Skip to main content

Books in Social sciences and humanities

  • Introduction to Homeland Security

    Principles of All-Hazards Risk Management
    • 4th Edition
    • December 2, 2011
    • George Haddow + 2 more
    • English
    Bullock, Haddow, and Coppola have set the standard for homeland security textbooks, and they follow up their #1-selling third edition with this substantially improved version. Students will value the decades of experience that the authors bring to their analysis, and the new edition offers still more research-based data to balance the field-tested practical information included in each chapter. Additionally, links to the most current online government information help to keep the text up-to-date in this rapidly developing field. As with its predecessors, the book clearly delineates the bedrock principles of preparing for, mitigating, managing, and recovering from emergencies and disasters. However, this new edition emphasizes their value with improved clarity and focus. NEW TO THIS EDITION: This edition has been thoroughly revised to include changes that are based both on changes relevant to the political, budgetary, and legal aspects of homeland security that have changed since the 2008 Presidential election (and subsequent change in the administration), but also in recognition of an expanding academic demand that is both larger in size and changing in scope (most notably with regard to an increase in the number of government employees and officials who are taking courses that have adopted the text). These include: an expansion of material on the organization of the Department of Homeland Security; strategic and philosophical changes that are recommended and/or that have occurred as a result of the Quadrennial Homeland Security Review completed in 2010; updated budgetary information on both homeland security programs and on the homeland security grants that have supported safety and security actions at the state and local levels, as well as in the private sector; and changes in the way the public perceives and receives information about security risk, including the possible elimination of the Homeland Security Advisory System.
  • An Interactive History of the Clean Air Act

    Scientific and Policy Perspectives
    • 1st Edition
    • December 1, 2011
    • Jonathan M Davidson + 1 more
    • English
    The Clean Air Act of 1970 set out for the United States a basic, yet ambitious, objective to reduce pollution to levels that protect health and welfare. The Act set out state and federal regulations to limit emissions and the Environmental Protection Agency was established to help enforce the regulations. The Act has since had several amendments, notably in 1977 and 1990, and has successfully helped to increase air quality. This book reviews the history of the Clean Air Act of 1970 including the political, business, and scientific elements that went into establishing the Act, emphasizing the importance that scientific evidence played in shaping policy. The analysis then extends to examine the effects of the Act over the past forty years including the Environmental Protection Agency’s evolving role and the role of states and industry in shaping and implementing policy. Finally, the book offers best practices to guide allocation of respective government and industry roles to guide sustainable development. The history and analysis of the Clean Air Act presented in this book illustrates the centrality of scientific analysis and technological capacity in driving environmental policy development. It would be useful for policy makers, environmental scientists, and anyone interested in gaining a clearer understand of the interaction of science and policy.
  • Library Classification Trends in the 21st Century

    • 1st Edition
    • November 18, 2011
    • Rajendra Kumbhar
    • English
    Library Classification Trends in the 21st Century traces development in and around library classification as reported in literature published in the first decade of the 21st century. It reviews literature published on various aspects of library classification, including modern applications of classification such as internet resource discovery, automatic book classification, text categorization, modern manifestations of classification such as taxonomies, folksonomies and ontologies and interoperable systems enabling crosswalk. The book also features classification education and an exploration of relevant topics.
  • Succeed or Sink

    Business Sustainability Under Globalisation
    • 1st Edition
    • November 17, 2011
    • Chris Rowley + 2 more
    • English
    Aimed at business strategists, policy makers, researchers and adult learners, this book has an Asian perspective on business sustainability and is about understanding how recent developments and future actions in one part of the world will have a global impact. The book magnifies the concept of so-called ‘globalisation’ and examines the topic of business sustainability from a broad and integrated approach to business: encapsulating people, prosperity and the planet. Furthermore, it acknowledges the contributions, challenges and potential of not only the big corporate houses, but also the smaller ones, in this situation. Chapters discuss the benefits organisations can attain with better governance, and social and environmental practices are also analysed.
  • HR Due Diligence

