购物车
个人中心
Legislating in the Dark
￥247.21
The 2009 financial stimulus bill ran to more than 1,100 pages, yet it wasn't even given to Congress in its final form until thirteen hours before debate was set to begin, and it was passed twenty-eight hours later. How are representatives expected to digest so much information in such a short time.The answerThey aren't. With Legislating in the Dark, James M. Curry reveals that the availability of information about legislation is a key tool through which Congressional leadership exercises power. Through a deft mix of legislative analysis, interviews, and participant observation, Curry shows how congresspersons-lacking the time and resources to study bills deeply themselves-are forced to rely on information and cues from their leadership. By controlling their rank-and-file's access to information, Congressional leaders are able to emphasize or bury particular items, exploiting their information advantage to push the legislative agenda in directions that they and their party prefer.Offering an unexpected new way of thinking about party power and influence, Legislating in the Dark will spark substantial debate in political science.
Ancestors and Antiretrovirals
￥265.87
In the years since the end of apartheid, South Africans have enjoyed a progressive constitution, considerable access to social services for the poor and sick, and a booming economy that has made their nation into one of the wealthiest on the continent. At the same time, South Africa experiences extremely unequal income distribution, and its citizens suffer the highest prevalence of HIV in the world. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu has noted, "e;AIDS is South Africa's new apartheid."e;In Ancestors and Antiretrovirals, Claire Laurier Decoteau backs up Tutu's assertion with powerful arguments about how this came to pass. Decoteau traces the historical shifts in health policy after apartheid and describes their effects, detailing, in particular, the changing relationship between biomedical and indigenous health care, both at the national and the local level. Decoteau tells this story from the perspective of those living with and dying from AIDS in Johannesburg's squatter camps. At the same time, she exposes the complex and often contradictory ways that the South African government has failed to balance the demands of neoliberal capital with the considerable health needs of its population.
Opera Fanatic
￥270.76
Though some dismiss opera as old-fashioned, it shows no sign of disappearing from the world's stage. So why do audiences continue to flock to itGiven its association with wealth, one might imagine that opera tickets function as a status symbol. But while a desire to hobnob with the upper crust might motivate the occasional operagoer, for hardcore fans the real answer, according to The Opera Fanatic, is passion-they do it for love.Opera lovers are an intense lot, Claudio E. Benzecry discovers in his look at the fanatics who haunt the legendary Coln Opera House in Buenos Aires, a key site for opera's globalization. Listening to the fans and their stories, Benzecry hears of two-hundred-mile trips for performances and nightlong camp-outs for tickets, while others testify to a particular opera's power to move them-whether to song or to tears-no matter how many times they have seen it before. Drawing on his insightful analysis of these acts of love, Benzecry proposes new ways of thinking about people's relationship to art and shows how, far from merely enhancing aspects of everyday life, art allows us to transcend it.
Philosophy of Pseudoscience
￥288.41
What sets the practice of rigorously tested, sound science apart from pseudoscienceIn this volume, the contributors seek to answer this question, known to philosophers of science as "e;the demarcation problem."e; This issue has a long history in philosophy, stretching as far back as the early twentieth century and the work of Karl Popper. But by the late 1980s, scholars in the field began to treat the demarcation problem as impossible to solve and futile to ponder. However, the essays that Massimo Pigliucci and Maarten Boudry have assembled in this volume make a rousing case for the unequivocal importance of reflecting on the separation between pseudoscience and sound science. Moreover, the demarcation problem is not a purely theoretical dilemma of mere academic interest: it affects parents' decisions to vaccinate children and governments' willingness to adopt policies that prevent climate change. Pseudoscience often mimics science, using the superficial language and trappings of actual scientific research to seem more respectable. Even a well-informed public can be taken in by such questionable theories dressed up as science. Pseudoscientific beliefs compete with sound science on the health pages of newspapers for media coverage and in laboratories for research funding. Now more than ever the ability to separate genuine scientific findings from spurious ones is vital, and The Philosophy of Pseudoscience provides ground for philosophers, sociologists, historians, and laypeople to make decisions about what science is or isn't.
