Director's Summer Reading List 2025

We invite al our friends and colleagues to explore this thoughtfully compiled list, we hope it will help expand the content you engage with this Summer.

• Read moving personal histories, a history of nature in cities, the story of school dinners about the political dilemna of tech governance, the future of work and more.
• Watch a documentary on the healing powers of boxing.
• Listen to a fascinating podcast about citizenship and prosperity.
• Catch contemporary music performances at the Southbank Centre.

We hope you enjoy!

The Work We Need: a 21st Century Reimagining

By Hilary Cottam

Work, for decades, has been debated and discussed as a narrow economic category. Instead, Hilary Cottam identifies work as a cultural force and one at the heart of good lives, strong communities and nations that have a sense of a shared destiny. Crucially, in these dramatic times, she shows how we can shape this force to meet technological change, our ecological crisis and the challenges of the world's deep injustices. We can create a work revolution.  Ambitious but rooted in the ideas of everyday experts - that is, real workers from all walks of life -- this is a realistic and hopeful book. Hilary Cottam has crossed the UK and the USA; she's spent time in communities considered (by outsiders) as 'left behind' and in places at the centre of financial and technological power.  Drawing on a fascinating range of sources including historians, trade unionists, business leaders, philosophers and most originally, on hours of her imaginative workshops with workers, Hilary Cottam, in the belief that we can engineer positive change, boldly asks: how can we redesign work? She answers with the stories from her journeys where she found significant and shared ideas in all our communities. She shows us how work could be re-imagined and in a way that benefits everyone. Our challenges - political, social, economic and environmental - are tangled and growing. But so are the imaginative solutions. In this exciting, inspiring and optimistic book Hilary shows us how we could work differently and therefore live better.

Political Responsibility and Tech Governance

By Jude Browne

Not a day goes by without a new story on the perils of technology: from increasingly clever machines that surpass human capability and comprehension to genetic technologies capable of altering the human genome in ways we cannot predict. How can we respond? What should we do politically? Focusing on the rise of robotics and artificial intelligence (AI), and the impact of new reproductive and genetic technologies (Repro-tech), Jude Browne questions who has political responsibility for the structural impacts of these technologies and how we might go about preparing for the far-reaching societal changes they may bring. This thought-provoking book tackles some of the most pressing issues of our time and offers a compelling vision for how we can respond to these challenges in a way that is both politically feasible and socially responsible.

The Care Economy

By Tim Jackson

Care is the foundation for life itself. But its fate in the economy is precarious and uncertain. In our hearts it’s honoured as an irreducible good. But in the market it’s treated as a second class citizen—barely recognised in the relentless rush for productivity and wealth. How did we arrive in this dysfunctional place? And what can we do to change things?  Tim Jackson sets out to tackle these questions in this timely and deeply personal book. Irreverent, insightful and profoundly inquisitive, The Care Economy offers a bold and accessible manifesto for a healthier and more humane society—a powerful antidote to a conflict-ridden world.

Serving the Public: The good food revolution in schools, hospitals, and prisons

By Kevin Morgan

IGP had a launch event for this book recently, chaired by Saffron Woodcroft (UCL, IGP), and the panel discussion showed how there are many links to IGP’s work on UBS. We also spoke about the importance of accounting for social value in public policy and procurement in particular.

How Democracies Die

By Steven Levitsky & Daniel Ziblatt

Democracies can die with a coup d'état - or they can die slowly. This happens most deceptively when in piecemeal fashion, with the election of an authoritarian leader, the abuse of governmental power and the complete repression of opposition. All three steps are being taken around the world and we must all understand how we can stop them. From the rule of General Augusto Pinochet in Chile to the quiet undermining of Turkey's constitutional system by President Recip Erdogan, Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt draw insightful lessons from history to shine a light on regime breakdown across the 20th and 21st centuries.  Based on years of research, they present a deep understanding of how and why democracies die; an alarming analysis of how democracy is being subverted today; and a guide for maintaining and repairing a threatened democracy, for governments, political parties and individuals. History doesn't repeat itself. But we can protect our democracy by learning its lessons, before it's too late.

Urban Jungle

By Ben Wilson

Since the beginning of civilization, humans have built cities to wall nature out, then glorified it in beloved but quite artificial parks. In Urban Jungle Ben Wilson—the author of Metropolis, a seven-thousand-year history of cities that the Wall Street Journal called “a towering achievement”—looks to the fraught relationship between nature and the city for clues to how the planet can survive in an age of climate crisis.

 

'The Muslim Cowboy'

By Bruce Omar Yates

In the aftermath of the Iraq war, an odd Iraqi man entranced by Americana and old Western movies dresses in double denim and roams a lawless landscape in search of his own Western story. Amidst the disorder he meets a young girl, and together they set out across the tank strewn desert on his trusty camel to find safety. Written with a simplicity of direction that captivates like a film, The Muslim Cowboy is an extraordinary and mesmerising literary debut about the search for identity, the struggle to reconcile conflicting values, and sacrifice as that great virtue we all must embrace in order to find meaning and purpose in a world of chaos.

Visualising Palestine

Edited by Jessica Anderson, Aline Batarseh and Yosra El Gazzar

A tool for organizers, movement leaders, students, and anyone wanting to learn more about Palestine, add Visualizing Palestine: A Chronicle of Colonialism and the Struggle for Liberation to your library today.

Fight Fair

From the BBC, featuring Libby Liburd

This is an award-winning podcast by Libby Liburd, the artist that worked with Jose for their exhibition 'Priced Out' at UCL East.

How Might We: Exploring the Citizen Prosperity Index

By Patrick Scally and Saffron Woodcroft

This conversation explores the Citizen Prosperity Index methodology and its application in various local contexts, emphasising the importance of community-led interventions and the diverse definitions of prosperity across cultures. The discussion highlights the challenges of urban regeneration, the need for interventions to ensure benefits reach long-term residents, and the role of citizen scientists in shaping urban policy.

Futuretense

at the Southbank Centre

Twice every month, these free gigs share the sounds of the future, providing a platform for up and coming British and international musicians.

Join or Die

Directed by Rebecca Davis & Pete Davis

In this feature documentary, follow the half-century story of America's civic unraveling through the journey of legendary social scientist Robert Putnam, whose groundbreaking "Bowling Alone" research into America's decades-long decline in community connections could hold the answers to our democracy's present crisis. Flanked by influential fans and scholars — from Hillary Clinton, Pete Buttigieg, and Surgeon General Vivek Murthy to Eddie Glaude Jr., Raj Chetty, and Priya Parker — as well as inspiring groups building community in neighbourhoods across the country, join Bob as he explores three urgent civic questions: What makes democracy work? Why is American democracy in crisis? And, most importantly… What can we do about it?

A Mind free of the 'Me'

By J. Krishnamurti

Extract from the first conversation between J Krishnamurti and Father Eugene Schallert in San Diego, 1972.