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万本电子书0元读

Serengeti IV
Serengeti IV
Anthony R. E. Sinclair and Kristine L. Metzger
¥535.63
The vast savannas and great migrations of the Serengeti conjure impressions of a harmonious and balanced ecosystem. But in reality, the history of the Serengeti is rife with battles between human and non-human nature. In the 1890s and several times since, the cattle virus rinderpest-at last vanquished in 2008-devastated both domesticated and wild ungulate populations, as well as the lives of humans and other animals who depended on them. In the 1920s, tourists armed with the world's most expensive hunting gear filled the grasslands. And in recent years, violence in Tanzania has threatened one of the most successful long-term ecological research centers in history.Serengeti IV, the latest installment in a long-standing series on the region's ecology and biodiversity, explores the role of our species as a source of both discord and balance in Serengeti ecosystem dynamics. Through chapters charting the complexities of infectious disease transmission across populations, agricultural expansion, and the many challenges of managing this ecosystem today, this book shows how the people and landscapes surrounding crucial protected areas like Serengeti National Park can and must contribute to Serengeti conservation. In order to succeed, conservation efforts must also focus on the welfare of indigenous peoples, allowing them both to sustain their agricultural practices and to benefit from the natural resources provided by protected areas-an undertaking that will require the strengthening of government and education systems and, as such, will present one of the greatest conservation challenges of the next century.
Racial Order
Racial Order
Emirbayer, Mustafa
¥323.73
Proceeding from the bold and provocative claim that there never has been a comprehensive and systematic theory of race, Mustafa Emirbayer and Matthew Desmond set out to reformulate how we think about this most difficult of topics in American life. In The Racial Order, they draw on Bourdieu, Durkheim, and Dewey to present a new theoretical framework for race scholarship. Animated by a deep and reflexive intelligence, the book engages the large and important issues of social theory today and, along the way, offers piercing insights into how race actually works in America. Emirbayer and Desmond set out to examine how the racial order is structured, how it is reproduced and sometimes transformed, and how it penetrates into the innermost reaches of our racialized selves. They also consider how-and toward what end-the racial order might be reconstructed.?In the end, this project is not merely about race; it is a theoretical reconsideration of the fundamental problems of order, agency, power, and social justice. The Racial Order is a challenging work of social theory, institutional and cultural analysis, and normative inquiry.
Great Transformations in Vertebrate Evolution
Great Transformations in Vertebrate Evolution
Kenneth P. Dial and Neil Shubin
¥294.30
How did flying birds evolve from running dinosaurs, terrestrial trotting tetrapods evolve from swimming fish, and whales return to swim in the seaThese are some of the great transformations in the 500-million-year history of vertebrate life. And with the aid of new techniques and approaches across a range of fields-work spanning multiple levels of biological organization from DNA sequences to organs and the physiology and ecology of whole organisms-we are now beginning to unravel the confounding evolutionary mysteries contained in the structure, genes, and fossil record of every living species.This book gathers a diverse team of renowned scientists to capture the excitement of these new discoveries in a collection that is both accessible to students and an important contribution to the future of its field. Marshaling a range of disciplines-from paleobiology to phylogenetics, developmental biology, ecology, and evolutionary biology-the contributors attack particular transformations in the head and neck, trunk, appendages such as fins and limbs, and the whole body, as well as offer synthetic perspectives. Illustrated throughout, Great Transformations in Vertebrate Evolution not only reveals the true origins of whales with legs, fish with elbows, wrists, and necks, and feathered dinosaurs, but also the relevance to our lives today of these extraordinary narratives of change.
The Zombie Chasers #7: World Zombination
The Zombie Chasers #7: World Zombination
Kloepfer, John
¥38.72
In the final book in the beloved Zombie Chasers series, Zack Clarke and his zombie-fighting team travel across the world in search of an antidote that will stop the brain-gobbling outbreak once and for all. With all the middle school shenanigans, fast-paced adventure, and hilarious black-and-white drawings that have made this series a favorite of reluctant readers everywhere, The Zombie Chasers #7: World Zombination is an uproarious, gore-streaked finale that readers will love!From taming zombie jungle animals in Madagascar to unearthing zombie mummies—zummies—in Egypt to battling black-belt super zombies in China, it's the zombie chasers' slimiest adventure yet. Will the kids be able to get the antidote and unzombify the undead masses once and for allOr will the putrid planet fall to the zombie scourge?