Plant Sensing and Communication
￥288.41
The news that a flowering weed-mousear cress (Arabidopsis thaliana)-can sense the particular chewing noise of its most common caterpillar predator and adjust its chemical defenses in response led to headlines announcing the discovery of the first "e;hearing"e; plant. As plants lack central nervous systems (and, indeed, ears), the mechanisms behind this "e;hearing"e; are unquestionably very different from those of our own acoustic sense, but the misleading headlines point to an overlooked truth: plants do in fact perceive environmental cues and respond rapidly to them by changing their chemical, morphological, and behavioral traits.In Plant Sensing and Communication, Richard Karban provides the first comprehensive overview of what is known about how plants perceive their environments, communicate those perceptions, and learn. Facing many of the same challenges as animals, plants have developed many similar capabilities: they sense light, chemicals, mechanical stimulation, temperature, electricity, and sound. Moreover, prior experiences have lasting impacts on sensitivity and response to cues; plants, in essence, have memory. Nor are their senses limited to the processes of an individual plant: plants eavesdrop on the cues and behaviors of neighbors and-for example, through flowers and fruits-exchange information with other types of organisms. Far from inanimate organisms limited by their stationary existence, plants, this book makes unquestionably clear, are in constant and lively discourse.
Deep Rhetoric
￥311.96
"e;Rhetoric is the counterpart of logic,"e; claimed Aristotle. "e;Rhetoric is the first part of logic rightly understood,"e; Martin Heidegger concurred. "e;Rhetoric is the universal form of human communication,"e; opined Hans-Georg Gadamer. But in Deep Rhetoric, James Crosswhite offers a groundbreaking new conception of rhetoric, one that builds a definitive case for an understanding of the discipline as a philosophical enterprise beyond basic argumentation and is fully conversant with the advances of the New Rhetoric of Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca.Chapter by chapter, Deep Rhetoric develops an understanding of rhetoric not only in its philosophical dimension but also as a means of guiding and conducting conflicts, achieving justice, and understanding the human condition. Along the way, Crosswhite restores the traditional dignity and importance of the discipline and illuminates the twentieth-century resurgence of rhetoric among philosophers, as well as the role that rhetoric can play in future discussions of ontology, epistemology, and ethics. At a time when the fields of philosophy and rhetoric have diverged, Crosswhite returns them to their common moorings and shows us an invigorating new way forward.
Far Afield
￥288.41
Anthropology has long had a vexed relationship with literature, and nowhere has this been more acutely felt than in France, where most ethnographers, upon returning from the field, write not one book, but two: a scientific monograph and a literary account. In?Far Afield-brought to English-language readers here for the first time-Vincent Debaene puzzles out this phenomenon, tracing the contours of anthropology and literature's mutual fascination and the ground upon which they meet in the works of thinkers from Marcel Mauss and Georges Bataille to Claude Levi-Strauss and Roland Barthes.?The relationship between anthropology and literature in France is one of careful curiosity. Literary writers are wary about anthropologists' scientific austerity but intrigued by the objects they collect and the issues they raise, while anthropologists claim to be scientists but at the same time are deeply concerned with writing and representational practices. Debaene elucidates the richness that this curiosity fosters and the diverse range of writings it has produced, from Proustian memoirs to proto-surrealist diaries. In the end he offers a fascinating intellectual history, one that is itself located precisely where science and literature meet.
