A major history of Afghanistan and its changing political culture Afghanistan traces the historic struggles and the changing nature of political authority in this volatile region of the world, from the Mughal Empire in the sixteenth century to the Taliban resurgence today. Thomas Barfield introduces readers to the bewildering diversity of tribal and ethnic groups in Afghanistan, explaining what unites them as Afghans despite the regional, cultural, and political differences that divide them. He shows how governing these peoples was relatively easy when power was concentrated in a small dynastic elite, but how this delicate political order broke down in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries when Afghanistan's rulers mobilized rural militias to expel first the British and later the Soviets. Armed insurgency proved remarkably successful against the foreign occupiers, but it also undermined the Afghan government's authority and rendered the country ever more difficult to govern as time passed. B

A novel theory of how technological revolutions affect the rise and fall of great powers When scholars and policymakers consider how technological advances affect the rise and fall of great powers, they draw on theories that center the moment of innovation the eureka moment that sparks astonishing technological feats. In this book, Jeffrey Ding offers a different explanation of how technological revolutions affect competition among great powers. Rather than focusing on which state first introduced major innovations, he investigates why some states were more successful than others at adapting and embracing new technologies at scale. Drawing on historical case studies of past industrial revolutions as well as statistical analysis, Ding develops a theory that emphasizes institutional adaptations oriented around diffusing technological advances throughout the entire economy.Examining Britain s rise to preeminence in the First Industrial Revolution, America and Germany s overtaking of Britain in the Second

二十一世纪以来，伴随着中国经济的迅速崛起，国内财经媒体迅猛发展、日臻成熟，财经新闻行业吸引了越来越多的高校学子投身其中。如何成为一名卓越的财经媒体人？如何理解中国经济的运行轨迹？中国财经媒体面临怎样的发展机遇和挑战？类似问题并不能在象牙塔中、在学院教育中找到完整的答案。本书收录了一线财经媒体人的切身经验和体悟，并在第一版基础上进行调整和更新，为新闻理想主义者们，点燃梦想之光。

作者考察了中国的小脚部落――云南通海六一村的历史，采访了几十位小脚妇女，发掘了她们的缠足史，叙述了她们的生命历程并探索了世代缠足者的心理及其欣赏缠足者的变态心理。

《追求卓越》是作者对第二语言（英语）教学中的专家知能所作的开创性研究成果，书中通过对四位第二语言教师进行的案例研究，看到了教学新手和专家型教师在行为方式和拥有知识方面的诸多不同。

Why did theatre audiences laugh in Shakespeare's day? Why dothey still laugh now? What did Shakespeare do with the conventionsof comedy that he inherited, so that his plays continue to amuseand move audiences? What do his comedies have to say about love,sex, gender, power, family, community, and class? What place havepain, cruelty, and even death in a comedy? Why all those puns? In asurvey that travels from Shakespeare's earliest experiments infarce and courtly love-stories to the great romantic comedies ofhis middle years and the mould-breaking experiments of his lastdecade's work, this book addresses these vital questions. Organisedthematically, and covering all Shakespeare's comedies from thebeginning to the end of his career, it provides readers with a mapof the playwright's comic styles, showing how he built on comedicconventions as he further enriched the possibilities of thegenre.