We think our wealth today comes from productive corporations and workers, but they merely add icing to a cake baked long ago. In this provocative book, Peter Barnes argues that most of today's wealth is co-inherited from nature and past human efforts, not individually earned. If some of that co-inherited wealth were placed in trust for each of us, living and yet-to-be born – creating what Barnes calls “universal property” – capitalism would be fundamentally transformed.As Barnes no...

In 'To Be or Not to Be' (1942), Ernest Lubitsch brought his legendary comic touch to the most unpromising situation: life in Nazi-occupied Poland. In this study, Peter Barnes considers what it is to make comedy out of tragedy.

BIM: Contractual and Legal Perspectives is a guide to the legal and contractual issues that need to be considered when operating under Building Information Modelling (BIM). The book illustrates the ways in which these issues are presently addressed and considers emerging approaches that can support the effective integration of BIM within project delivery.Coverage includesBIM documentation and key roles and responsibilitiesincorporation of BIM within...

The sustainable business expert and author of Climate Solutions presents a plan to upgrade capitalism to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century.The commons—the collective natural and cultural resources that belong to all of humanity—is currently under siege. It is being squandered under our current version of corporate, globalized capitalism. This is Capitalism 2.0. And, according to Peter Barnes, we're long overdue for an upgrade.Our curren...

Peter Barnes argues that because of globalization, automation, and winner-take-all capitalism, there won'Äôt be enough high-paying jobs to sustain America'Äôs middle class in the future. Therefore, to survive economically, our middle class needs'Äîand deserves'Äîa supplementary source of nonlabor income.To meet this need, Barnes proposes to give every American a share of the wealth we own together'Äî starting with our air and financial infrastructure. These shares would pay dividend...

A selection of plays by "one of the most original and biting comic writers working in Britain" (The Times)The Spirit of Man is "an ingenious triple-bill exploring Man's need for faith through three short satires based in medieval France, Protectorate England and nineteenth-century Eastern Europe" (Independent); Nobody Here But Us Chickens is a linked trilogy of satires on New Age, corporate and bedroom politics. Red Noses is a political satire about the plague and takes place in 13...

An RSC commission to commemorate the first celebration of Shakespeare's life and worksA mischievous satire on the foundation of the Shakespeare industry: In 1769, when David Garrick staged the first theatre festival to celebrate the life of Stratford's most famous son, little did he realise the impact it would have on the future livelihood of the small Warwickshire market town. Peter Barnes' ironic and irreverent new comedy dissects the cult of the theatrical personality, with gues...

A selection of plays by "one of the most original and biting comic writers working in Britain" (The Times)Clap Hands Here Comes Charlie is a riotous, scabrous comedy concerning a demonic figure, a destroyer and giver of life, who is always trying to jump, with both feet into his left trouser leg. Heaven's Blessings, taken from the grim pages of the Bible is a charming epic comedy of Tobit, his wife, their son and a cantankerous guardian angel, who set out to reclaim an outstanding ...

Set in medieval Italy during a crisis in the Church, Sunsets and Glories is "a work of the highest and most thrilling theatrical energy" (Independent on Sunday)Sunsets and Glories is set in the late thirteenth-century Italy where power struggles between Church and State inspire such characters as the spineless Charles 11, paid killer Montefelto and 'madwoman' Maifreda. Into this maelstrom steps Peter de Morrone, the saintly Pope Celestine V, provoking a bitter crisis of faith in th...

A haunting and brutally funny story of heroism and human valuesIn the bloody aftermath of the Wars of the Roses, Captain John Mallory leads a band of renegades across a war-torn landscape on a breathtaking quest in search of a dream - a dream of home. Dreaming premiered at the Royal Exchange Theatre in March 1999 before moving to the West End."Peter Barnes is one of the unrecognised geniuses of the English theatre" (Plays and Players)

Etonians aren't exactly noted for their grey matter, but I've always found them perfectly adjusted to society.Jack, a possible paranoid schizophrenic with a Messiah complex, inherits the title of the 14th Earl of Gurney after his father passes away in a bizarre accident. Singularly unsuited to a life in the upper echelons of elite society, Jack finds himself at the centre of a ruthless power struggle as his scheming family strives to uphold their reputation.Bubblin...

The collection of lectures and publications from the Schumacher Center for a New Economics represents some of the foremost voices on a new economics.Peter Barnes avers that we are no longer in the Holocene epoch, but in the Anthropocene epoch, an era in which humans are "a, if not the, dominant geological force on our planet," and thus we cannot continue with business as usual. Barnes argues that the best means to achieve the goal of an economic system that provides an adequate inc...