Scientific Babel
￥147.15
English is the language of science today. No matter which languages you know, if you want your work seen, studied, and cited, you need to publish in English. But that hasn't always been the case. Though there was a time when Latin dominated the field, for centuries science has been a polyglot enterprise, conducted in a number of languages whose importance waxed and waned over time-until the rise of English in the twentieth century.?So how did we get from there to hereHow did French, German, Latin, Russian, and even Esperanto give way to EnglishAnd what can we reconstruct of the experience of doing science in the polyglot pastWith Scientific Babel, Michael D. Gordin resurrects that lost world, in part through an ingenious mechanism: the pages of his highly readable narrative account teem with footnotes-not offering background information, but presenting quoted material in its original language. The result is stunning: as we read about the rise and fall of languages, driven by politics, war, economics, and institutions, we actually see it happen in the ever-changing web of multilingual examples. The history of science, and of English as its dominant language, comes to life, and brings with it a new understanding not only of the frictions generated by a scientific community that spoke in many often mutually unintelligible voices, but also of the possibilities of the polyglot, and the losses that the dominance of English entails.?Few historians of science write as well as Gordin, and Scientific Babel reveals his incredible command of the literature, language, and intellectual essence of science past and present. No reader who takes this linguistic journey with him will be disappointed.
Black New Orleans, 1860-1880
￥282.53
Reissued for the first time in over thirty years, Black New Orleans explores the twenty-year period in which the city's black population more than doubled. Meticulously researched and replete with archival illustrations from newspapers and rare periodicals, John W. Blassingame's groundbreaking history offers a unique look at the economic and social life of black people in New Orleans during Reconstruction. Not a conventional political treatment, Blassingame's history instead emphasizes the educational, religious, cultural, and economic activities of African Americans during the late nineteenth century."e;Blending historical and sociological perspectives, and drawing with skill and imagination upon a variety of sources, [Blassingame] offers fresh insights into an oft-studied period of Southern history. . . .In both time and place the author has chosen an extraordinarily revealing vantage point from which to view his subject.?"e;-Neil R. McMillen, American Historical Review
African American Writers and Classical Tradition
￥241.33
Constraints on freedom, education, and individual dignity have always been fundamental in determining who is able to write, when, and where. Considering the singular experience of the African American writer, William W. Cook and James Tatum here argue that African American literature did not develop apart from canonical Western literary traditions but instead grew out of those literatures, even as it adapted and transformed the cultural traditions and religions of Africa and the African diaspora along the way.Tracing the interaction between African American writers and the literatures of ancient Greece and Rome, from the time of slavery and its aftermath to the civil rights era and on into the present, the authors offer a sustained and lively discussion of the life and work of Phillis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass, Ralph Ellison, and Rita Dove, among other highly acclaimed poets, novelists, and scholars. Assembling this brilliant and diverse group of African American writers at a moment when our understanding of classical literature is ripe for change, the authors paint an unforgettable portrait of our own reception of "e;classic"e; writing, especially as it was inflected by American racial politics.
Haiku for a Season / Haiku per una stagione
￥170.69
Andrea Zanzotto is one of the most important and acclaimed poets of postwar Italy. This collection of ninety-one pseudo-haiku in English and Italian-written over several months during 1984 and then revised slowly over the years-confirms his commitment to experimentation throughout his life. Haiku for a Season represents a multilevel experiment for Zanzotto: first, to compose poetry bilingually; and second, to write in a form foreign to Western poetry. The volume traces the life of a woman from youth to adulthood, using the seasons and the varying landscape as a mirror to reflect her growth and changing attitudes and perceptions. With a lifelong interest in the intersections of nature and culture, Zanzotto displays here his usual precise and surprising sense of the living world. These never-before-published original poems in English appear alongside their Italian versions-not strict translations but parallel texts that can be read separately or in conjunction with the originals. As a sequence of interlinked poems, Haiku for a Season reveals Zanzotto also as a master poet of minimalism. Zanzotto's recent death is a blow to world poetry, and the publication of this book, the last that he approved in manu*, will be an event in both the United States and in Italy.