Fart Squad
Fart Squad
Pilger, Seamus
¥27.65
It was an average day at Harry Buttz Elementary until . . . KABLAM! The five-bean burritos churning in Darren Stonkadopolis's stomach exploded in a fart so volcanic it melted his desk seat, knocked out his whole class, and got him sent to the nurse—and he's not alone.Something fishy is going on in Buttzville. And it's up to Darren and his three farting friends to combine their potty powers to get to the bottom of this evil plot—before it's too late. With their scent-sei, Janitor Stan, at their side, the Fart Squad has to learn to harness the powers between their butt cheeks. And then let it RIIIP."A flagrant romp. Not to be passed!"—The New York Toots"A cut above the rest."—StinkyCheese.com"If you haven't caught wind of Fart Squad yet, don't let this one go!" —Rude News"We've been dealt a winner!"—SmeltIt.blog.com
Uncivil Rights
Uncivil Rights
Perrillo, Jonna
¥265.87
Almost fifty years after?Brown v. Board of Education, a wealth of research shows that minority students continue to receive an unequal education. At the heart of this inequality is a complex and often conflicted relationship between teachers and civil rights activists, examined fully for the first time in Jonna Perrillo's?Uncivil Rights, which traces the tensions between the two groups in New York City from the Great Depression to the present.While movements for teachers' rights and civil rights were not always in conflict, Perrillo uncovers the ways?they have become so, brought about both by teachers who have come to see civil rights efforts as detracting from or competing with their own goals and by civil rights activists whose aims have de-professionalized the role of the educator. Focusing in particular on unionized teachers, Perrillo finds a new vantage point from which to examine the relationship between school and community, showing how in this struggle, educators, activists, and especially our students have lost out.?
Combating Jihadism
Combating Jihadism
Mendelsohn, Barak
¥247.21
Although terrorism is an age-old phenomenon, jihadi ideology is distinctive in its ambition to abandon the principle of state sovereignty, overthrow the modern state system, and replace it with an extremely radical interpretation of an Islamic world order. These characteristics reflect a radical break from traditional objectives promoted by terrorist groups. In Combating Jihadism Barak Mendelsohn argues that the distinctiveness of the al-Qaeda threat led the international community to change its approach to counterterrorism. Contrary to common yet erroneous conceptions, the United States, in its role as a hegemon, was critical for the formulation of a multilateral response.While most analyses of hegemony have focused on power, Mendelsohn firmly grounds the phenomenon in a web of shared norms and rules relating to the hegemon's freedom of action. Consequently, he explains why US leadership in counterterrorism efforts was in some spheres successful, when in others it failed or did not even seek to establish multilateral collaborative frameworks. Tracing the ways in which international cooperation has stopped terrorist efforts, Combating Jihadism provides a nuanced, innovative, and timely reinterpretation of the war on terrorism and the role of the United States in leading the fight against al-Qaeda and its affiliates.
Death of Socrates
Death of Socrates
Mongin, Jean Paul
¥123.61
At its most basic, philosophy is about learning how to think about the world around us. It should come as no surprise, then, that children make excellent philosophers! Naturally inquisitive, pint-size scholars need little prompting before being willing to consider life's "e;big questions,"e; however strange or impractical. Plato & Co. introduces children-and curious grown-ups-to the lives and work of famous philosophers, from Descartes to Socrates, Einstein, Marx, and Wittgenstein. Each book in the series features an engaging-and often funny-story that presents basic tenets of philosophical thought alongside vibrant color illustrations."e;Tell us, Delphic Oracle, who is the wisest man in all of Greece?"e; So begins The Death of Socrates. No mortal man is wiser than Socrates, who, on his daily walks through Athens, talks to all the people he meets. When the person he talks to takes himself to be very wise, Socrates asks so many questions that the person ends up admitting he knows nothing. When he runs into people who know little, Socrates sets them on the way to wisdom. But not everyone shares Socrates's love for the truth. When the people of Athens become angry with him for his ceaseless questioning, how will he find the courage to continue to speak the truth Plato & Co.'s clear approach and charming illustrations make this series the perfect addition to any little library.
