New to the catalogue

In recent years, female artists such as Amy Winehouse, Lady Gaga and Adele have had huge commercial and critical success as well as massive media attention. As more and more female solo artists hit the mainstream the question arises: where are the girl bands? Why aren’t they getting the attention they deserve?

Does their gender solely define their music? Do they get gigs and attention just because they are female? Does the medai focus on what they look like undermine what they are doing musically?

Women Make Noise: girl bands from Motown to the modern is a collection of 10 essays about all-girl bands from the 1920s up to 2012. Its editor, Julia Downes, invites musicians, promoters, journalists, high profile artists and music fans to discuss their favourite girl bands: not the type who sing along to backing tracks – the real musicians, who can actually play their instruments.

From the country belles of the 20s-40s, Motown groups of the 60s, to prog rock goddesses and punks of the 70s-80s; from riot grrrl activists of the 90s to radical protesters Pussy Riot. These aren’t the manufactured acts of some pop svengali, these groups write their own songs, play their own instruments and make music together on their own terms.

Ten essays aren’t enough to dissect all of the all-girl bands in history but it is a good start on what is a lengthy topic. Including interviews with classic punk groups like The Raincoats and The Slits, as well as household names like Bjork and Beth Ditto, this book demonstrates that all-girl bands have made radical contributions to feminism, culture and politics as well as producing some unique, influential and innovative music.

Further details of Women make noise: girl bands from Motown to the modern can be found on our catalogue.

(photo credit: TASCHEN: © 2013 TASCHEN GmbH, Hohenzollernring 53, D-50672 Köln, www.taschen.com)

“Bond, James Bond”

With those three words, spoken by Sean Connery in 1962, the world was introduced to one of the longest-running and perhaps best-loved cinematic characters of all time.

50 years on, the 23rd James Bond film, Skyfall, was released and those three words were uttered once more, this time by Daniel Craig.

When the cameras first started rolling in Jamica on Dr No all those years ago, no one could have predicted what Ian Fleming, Harry Saltzman and Cubby Broccoli had started.

Ian Fleming began writing the first Bond novel, Casino Royale, at his Jamican holiday home, Goldeneye, in 1952. It was something he had thought about for some time. During World War 2, Fleming had been personal assistant to Admiral John Godfrey, director at the Naval Intelligence Division of the Admiralty. He was an organiser and ideas man on a multitude of fronts; in short he had been a spy.

Prevented by the Official Secrets Act from talking about it openly, Fleming, like spies before him and since, for example W. Somerset Maughan and John le Carré, turned to fiction. Through writing, Fleming could immerse himself in that world once more.

The Bond novels were successful, touching a chord in a generation of Britons who had lived through the war and wanted a more exotic lifestyle than the austerity measures at home.

Fleming let producer Harry Saltzman option the Bond film and television rights. Through a mutual friend Saltzman met Albert R. “Cubby” Broccoli, an experienced film producer, and they agreed to go into business together making Bond movies as EON Productions.

EON Productions made the first Bond movie, Dr No, in 1962.

To mark the 50th anniversary, publishing house Taschen and dedicated editor, Paul Duncan, created this book as an appropriate tribute to this incredible milestone.

The James Bond archives is exactly that. Paul Duncan spent two years researching over one million images and 100 filing cabinets of documentation.

The result is the most complete account of the making of the series, covering every James Bond film ever made, beginning with Dr. No (1962) and ending with Skyfall (2012), including the spoof Casino Royale (1967) and Never Say Never Again (1983).

This fascinating and, at 600 pages, huge book looks not just at each Bond film but at the world behind the films and everything it took to make them happen -the writers, producers, directors, actors, production staff, designers, costumers, special effects technicians and composers.

Containing rare and previously unseen photographs and documents found in the EON and MGM archives, this book is a fitting tribute to the legend of James Bond.

You can find further details of The James Bond archives on our catalogue.

(Photo credit: Granta Books)

Over the course of a year and a half, Miriam Darlington travelled around Britain in search of wild otters: from her home in Devon to Scotland, Cumbria, Wales, Northumberland, Cornwall, Somerset and to her childhood home near the River Ouse.

Otter Country follows Darlington’s search through different landscapes, seasons, weather and light, as she tracks one of Britain’s most elusive animals.

During her journey she meets otter experts, representatives of the Environment Agency, conservationists, ecologists, walkers, zoo keepers, fishermen, scientists, hunters and poets.

Above all, she learns how to track and be around otters.

This is an engaging and mesmerising book which should establish Darlington as a prominent voice within the new generation of British nature writers.

Further details of Otter country: in search of the wild otter can be found on our catalogue.

