内容简介 本书是关于我们如何从科学的视角重新认识这个世界的科普读物，阐述了宇宙、世界、生命科学视角下，对世界本源的认识，并结合生物学、数学、物理学和计算机科学知识，更加细致入微地解释我们观察到的世界中的各类现象。 在这本书中，作者希望表明我们的宇宙不仅仅是一座没有生命、毫无意义的数学机器。在我们真正了解意识和人类思想的奇迹之前，我们能真正了解宇宙吗？为了做到这一点，作者超越了物理世界去寻找答案。对于对生命、宇宙和一切事物的深层问题感到好奇的读者来说，《世界本身》是一本必不可少的读物。

In this classic work of economic history and social theory,Karl Polanyi analyzes the economic and social changes brought aboutby the "great transformation" of the Industrial Revolution. Hisanalysis explains not only the deficiencies of the self-regulatingmarket, but the potentially dire social consequences of untemperedmarket capitalism. New introductory material reveals the renewedimportance of Polanyi's seminal analysis in an era of globalizationand free trade.

For the past 90 years, the House of Windsor, through its four successive monarchs,has reigned over the United Kingdom, the Commonwealth and 'other realms and territories'. It has borne witness to almost a century of unprecedented social and political change, and has itself undergone substantial modemisation. As Head of State, the Queen continues to have an important part to play in the life of the nation: she and many other members of the Royal Family make regular and extensive visits throughout the UK, meeting the public, supporting the work of charities and other public bodies, recognising excellence in both business and social contexts. Her State duties include the Opening of Parliament and the giving of the Queen's Speech; on the international stage, close links with former colonies are maintained through her role as Head of the Commonwealth, and state visits to all parts of the world help promote international relations.

This book examines the theology and ethics of land use,especially the practices of modern industrialized agriculture, inlight of critical biblical exegesis. Nine interrelated essaysexplore the biblical writers' pervasive concern for the care ofarable land against the background of the geography, socialstructures, and religious thought of ancient Israel. This approachconsistently brings out neglected aspects of texts, both poetry andprose, that are central to Jewish and Christian traditions. Ratherthan seeking solutions from the past, Davis creates a conversationbetween ancient texts and contemporary agrarian writers; thus sheprovides a fresh perspective from which to view the destructivepractices and assumptions that now dominate the global foodeconomy. The biblical exegesis is wide-ranging and sophisticated;the language is literate and accessible to a broad audience.

Finally, homeschoolers have a comprehensive guide to designinga homeschool curriculum, from one of the country's foremosthomeschooling experts. , Rebecca Rupp presents a structured plan toensure that your children will learn what they need to know whenthey need to know it, from preschool through high school. Based onthe traditional pre-K through 12th-grade structure, Home LearningYear by Year features: The integral subjects to be covered within each grade Standards for knowledge that should be acquired by your child ateach level Recommended books to use as texts for every subject Guidelines for the importance of each topic: which knowledge isessential and which is best for more expansive study based on yourchild's personal interests Suggestions for how to sensitively approach less academic subjects,such as sex education and physical fitness

In his million-copy bestseller Guns, Germs, and Steel, JaredDiamond examined how and why Western civilizations developed thetechnologies and immunities that allowed them to dominate much ofthe world. Now in this brilliant companion volume, Diamond probesthe other side of the equation: What caused some of the greatcivilizations of the past to collapse into ruin, and what can welearn from their fates? As in Guns, Germs, and Steel, Diamond weaves anall-encompassing global thesis through a series of fascinatinghistorical-cultural narratives. Moving from the Polynesian cultureson Easter Island to the flourishing American civilizations of theAnasazi and the Maya and finally to the doomed Viking colony onGreenland, Diamond traces the fundamental pattern of catastrophe.Environmental damage, climate change, rapid population growth, andunwise political choices were all factors in the demise of thesesocieties, but other societies found solutions and persisted.Similar problems face us today and have already brought

'Laughter', says Eric Weitz, 'may be considered one of themost extravagant physical effects one person can have on anotherwithout touching them'. But how do we identify something which ismeant to be comic, what defines something as 'comedy', and whatdoes this mean for the way we enter the world of a comic text?Addressing these issues, and many more, this is a 'how to' guide toreading comedy from the pages of a dramatic text, with relevance toanything from novels and newspaper columns to billboards andemails. The book enables you to enhance your grasp of the comicthrough familiarity with characteristic structures and patterns,referring to comedy in literature, film and television throughout.Perfect for drama and literature students, this Introductionexplores a genre which affects the everyday lives of us all, andwill therefore also capture the interest of anyone who loves tolaugh.