Conceived in Doubt
￥200.12
Americans have long acknowledged a deep connection between evangelical religion and democracy in the early days of the republic. This is a widely accepted narrative that is maintained as a matter of fact and tradition-and in spite of evangelicalism's more authoritarian and reactionary aspects.In Conceived in Doubt, Amanda Porterfield challenges this standard interpretation of evangelicalism's relation to democracy and describes the intertwined relationship between religion and partisan politics that emerged in the formative era of the early republic. In the 1790s, religious doubt became common in the young republic as the culture shifted from mere skepticism toward darker expressions of suspicion and fear. But by the end of that decade, Porterfield shows, economic instability, disruption of traditional forms of community, rampant ambition, and greed for land worked to undermine heady optimism about American political and religious independence. Evangelicals managed and manipulated doubt, reaching out to disenfranchised citizens as well as to those seeking political influence, blaming religious skeptics for immorality and social distress, and demanding affirmation of biblical authority as the foundation of the new American national identity.As the fledgling nation took shape, evangelicals organized aggressively, exploiting the fissures of partisan politics by offering a coherent hierarchy in which God was king and governance righteous. By laying out this narrative, Porterfield demolishes the idea that evangelical growth in the early republic was the cheerful product of enthusiasm for democracy, and she creates for us a very different narrative of influence and ideals in the young republic.
Coming Back To Me: The Autobiography of Marcus Trescothick
￥72.40
A true-life sporting memoir of one of the best batsman in the game who stunned the cricket world when he prematurely ended his own England career. Trescothick’s brave and soul-baring account of his mental frailties opens the way to a better understanding of the unique pressures experienced by modern-day professional sportsmen. At 29, Marcus Trescothick was widely regarded as one of the batting greats. With more than 5,000 Test runs to his name and a 2005 Ashes hero, some were predicting this gentle West Country cricket nut might even surpass Graham Gooch's record to become England's highest ever Test run scorer. But the next time Trescothick hit the headlines it was for reasons no one but a handful of close friends and colleagues could have foreseen. On Saturday 25 February 2006, four days before leading England into the first Test against India in place of the injured captain Vaughan, Trescothick was out for 32 in the second innings of the final warm-up match. As he walked from the field he fought to calm the emotional storm that was raging inside him, at least to hide it from prying eyes. In the dressing room he broke down in tears, overwhelmed by a blur of anguish, uncertainty and sadness he had been keeping at bay for longer than he knew. Within hours England's best batsman was on the next flight home. His departure was kept secret until after close of play when coach Duncan Fletcher told the stunned media his acting captain had quit the tour for 'personal, family reasons.' Until now, the full, extraordinary story of what happened that day and why, of what preceded his breakdown has never been told. He reveals for the first time that he almost flew home from the 2004 tour to South Africa – of what caused it and of what followed – his comeback to the England side and a second crushing breakdown nine months later that left him unable to continue the 2006-07 Ashes tour down under. Coming Back to Me will replace the myths and rumours with the truth as Trescothick talks with engaging openness and enthusiasm about his rise to the top of international cricket; and describes with equal frankness his tortured descent into private despair.
Apache
￥57.09
Ed Macy is an elite pilot, one of the few men qualified to fly Apache helicopters, the world’s deadliest fighting machines. This is his account of a fearless mission behind enemy lines in Afghanistan. After a brutal accident forced him out of the Paras, Ed Macy refused to go down quietly. He bent every rule to sign up for the Army’s gruelling Apache helicopter programme and was one of the handful to pass the nightmare selection process. Dispatched to Afghanistan’s notorious Helmand Province in 2006, his squadron were on hand when a marine went MIA behind enemy lines – and they knew they were his only hope. From the cockpit of the mighty Apache helicopter comes this incredible true story of a rescue mission so dangerous they said it couldn’t be done, and of the man who dared to disagree.