(Photo credit: Polity Press)

Spike Lee has directed, written, produced, and acted in dozens of films that present a proudly opinionated and rich portrait of American society.

Lee is the only African-American filmmaker to establish and sustain a major presence in American film over a period of decades.

He has paid acute attention to the experiences of racial and ethnic minorities. But white men and women also play important roles in his movies, and his interest in class, race, and urban life has led him to produce films as diverse as the audiences who view them.

His output comprises almost fifty theatrical features, short films, and TV movies and episodes as director, almost as many as producer, and more than a dozen each as screenwriter and actor.

His music videos have been commissioned by everyone from Michael Jackson and Public Enemy to Tracy Chapman and Chaka Chan, and he has directed commercials for Nike Air Jordans and American Express.

He has won prizes, honours, and nominations at the Cannes, Berlin, and Venice film festivals, among others.

His defining trait is a willingness to raise hard questions about contemporary America without pretending to have easy answers; his pictures are designed to challenge and provoke us, not ease our minds or pacify our emotions.

The opening words of his 1989 masterpiece Do the Right Thing present his core message in two emphatic syllables: “Wake up!”

Spike Lee’s America written by David Steritt is a vibrant and provocative book examining not only the work of a great filmmaker, but also American society and politics.

You can find further details of Spike Lee’s America on our catalogue.

(Photo credit: The most human human written by Brian Christian, published by Penguin)

Telling the difference between humans and computers used to be easy.

But artificial intelligence is now so advanced that it is capable of behaving, and even thinking, in ways that have long considered to be exclusive to humans.

In The most human human, Brian Christian talks to the world’s leading artificial intelligences, battling against them in the renowned Turing Test competition, in order to find out what they’re capable of – and what makes us unique.

The test is named after British mathematician Alan Turing, one of the founders of computer science, who in 1950, just as the computer was being invented, was already considering the philosophical implications of these new machines. Specifically, can machines think?

Turing proposed a practical test: assemble a panel of scientists to have five-minute long text conversations via computer terminals, sending and receiving text messages. The catch is that the judges don’t know whether the messages appearing on their screens are coming from real people, or from computer programs pretending to be real people.

Turing famously predicted that by the year 2000, computer software would be fooling the judges 30% of the time.

The annual Loebner Prize held since the early 1990’s has put Turing’s theory to the test, and although this famous millennial prediction did not come to pass, at the 2008 contest, the leading computer program came shy of that mark by just a single vote.

Brian Christian decided to get involved in the 2009 contest, as one of the human “confederates” who talk with the judges and try to convince them that we are, in fact, human.

The computer program that does the best job each year of persuading the judges that it is human wins what’s called the Most Human Computer award.

But there’s also another award for the human that does the best job of persuading the panel: the Most Human Human award.

This is a funny, inspiring, and intelligent book. Drawing on science, philosophy, literature and the arts, and touching on aspects of life as diverse as language, work, school, chess, speed-dating, art, video games, psychiatry and the law, The Most Human Human shows that far from being a threat to our humanity, computers provide a better means than ever before of understanding exactly what it is.

Further details of The most human human can be found on our catalogue.

(Photo credit: Lion Hudson)

Long before the massively successful The Lord of the Rings films, J.R.R Tolkien’s creations and characters had captured the imagination of millions of readers.

Today, it is difficult to imagine a world without Tolkien’s stories of Middle-earth, elves, wizards and hobbits. But who was the man who dreamt up the intricate languages and perfectly crafted world of Middle-earth?

Colin Duriez has written an engaging and accessible biography examining the man behind the legend.

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien had a difficult life for many years: orphaned and poor, his guardian forbad him to communicate with the woman he had fallen in love with, and he went through the trauma of serving in the Battle of the Somme during the First World War.

An intensely private and brilliant scholar, he spent over fifty years working on the languages, history, people and geography of Middle-earth, with a consistent mythology inspired by a formidable knowledge of early northern European history and culture.

When he sought to get The Lord of the Rings published – after spending a dozen or so years on it – he had difficulty settling on a publisher. When he did, his publisher, though enthusiastic, treated it as a loss-making venture, little realising the wealth it would create both for the company and its author.

You can find further details of J.R.R. Tolkien: the making of a legend on our catalogue.

Mark Connelly examines the traditions which have contributed to the modern Christmas as an icon of cultural and social history.

The key elements of the modern Christmas evolved during the nineteenth century as a result of a complex range of social, economic and cultural forces.

Among the themes of the book are its Anglo-German origins and the idea of the bourgeois Christmas expressing family virtues; the liberal values at the heart of Anglo-American political, cultural and social life; the need for a touchstone with the past in an age of rapid expansion, and thus the myth of Merrie England; the revival of English music – perhaps the greatest age of church music and carols since the 14th century; printing and publishing and the increase in literacy; shopping and consumerism; and broadcasting.