"The present book is intended," Einstein wrote in 1916, "as far as possible, to give an exact insight into the theory of Relativity to those readers who, from a general scientific and philosophical point of view, are interested in the theory, but who are not conversant with the mathematical apparatus of theoretical physics.... In the interest of clearness, it appeared to me inevitable that I should repeat myself frequently, without paying the slightest attention to the elegance of the presentation. I adhered scrupulously to the precept of that brilliant theoretical physicist L. Boltzmann, according to whom matters of elegance ought to be left to the tailor and to the cobbler." But it is elegant, in part because of the 1920 translation, by Robert W. Lawson, a British physicist who had polished his German while a prisoner of war in Austria. The introduction, by science writer Nigel Calder, guides the reader through the work section by section, even giving advice on which sections to skip, or at least not to wor

The only thing wrong with this readable, funny memoir of a magazine writer's yearlong travels across the world in search of pleasure and balance is that it seems so much like a Jennifer Aniston movie. Like Jen, Liz is a plucky blond American woman in her thirties with no children and no major money worries. As the book opens, she is going through a really bad divorce and subsequent stormy rebound love affair. Awash in tears in the middle of the night on the floor of the bathroom, she begins to pray for guidance, "you know -- like, to God." God answers. He tells her to go back to bed. I started seeing the Star headlines: "Jen's New Faith!" "What Really Happened at the Ashram!" "Jen's Brazilian Sugar Daddy -- Exclusive Photos!" Please understand that Gilbert, whose earlier nonfiction book, The Last American Man, portrayed a contemporary frontiersman, is serious about her quest. But because she never leaves her self-deprecating humor at home, her journey out of depression and toward belief lacks a certain gravit

A great master of the early Renaissance, Piero della Francescacre-ated paintings for ecclesiastics, confraternities, andillustriousnobles throughout the Italian peninsula. Since the earlytwentiethcentury, the rational space, abstract designs, lucidillumination,and naturalistic details of his pictures haveattracted a wide audi-ence. Piero's treatises on mathematics andperspective also fasci-nate scholars in a wide range ofdisciplines. The Cambridge Com-panion to Piero della Francescabrings together new essays thatoffer a synthesis and overview ofPiero's life and accomplishmentsas a painter and theoretician. Theyexplore a variety of themesassociated with the artist's career,including the historical and reli-gious circumstances surroundingPiero's altarpieces and frescoes;the politics underlying hisportraits; the significance of clothing inhis paintings; theinfluence of his theories on perspective andmathematics; and theartist's enduring fascination for modernpainters and writers.

The dissenting opinions of Patrick Henry and others who sawthe Constitution as a threat to our hard-won rights andliberties. Edited and introduced by Ralph Ketcham.

In the 1950s, a series of dams was proposed along the BrazosRiver in north-central Texas. For John Graves, this project meantthat if the stream’s regimen was thus changed, the beautiful andsometimes brutal surrounding countryside would also change, aswould the lives of the people whose rugged ancestors had eked outan existence there. Graves therefore decided to visit that stretchof the river, which he had known intimately as a youth. Goodbye to a River is his account of that farewell canoevoyage. As he braves rapids and fatigue and the fickle autumnweather, he muses upon old blood feuds of the region and violentskirmishes with native tribes, and retells wild stories of courageand cowardice and deceit that shaped both the river’s people andthe land during frontier times and later. Nearly half a centuryafter its initial publication, Goodbye to a River is a trueAmerican classic, a vivid narrative about an exciting journey and apowerful tribute to a vanishing way of life and its ever-changingnatural env

Want to read faster — and recall more of what you read? Thispractical, hands-on guide gives you the techniques you need toincrease your reading speed and retention, whether you're readingbooks, e-mails, magazines, or even technical journals! You'll findreading aids and plenty of exercises to help you read faster andbetter comprehend the text. Yes, you can speed read — discover the skills you need to readquickly and effectively, break your bad reading habits, and take inmore text at a glance Focus on the fundamentals — widen your vision span and see how toincrease your comprehension, retention, and recall Advance your speed-reading skills — read blocks of text, heightenyour concentration, and follow an author's thought patterns Zero in on key points — skim, scan, and preread to quickly locatethe information you want Expand your vocabulary — recognize the most common words andphrases to help you move through the text more quickly Open the book and find:

