Most-borrowed books in the Council Library

In 2019 the Council Library enlarged its collections with books on EU policies, politics, economy and international relations. We would now like to share with you the year’s most popular reads.

Alarums & excursions: improvising politics on the European stage by Luuk van Middelaar  is at the top of the most-borrowed books list, together with the Dutch and French versions of the book: Improvisatie & oppositie : de nieuwe politiek van Europa and Quand l’Europe improvise: dix ans de crises politiques. The Council Library invited the author to present his book to the GSC in April 2019. If you missed it, a short report of the event and a summary of the French version can be found on our blog.

Anti-mémoires by Herman Van Rompuy is unsurprisingly among the top titles. We presented this book by the first President of the European Council on the library blog in March 2019. 

Factfulness: ten reasons we’re wrong about the world - and why things are better than you think also made its way to the top. If you haven’t read it yet, you can have a look at the book summary published on our blog.

The top titles are followed by a long list of books borrowed many times during the year. See below for just a few examples:

The future of Europe: views from the capitals / Michael Kaeding, Johannes Pollak, Paul Schmidt (eds.). Cham: Springer International Publishing; Imprint: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019

The history of the European Union: constructing utopia / Giuliano Amato, Enzo Moavero-Milanesi, Gianfranco Pasquino, Lucrezia Reichlin. Oxford: Hart, 2019

Heroic failure: Brexit and the politics of pain / Fintan O’Toole. London: Apollo, 2018

The age of surveillance capitalism: the fight for a human future at the new frontier of power / Shoshana Zuboff. New York: Public Affairs, 2019

Climate justice: hope, resilience and the fight for a sustainable future / Mary Robinson, Caitríona Palmer. London: Bloomsbury, 2018

The back channel: a memoir of American diplomacy and the case for its renewal / William J. Burns. New York: Random House, 2019

The dawn of Eurasia: on the trail of the New World Order / Bruno Maçães. Milton Keynes: Allen Lane, 2018

The hell of good intentions: America’s foreign policy elite and the decline of U.S. primacy / Stephen M. Walt. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018

To request books, Council staff just need to sign in to Eureka with their EU login credentials, open the bibliographic record and click on "Request".

The reading room is open to external researchers and university students for on-site consultation of the Library resources upon request.

External researchers can also request materials from our collections on interlibrary loan via their local libraries.

These books do not necessarily represent the positions, policies or opinions of the Council of the European Union or of the European Council.

• The Council library is located in the Justus Lipsius building, at JL 02 GH, Rue de la Loi/Wetstraat 175, 1048 Brussels (Froissart entrance) – opening hours Monday to Friday 10.00 – 16.00.
• It is open to all staff of the Council of the European Union and the European Council, trainees, permanent representations of member states, staff of other EU institutions and bodies, and researchers and students upon request. Access to some library holdings may be restricted to on-site consultation.