The Year of Magical Thinking
￥66.22
From one of America's iconic writers, a portrait of a marriage and a life – in good times and bad – that will speak to anyone who has ever loved a husband or wife or child. A stunning book of electric honesty and passion. Several days before Christmas 2003, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion saw their only daughter, Quintana, fall ill. At first they thought it was flu, then pneumonia, then complete sceptic shock. She was put into an induced coma and placed on life support. Days later – the night before New Year’s Eve –the Dunnes were just sitting down to dinner after visiting the hospital when John suffered a massive and fatal coronary. In a second, this close, symbiotic partnership of 40 years was over. Four weeks later, their daughter pulled through. Two months after that, arriving at LA airport, she collapsed and underwent six hours of brain surgery at UCLA Medical Centre to relieve a massive hematoma. This powerful book is Didion’s ‘attempt to make sense of the weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I ever had about death, about illness … about marriage and children and memory … about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself’. The result is an exploration of an intensely personal yet universal experience: a portrait of a marriage, and a life, in good times and bad.
Helpless
￥45.62
Neglected by her careless parents, Marianne turned to her neighbour, the one person that she thought she could trust…. Eight year old Marianne, the eldest of five children, was neglected by her slovenly mother and her violent alcoholic father. Uncared for and unkempt she was rejected at school by her peers and scarcely tolerated by her teachers. Only one person gave her the affection she craved; a neighbour who seeing the vulnerable child knew she was easy prey for his perverted desires. ‘Little Lady’ he called her over the few months he groomed her. Less than twelve months later she was caught in a trap of fear - if she talked she would be punished. With no one to turn to she kept ‘their secret’. At thirteen she fell pregnant. Still too frightened to speak out she refused to tell the social workers who the father was. Without family support the teenager gave birth to a daughter in the unmarried mother's home. Six weeks later the baby she had already grown to love was taken away for adoption. Marianne returned home, but the neighbour's abuse continued and a year later she was pregnant again. This time her father literally tried to beat the baby out of her but she failed to miscarry. Scared for her life and that of her baby's she ran away from home carrying only a plastic bag stuffed with her few possessions. Marianne who still missed her first child desperately struggled to keep her second daughter. Two months after the birth she realized that for the baby's sake she would have to hand her over for adoption. Helpless is Marianne’s heartbreaking story as told the bestselling author of Don’t Tell Mummy.
Never Say Die
￥54.25
On a Saturday morning in May 1980, Melanie Bowen, a pretty fifteen year old, ran down the stairs of her parents’ home in Port Talbot, grabbed her leather jacket and crash helmet, yelled a goodbye, and then walked out of the front door into the sunshine for what was to be the last time in her life. Never Say Die is the true story of what followed… Since the motorcycle crash that left her paralysed from the chest down, Melanie's life has been one of extremes. On the down side, she has endured 5 horrific months of despair and indignity in rehabilitation, undergone a colostomy at 23, been in another serious car crash, suffered syringomyelia and the terrifying prospect of full quadriplegia, been diagnosed with breast cancer and broken several bones. On the plus side, however, she's won medals in athletics for Wales, been humbled and inspired by Falklands veterans at RAF Chessington, raised thousands for charity, become a major disability poster girl in America, dabbled with the film world and been screen tested for a movie, met the Queen, and set up her own rehabilitation charity, whose patrons include the acclaimed actor Michael Sheen, Dame Tanni Grey Thompson and former Welsh Rugby captain, Gwyn Jones. She has also, against all the odds, found lasting happiness, having fallen in love with and married the surgeon who 25 years earlier told her she would never walk again.
Wilfred Thesiger: The Life of the Great Explorer
￥80.25
Wilfred Thesiger, the last of the great gentlemen explorer-adventurers, became a legend in his own lifetime. This authorised biography by a longstanding friend and associate delves into his little-known character and motivations, as well as recounting the details of his extraordinary life. Wilfred Thesiger, the great explorer-adventurer and author of ‘Arabian Sands’ and ‘The Marsh Arabs’, and one work of autobiography ‘The Life of my Choice’, became a legend in his own lifetime, but his character and motivations have remained an intriguing enigma. In this authorised biography – written with Thesiger’s support before he died in 2003 and with unique access to the rich Thesiger archive – Alexander Maitland investigates this fascinating figure’s family influences, his wartime experiences, his philosophy as a hunter and conservationist, his writing and photography, his friendships with Arabs and Africans amongst whom he lived, and his now-acknowledged homosexuality.
