building, and forbidden love - not bad for a nation of stiff upper lips.

The integrity of products and brands is at the core of successful global business. Yet, chances are your management strategy does not protect the key elements that generate your product and brand revenues, leaving them vulnerable to internal and external attacks.
Global Brand Integrity Management delivers a blueprint for developing and maintaining an integrity program that preserves your brand's reputation, ensures product protection, and increases your competitiveness in the global marketplace. Drawing upon their three decades of experience, Richard Post and Penelope Post distill valuable lessons learned into the “Eight Laws of Brand Integrity,” extracted from hundreds of projects and at a cost of billions of dollars in brand--related losses to global businesses:

The distinguished sociologist Richard Sennett surveys major differences between earlier forms of industrial capitalism and the more global, more febrile, ever more mutable version of capitalism that is taking its place. He shows how these changes affect everyday life—how the work ethic is changing; how new beliefs about merit and talent displace old values of craftsmanship and achievement; how what Sennett calls “the specter of uselessness” haunts professionals as well as manual workers; how the boundary between consumption and politics is dissolving.

In recent years, reformers of both private and public institutions have preached that flexible, global corporations provide a model of freedom for individuals, unlike the experience of fixed and static bureaucracies Max Weber once called an “iron cage.” Sennett argues that, in banishing old ills, the new-economy model has created new social and emotional traumas. Only a certain kind of human being can prosper in unstable, fragmentary institutions: the culture of the new capitalism demands an ideal self oriented to the short term, focused on potential ability rather than accomplishment, willing to discount or abandon past experience. In a concluding section, Sennett examines a more durable form of self hood, and what practical initiatives could counter the pernicious effects of “reform.”

News of the Week
SCIENCE EDUCATION: Louisiana Opens School Door for Opponents of Evolution
Fayana Richards
Science 20 June 2008: 1572.
A bill passed overwhelmingly by the Louisiana state legislature and expected to become law as early as next week marks the latest attack in the United States on the teaching of evolution and mainstream scientific thought on global warming and other topics.
BIOBANKS: Canada Launches Massive Study of Adult Cancer Precursors
Paul Webster
Science 20 June 2008: 1572-1573.
Canada has joined the global stampede of countries gathering biological data over decades on a large population cohort in hopes of better understanding the genetic, social, and environmental factors that affect human health.
BIODEFENSE: Senate Bill Would Alter Biosafety, Select Agent Rules
Jocelyn Kaiser
Science 20 June 2008: 1573.
Last week, a bipartisan pair of U.S. senators introduced a bill that would streamline the red tape involved in studying potential bioweapons as well as address safety concerns at the nation's biodefense labs.