One of the world's most beloved and bestselling writers takes his ultimate journey -- into the most intriguing and intractable questions that science seeks to answer. In A Walk in the Woods, Bill Bryson trekked the Appalachian Trail -- well, most of it. In In A Sunburned Country, he confronted some of the most lethal wildlife Australia has to offer. Now, in his biggest book, he confronts his greatest challenge: to understand -- and, if possible, answer -- the oldest, biggest questions we have posed about the universe and ourselves. Taking as territory everything from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization, Bryson seeks to understand how we got from there being nothing at all to there being us. To that end, he has attached himself to a host of the world's most advanced (and often obsessed) archaeologists, anthropologists, and mathematicians, travelling to their offices, laboratories, and field camps. He has read (or tried to read) their books, pestered them with questions, apprenticed himself to their powerf

过去的60年里，人工智能已经慢慢渗透到我们的日常生活中，如社交媒体，Netflix,无人驾驶汽车和人形机器人等, 使我们在与世界互动的方式上发生了*大变化。人类会被AI取代吗？人工智能是否可以改善社会和人类的发展？ The past sixty years have witnessed astonishing growth in the field of artifical intelligence. From social media to Netflix, AI has already infiltrated our daily lives, while driverless cars and humanoid robots are starting to make seismic shifts in the ways we interact with our world. Are we on the threshold of an AI-dominated reality? How will the ethics of this expanding field be enforced in practice? Will humans be superseded by AI? This astute and disquieting review, replete with astonishing up-to-the-minute imagery a trademark of the Big Idea series evaluates whether AI can transform society and humanity for the better or whether its enormous capability will bring about a dystopian AI-controlled future for t

本书探讨了现代医学的现状，研究了医学，医保和它们对现代生活的影响，围绕当今的逐步上升的医学成本（包括财物的和道德的）进行了讨论，适合对道德和哲学感兴趣的人以及在医学领域工作的人。 This fascinating entry in The Big Idea series lays out the ethical implications and the costs of modern medicine. Over the course of human history, medicine has achieved incredible successes―but at what cost? This latest book in The Big Idea series explores the state of modern medicine, examining the ethics of medical and healthcare practices and the impact they have on modern life. This fascinating analysis engages with the debate surrounding the escalating costs, both financial and ethical, of medicine today. Intelligent and provocative, Is Medicine Still Good for Us? dissects common assumptions about medicine, helping the reader create their own informed opinion about its extraordinary achievements, limitations, injustices, and inev

In the era of Kennedy and Khrushchev, power was expressed interms of nuclear missiles, industrial capacity, numbers of menunder arms, and tanks lined up ready to cross the plains of EasternEurope. By 2010, none of these factors confer power in the sameway: industrial capacity seems an almost Victorian virtue, andcyber threats are wielded by non-state actors. Politics changed,and the nature of power—defined as the ability to affect others toobtain the outcomes you want—had changed dramatically. Power is notstatic; its story is of shifts and innovations, technologies andrelationships. Joseph Nye is a long-time analyst of power and a hands-onpractitioner in government. Many of his ideas have been at theheart of recent debates over the role America should play in theworld: his concept of "soft power" has been adopted by leaders fromBritain to China; "smart power” has been adopted as thebumper-sticker for the Obama Administration’s foreign policy. Thisbook is the summation of his work, as relevant to gene

People decide about political parties by taking into accountthe preferences, values, expectations, and perceptions of theirfamily, friends, colleagues, and neighbours. As most people livewith others, members of their households influence each other'spolitical decisions. How and what they think about politics andwhat they do are the outcomes of social processes. Applying variedstatistical models to data from extensive German and Britishhousehold surveys, this book shows that wives and husbandsinfluence each other; young adults influence their parents,especially their mothers. Wives and mothers sit at the centre ofhouseholds: their partisanship influences the partisanship ofeveryone else, and the others affect them. Politics in householdsinteracts with competition among the political parties to sustainbounded partisanship. People ignore one of the major parties andvary their preference of its major rival over time. Electioncampaigns reinforce these choices.

From an award-winning historian, a stirring (and timely)narrative history of American labor from the dawn of the industrialage to the present day. From the textile mills of Lowell, Massachusetts, the first realfactories in America, to the triumph of unions in the twentiethcentury and their waning influence today, the con?test betweenlabor and capital for their share of American bounty has shaped ournational experience. Philip Dray’s ambition is to show us the vitalaccomplishments of organized labor in that time and illuminate itscentral role in our social, political, economic, and culturalevolution. There Is Power in a Union is an epic, character-drivennarrative that locates this struggle for security and dignity inall its various settings: on picket lines and in union halls,jails, assembly lines, corporate boardrooms, the courts, the hallsof Congress, and the White House. The author demonstrates,viscerally and dramatically, the urgency of the fight for fairnessand economic democracy—a strugg

我们应该支持素食主义吗？从 纯素食主义的演变 到 为什么今天要做素食主义？ 书中研究了现在主流的以植物为基础的饮食的演变， 纯素食主义的挑战 调查了纯素生活方式的营养和误解，设想了素食主义的未来及其对地球的影响。 An insightful look at the arguments for and against universal adoption of a vegan diet and lifestyle. As concern grows over the environmental costs and ethical implications of intensive factory farming, an increasing number of people are embracing diets and lifestyles free from animal products. Should We All Be Vegan? gives a fluid and engaging account of the evolution of veganism. Over the course of four easily digestible chapters, food writer Molly Watson reveals the truth about veganism s impact on our health, the planet, and the global economy. Chapters like The Evolution of Veganism and Why Go Vegan Today? examine the development of veganism from the earliest meat-free human

'We have no choice but to go fight,' WaLty said,his voice still hoarse, his delivery slow. 'We try to piecetogether some proof. We go to court and fight Likehell, and when we Lose we can tell our clients that we foughtthe good fight. In every Lawsuit,somebody wins, somebody Loses.Sure, we'll get our butts kicked, but at this point I'drather walk out of the courtroom with my head upthan deal with sanctions and malpractice claims.'

The twenty-first century has brought a renewed interest indemocratic theory and practices, creating a complicatedrelationship between time-honoured democratic traditions and newforms of political participation. Reflecting on this interplaybetween tradition and innovation, Aletta J. Norval offers freshinsights into the global complexities of the formation ofdemocratic subjectivity, the difficult emergence and articulationof political claims, the constitution of democratic relationsbetween citizens and the deepening of our democratic imagination.Aversive Democracy draws inspiration from a critical engagementwith deliberative and post-structuralist models of democracy,whilst offering a distinctive reading inspired by contemporary workon the later Wittgenstein. This is a creative and insightful workwhich reorients democratic theory, elucidating the character of thecommitments we engage in when we participate in democratic lifetogether.

Located at the intersection of law, political science,philosophy, and literary theory, this is a work of constitutionaltheory that explores the nature of American constitutionalinterpretation through a reconsideration of the long-standingdebate between the interpretive theories of originalism andnonoriginalism. It traces that debate to a particular set ofpremises about the nature of language, interpretation, andobjectivity, premises that raise the specter of unconstrained,unstructured constitutional interpretation that has hauntedcontemporary constitutional theory. It presents the novel argumentthat a critique of the underlying premises of originalism dissolvesnot just originalism but nonoriginalism as well, which leads to therecognition that constitutional interpretation is already andalways structured. It makes this argument in terms of the firstprinciple of the American political system: by their fidelity tothe Constitution, Americans are a textual people in that they livein and through the terms of a fun