    Mergers and Acquisitions in China
    • 1st Edition
    • November 16, 2011
    • ChyeKok Ho + 1 more
    • English
    This book examines how to conduct due diligence on mergers and acquisitions for organisations in China written from a management perspective. Aimed primarily at practitioners within the field of International Human Resource Management, it highlights models that appear straightforward and yet are susceptible to oversights and failings. It examines the roles of human resource practitioners from when a target company is identified for mergers or acquisitions through to assessing its risks. The book incorporates adopting human resource management strategies under differing business conditions, negotiating to secure the deal and integrating the new business unit to the merged or acquired organisation. This title gives a fantastically detailed analysis of due diligence, capturing the nuances of the Chinese way of doing things and how this affects a business environment.
  • Moving To The Cloud

    Developing Apps in the New World of Cloud Computing
    • 1st Edition
    • November 16, 2011
    • Geetha Manjunath + 1 more
    • English
    Moving to the Cloud provides an in-depth introduction to cloud computing models, cloud platforms, application development paradigms, concepts and technologies. The authors particularly examine cloud platforms that are in use today. They also describe programming APIs and compare the technologies that underlie them. The basic foundations needed for developing both client-side and cloud-side applications covering compute/storage scaling, data parallelism, virtualization, MapReduce, RIA, SaaS and Mashups are covered. Approaches to address key challenges of a cloud infrastructure, such as scalability, availability, multi-tenancy, security and management are addressed. The book also lays out the key open issues and emerging cloud standards that will drive the continuing evolution of cloud computing.
  • Elements of Financial Risk Management

    • 2nd Edition
    • November 10, 2011
    • Peter Christoffersen
    • English
    The Second Edition of this best-selling book expands its advanced approach to financial risk models by covering market, credit, and integrated risk. With new data that cover the recent financial crisis, it combines Excel-based empirical exercises at the end of each chapter with online exercises so readers can use their own data. Its unified GARCH modeling approach, empirically sophisticated and relevant yet easy to implement, sets this book apart from others. Five new chapters and updated end-of-chapter questions and exercises, as well as Excel-solutions manual, support its step-by-step approach to choosing tools and solving problems.
  • Strategic Business Development for Information Centres and Libraries

    • 1st Edition
    • November 9, 2011
    • Margareta Nelke
    • English
    This book is aimed at guiding managers towards systematic approaches to improve and facilitate necessary strategic business development and planning. Conditions in the workplace for the Library and Information Services (LIS) are rapidly changing: many organizations are experiencing budget restrictions as well as stakeholders questioning the value of the services. Strategic Business Development for Information Centres and Libraries offers methods and tools for LIS departments to ensure value and benefits are delivered to the parent organization. It argues that LIS must be prepared to change according to the parent organization's needs, to develop strategies for important activities and to seek alliances among key stakeholders. It also offers information on the best practice from five top-performing international LIS units.
  • Global Resource Sharing

    • 1st Edition
    • November 9, 2011
    • Linda Frederiksen + 2 more
    • English
    Written from a global perspective, this book reviews sharing of library resources on a global scale. With expanded discovery tools and massive digitization projects, the rich and extensive holdings of the world’s libraries are more visible now than at any time in the past. Advanced communication and transmission technologies, along with improved international standards, present a means for the sharing of library resources around the globe. Despite these significant improvements, a number of challenges remain. Global Resource Sharing provides librarians and library managers with a comprehensive background in and summary of the issues involved in global resource sharing.
  • Crisis Information Management

    Communication and Technologies
    • 1st Edition
    • November 9, 2011
    • Christine Hagar
    • English
    This book explores the management of information in crises, particularly the interconnectedness of information, people, and technologies during crises. Natural disasters, such as the Haiti earthquake and Hurricane Katrina, and 9/11 and human-made crises, such as the recent political disruption in North Africa and the Middle East, have demonstrated that there is a great need to understand how individuals, government, and non-government agencies create, access, organize, communicate, and disseminate information within communities during crisis situations. This edited book brings together papers written by researchers and practitioners from a variety of information perspectives in crisis preparedness, response and recovery.