Author: The Librarians

A team of 17 working to cover your every need.

Book of the Week: “The Kurds of Northern Syria: Governance, Diversity and Conflicts”

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By Harriet Allsopp and Wladimir van Wilgenburg (I.B.Tauris, 2019), ISBN 9781838604455

“Based on unprecedented access to Kurdish-governed areas of Syria, including exclusive interviews with administration officials and civilian surveys, this book sheds light on the socio-political landscape of this minority group and the various political factions vying to speak for them.
The first English-language book to capture the momentous transformations that have occurred since 2011, the authors move beyond idealized images of Rojava and the Kurdish PYD (Democratic Union Party) to provide a nuanced assessment of the Kurdish autonomous experience and the prospects for self-rule in Syria. The book draws on unparalleled field research, as well as analysis of the literature on the evolution of Kurdish politics and the Syrian war. You will understand why the PYD-led project in Syria split the Kurdish political movement and how other representative structures amongst Syria’s Kurds fared. Emerging clearly are the complex range of views about pre-existing, current and future governance structures.”

Available under call number 323.1(569.1), HEIA 125534 

Illustration from book cover

Book of the Week: “Poor economics: a radical rethinking of the way to fight global poverty”, by Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee

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The new recipients of the Nobel Prize in Economics upend the most common assumptions about how economics works in this gripping and disruptive portrait of how poor people actually live.

“Why do the poor borrow to save? Why do they miss out on free life-saving immunizations, but pay for unnecessary drugs? In Poor Economics, Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo answer these questions based on years of field research from around the world. This book offers a radical rethinking of the economics of poverty and an intimate view of life on 99 cents a day. Poor Economics shows that creating a world without poverty begins with understanding the daily decisions facing the poor.”

Publisher: Noida: Random House India, 2011
Call Number: 337.2 HEIA 84548

Publisher: New York: PublicAffairs, 2011
Call Number: 337.2 HEIA 75424

French translation: Repenser la pauvreté
Editions du Seuil, 2012
Call Number: 337.2 HEIA 84811

Original illustration (cropped): Esther Duflo, Pop!Tech 2009, Camden, ME, by Kris Krüg, CC-By-SA 2.0

Exposition: Guerre et Paix

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L’exposition “Guerre et Paix” qui a ouvert ce samedi à la Fondation Bodmer accueille un ouvrage de notre bibliothèque : le premier volume de l’édition originale de “Vom Kriege”, de Carl von Clausewitz (Berlin : F. Dümmler, 1832-1833).

L’humanité n’a jamais cessé de penser, justifier, mener, glorifier la guerre ou de s’y préparer. Parallèlement, il y a toujours eu un effort pour limiter les pires violations, la condamner pour ses ravages, imaginer et travailler à la construction d’un monde plus juste et pacifique.

Guerre et Paix, organisée en partenariat avec l’Organisation des Nations Unies (ONU) et le Comité International de la Croix-Rouge (CICR), est consacrée aux réalités intemporelles de la guerre et de la paix. L’exposition est structurée en trois parties : la genèse des guerres, le temps de la destruction et le pari de la paix. Elle rassemble des idées provenant de la littérature, des beaux-arts, de l’anthropologie, de la philosophie, de la psychanalyse, du droit et de la politique.

A travers des œuvres littéraires, des affiches de propagande, des photographies, des peintures, des gravures et des documents d’archives, l’exposition, dont quelques pièces prestigieuses seront exposées dans les locaux du CICR et de l’ONU, tentera d’éclairer les visiteurs sur le dialogue immémorial entre la nature guerrière de l’homme et son profond désir de paix.

Commissariat : Pierre Hazan
Scénographie : Anne Bourban
Graphisme : Pascal Bolle

L’exposition est ouverte jusqu’au 1er mars 2020.