The Herbalist: Nicholas Culpeper and the Fight for Medical Freedom
￥72.40
From the bestselling author of ‘The Queen’s Conjuror’, comes the story of Nicholas Culpeper – legendary rebel, radical, Puritan, and author of the great ‘Herbal’. This is a powerful history of medicine’s first freedom fighter set in London during Britain’s age of revolution. In the mid-17th century, England was visited by the four horsemen of the apocalypse: a civil war which saw levels of slaughter not matched until the Somme, famine in a succession of failed harvests that reduced peasants to 'anatomies', epidemics to rival the Black Death in their enormity, and infant mortality rates that left childless even women who had borne eight or nine children. In the midst of these terrible times came Nicholas Culpeper’s ‘Herbal’ – one of the most popular and enduring books ever published. Culpeper was a virtual outcast from birth. Rebelling against a tyrannical grandfather and the prospect of a life in the church, he abandoned his university education after a doomed attempt at elopement. Disinherited, he went to London, where he was to find his vocation in instigating revolution. London's medical regime was then in the grip of the College of Physicians, a powerful body personified in the ‘immortal’ William Harvey, anatomist, royal physician and discoverer of the circulation of the blood. Working in the underground world of religious sects, secret printing presses and unlicensed apothecary shops, Culpeper challenged this stronghold at the time it was reaching the very pinnacle of its power – and in the process helped spark the revolution that toppled a monarchy. In a spellbinding narrative of impulse, romance and heroism, Benjamin Woolley vividly recreates these momentous struggles and the roots of today's hopes and fears about the power of medical science, professional institutions and government. ‘The Herbalist’ tells the story of a medical rebel who took on the authorities and paid the price.
Scott of the Antarctic: A Life of Courage and Tragedy in the Extreme South
￥76.91
David Crane has given us a magisterial portrait of one of Britain’s greatest heroes and explorers, acclaimed as the ‘masterpiece’ on the subject. Reissued for the 100th anniversary of Scott’s doomed expedition. ‘It seems a pity, but I do not think I can write more…For God’s sake look after our people.’ These were the final words written in Scott’s diary on 29 March 1912, as he lay dying of exhaustion, starvation and extreme cold, in his tent on his return journey from the South Pole. Since then he has been the subject of many books. Yet in all the pages that have been written about him, the personality behind the legend has been forgotten or distorted beyond all recognition. David Crane’s magisterial biography redresses this completely. By reassessing Scott’s life and his substantial scientific achievements, Crane is able to provide a fresh and exciting perspective on both the Discovery expedition of 1901-4 and the Terra Nova expedition of 1910-12. The courage and tragedy of Scott’s last journey are only one part of the process, for the scientific enquiry that led up to it transformed the whole nature and ambition of Antarctic exploration. Written with the full support of Scott’s surviving relatives, and with access to the voluminous diaries and records of key participants, this definitive biography sets out to reconcile the very private struggles of the man with the very public life of extremes that he led.
For The People
￥39.24
A true story of small-town apartheid Anelia Schutte grew up in Knysna – a beautiful town on the coast of South Africa, centred around a picturesque lagoon and popular with tourists. But there was another side to Knysna that those tourists never saw. In the hills surrounding the town with its exclusively white population lay the townships and squatter camps where the coloured and black people were forced to live. Most white children would never go to the other side of the hill, but Anelia did. Her earliest memories are of being the only white girl at a crèche for black children that her mother, Owéna, set up in the 1980s as a social worker serving the black community. Thirty years on, Anelia, now living in London, yearns to find out more about her mother’s work, and to understand the political unrest that clouded South Africa at the time. She returns to Knysna to find the truth about the town she grew up in, from the stories and memories of the people who were there. For the People is an exploration of apartheid South Africa through the eyes of Owéna – a white woman who worked tirelessly for the black people of Knysna and found herself swept up in their struggle. They called her Nobantu: ‘for the people'.