Which plays are included under the heading 'Shakespeare's lastplays', and when does Shakespeare's 'last' period begin? What ismeant by a 'late play', and what are the benefits in defining playsin this way? Reflecting the recent growth of interest in latestudies, and recognising the gaps in accessible scholarship on thisarea, leading international Shakespeare scholars address these andmany other questions. The essays locate Shakespeare's last plays –single and co-authored – in the period of their composition,consider the significant characteristics of their Jacobean context,and explore the rich afterlives, on stage, in print and other mediaof The Winter's Tale, Cymbeline, The Tempest, Pericles, The TwoNoble Kinsmen and Henry VIII. The volume opens with a historicaltimeline that places the plays in the contexts of contemporarypolitical events, theatrical events, other cultural milestones,Shakespeare's life and that of his playing company, the King'sMen.

Part diary and part reportage, The Soccer War is aremarkable chronicle of war in the late twentieth century. Between1958 and 1980, working primarily for the Polish Press Agency,Kapuscinski covered twenty-seven revolutions and coups in Africa,Latin America, and the Middle East. Here, with characteristiccogency and emotional immediacy, he recounts the stories behind hisofficial press dispatches—searing firsthand accounts of thefrightening, grotesque, and comically absurd aspects of life duringwar. The Soccer War is a singular work of journalism.

F.A. Hayek (1899-1992) was among the most important economistsand political philosophers of the twentieth century. He is widelyregarded as the principal intellectual force behind the triumph ofglobal capitalism, an 'anti-Marx' who did more than any otherrecent thinker to elucidate the theoretical foundations of the freemarket economy. His account of the role played by market prices intransmitting economic knowledge constituted a devastating critiqueof the socialist ideal of central economic planning, and his famousbook The Road to Serfdom was a prophetic statement of the dangerswhich socialism posed to a free and open society. He also madesignificant contributions to fields as diverse as the philosophy oflaw, the theory of complex systems, and cognitive science. Theessays in this volume, by an international team of contributors,provide a critical introduction to all aspects of Hayek'sthought.

在线阅读本书 Women make up almost half of today's labor force, but in corporateAmerica they don't share half of the power. Only four of the Fortune 500 company CEOs are women, and it's only been inthe last few years that even half of the Fortune 500companies have more than one female officer. A major reason for this? Most women were never taught how to playthe game of business. Throughout her career in the supercompetitive, male-dominated mediaindustry, Gail Evans, one of the country's most powerfulexecutives, has met innumerable women who tell her that they feellost in the workplace, almost as if they were playing a gamewithout knowing the directions. She tells them that's exactly the case: Business is indeed a game,and like any game, there are rules to playing well. For the mostpart, Gail has discovered, women don't know them. Men know these rules because they wrote them, but women oftenfeel shut out of the process because they don't know when to speakup, when to ask for responsibi

Instant #1 New York Times Bestseller For the first time, rock music’s most famous muse tells herincredible story Pattie Boyd, former wife of both George Harrison and Eric Clapton,finally breaks a forty-year silence and tells the story of how shefound herself bound to two of the most addictive, promiscuousmusical geniuses of the twentieth century and became the mostlegendary muse in the history of rock and roll. The woman whoinspired Harrison’s song “Something” and Clapton’s anthem “Layla,”Pattie Boyd has written a book that is rich and raw, funny andheartbreaking–and totally honest.

The author introduces the seminal concept of"pseudo-events"--such as press conferences and presidentialdebates, which are staged solely for publicity--and redefinescelebrity as "a person who is known for his well-knownness." Theresult is an essential resource that distinguishes the deceptionsof our culture from its few enduring truths.

In "Neither Here nor There" Bill Bryson brings his unique brand of humour to bear on Europe as he shoulders his backpack, keeps a tight hold on his wallet, and journeys from Hammerfest, the northernmost town on the continent, to Istanbul on the cusp of Asia. Fluent in, oh, at least one language, he retraces his travels as a student 20 years before. Whether braving the homicidal motorists of Paris, being robbed by gypsies in Florence, attempting not to order tripe and eyeballs in a German restaurant, window-shopping in the sex shops of the Reeperbahn or disputing his hotel bill in Copenhagen, Bryson takes in the sights, dissects the culture and illuminates each place and person with his hilariously caustic observations. He even goes to Liechtenstein.