Connelly links the rise of modern Christmas to the 19th-century values of family, empire and sentiment for old England. Today, a powerful media, obsessive consumerism and new forms of family life all condition our responses to the event.

Christmas: a history provides an original perspective on the West’s most enduring social and cultural institution.

You can find further deatils of Christmas: a history on our catalogue.

Front Line Bloggers and the Helmand Blog (now combined as UK Forces Afghanistan) were set up by the Permanent Joint Headquarters (PJHQ) to allow British armed forces personnel to tell the public back home what they were doing there, in their own words.

Personnel of all ranks from all three services, representing a wide variety of trades – infantry, signals, logistics, aviation, medical – as well as civilians, contributed their thoughts and experiences on everything from what it’s like to take on the Taliban in a firefight to the challenges of trying to cook a meal at a patrol base.

Taking the six-month deployment of Operation Herrick 11, the codename for the British campaign, as illustrative of British involvement in Helmand, these personal accounts give a picture of the conflict at ground level, the details of daily life that do not usually make the news, as well as individuals’ perspectives on major events.

The book, Blogging from the battlefield, was born out of the social media experiment that Major Paul Smyth, a Territorial Army soldier and career public relations professional, developed while ‘called up’ on operations.

What started as a one-month mobilisation to Kosovo ended up at just less than three years of service.

During that time he fought to bring the UK military’s communications into the twenty-first century, introducing the work of the services in Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan to audiences all over the world via media channels that have never been used by the military on operations before, and embracing the world of social media.

Blogging from the Battlefield is a result of that approach to harness technology and engage with audiences everywhere. The book mirrors the content of the most successful new media project ever deployed on operations by the British military.

With over 90,000 hits per month the blog has had a huge effect on the way the British military communicates. In an age where events can be broadcast within seconds, the information highway is becoming a new front line.

This fascinating book is a snapshot of life during a busy six-month tour of duty for 11 Light Brigade in Afghanistan and tells the real story of what it’s like for those men and women serving their country in a far-away land.

Further details of Blogging from the battlefield can be found on our catalogue.

(Photo credit: Ashgate, Gower & Lund Humphries Publishing)

This fascinating book by Richard Gray is an exploration of the history of the cinema building in Britain, from its 19th century origins right up to the present day.

The earliest cinemas were little more than shop conversions or basic rectangular rooms. As film-going grew in popularity during the World War I period, and later with the arrival of the ‘talkies’ from Hollywood in 1928, there was a great surge of new building, with cinemas becoming far more complex in style.

The movie palaces of the 1920s and 1930s – the heyday of cinema – could seat as many as 4000 people and often featured fantasy interiors, styled for example after Egyptian temples of Gothic cathedrals.

With the arrival of television in the late 1940s, however, cinema audiences began to dwindle, and a new type of building with several, smaller auditoria became necessary.

The recent resurgence in the popularity of film-going has accompanied, or even been boosted by, the arrival of the ‘multiplex’.

At the same time, an increasing recognition of the architectural importance of these often magnificent buildings has so far led to around 120 British cinemas being granted listed status. Thus they have been preserved for future generations.

Cinemas in Britain evokes the unique magic of cinema while providing a fascinating architectural history.

Further details of Cinemas in Britain: a history of cinema architecture can be found on our catalogue.

(Photo credit: Insight Editions Press)

Behind the Dolphin Smile is the heart-felt true story of an animal lover who dedicated his life to studying and training dolphins, but in the process discovered that he ultimately needed to set them free.

Richard O’Barry shares the fascinating story of his life with dolphins and other sea mammals in this captivating autobiography.

In his early career, O’Barry trained dolphins to entertain audiences for shows at aquatic theme parks and roles in movies and television shows, most notably Flipper.

His work as a trainer came to an abrupt end when one of the dolphins that played Flipper on television died of stress in his arms. At that moment, he realised that keeping dolphins in captivity and teaching them to do tricks was cruel and morally wrong.

He came to realize that dolphins were easy to train, not because of his great talent, but because they possessed great intelligence and he began to dedicate his life to stopping the exploitation of these exceptional mammals by retraining them to return to their natural habitats.

His tireless work, including being arrested in the 1970’s for trying to free a caged dolphin in the Bahamas, eventually led to his starring role in the 2010 Academy Award winning documentary The Cove, which covertly uncovered Japan’s horrific and inhumane dolphin-hunting practices.

You can find further details of Behind the dolphin smile on our catalogue.