Bloodtaking and Peacemaking
Bloodtaking and Peacemaking
Miller, William Ian
¥241.33
Dubbed by the New York Times as "e;one of the most sought-after legal academics in the county,"e; William Ian Miller presents the arcane worlds of the Old Norse studies in a way sure to attract the interest of a wide range of readers. Bloodtaking and Peacemaking delves beneath the chaos and brutality of the Norse world to discover a complex interplay of ordering and disordering impulses. Miller's unique and engaging readings of ancient Iceland's sagas and extensive legal code reconstruct and illuminate the society that produced them.People in the saga world negotiated a maze of violent possibility, with strategies that frequently put life and limb in the balance. But there was a paradox in striking the balance-one could not get even without going one better. Miller shows how blood vengeance, law, and peacemaking were inextricably bound together in the feuding process.This book offers fascinating insights into the politics of a stateless society, its methods of social control, and the role that a uniquely sophisticated and self-conscious law played in the construction of Icelandic society."e;Illuminating."e;-Rory McTurk, Times Literary Supplement"e;An impressive achievement in ethnohistory; it is an amalgam of historical research with legal and anthropological interpretation. What is more, and rarer, is that it is a pleasure to read due to the inclusion of narrative case material from the sagas themselves."e;-Dan Bauer, Journal of Interdisciplinary History
On Creaturely Life
On Creaturely Life
Santner, Eric L.
¥241.33
In his Duino Elegies, Rainer Maria Rilke suggests that animals enjoy direct access to a realm of being-the open-concealed from humans by the workings of consciousness and self-consciousness. In his own reading of Rilke, Martin Heidegger reclaims the open as the proper domain of human existence but suggests that human life remains haunted by vestiges of an animal-like relation to its surroundings. Walter Benjamin, in turn, was to show that such vestiges-what Eric Santner calls the creaturely-have a biopolitical aspect: they are linked to the processes that inscribe life in the realm of power and authority.?Santner traces this theme of creaturely life from its poetic and philosophical beginnings in the first half of the twentieth century to the writings of the enigmatic German novelist W. G. Sebald. Sebald's entire oeuvre, Santner argues, can be seen as an archive of creaturely life. For Sebald, the work on such an archive was inseparable from his understanding of what it means to engage ethically with another person's history and pain, an engagement that transforms us from indifferent individuals into neighbors.?An indispensable book for students of Sebald, On Creaturely Life is also a significant contribution to critical theory.
Egyptian Oedipus
Egyptian Oedipus
Stolzenberg, Daniel
¥247.21
A contemporary of Descartes and Newton, Athanasius Kircher, S. J. (1601/2-80), was one of Europe's most inventive and versatile scholars in the baroque era. He published more than thirty works in fields as diverse as astronomy, magnetism, cryptology, numerology, geology, and music. But Kircher is most famous-or infamous-for his quixotic attempt to decipher the Egyptian hieroglyphs and reconstruct the ancient traditions they encoded. In 1655, after more than two decades of toil, Kircher published his solution to the hieroglyphs, Oedipus Aegyptiacus, a work that has been called "e;one of the most learned monstrosities of all times."e; Here Daniel Stolzenberg presents a new interpretation of Kircher's hieroglyphic studies, placing them in the context of seventeenth-century scholarship on paganism and Oriental languages.?Situating Kircher in the social world of baroque Rome, with its scholars, artists, patrons, and censors, Stolzenberg shows how Kircher's study of ancient paganism depended on the circulation of texts, artifacts, and people between Christian and Islamic civilizations. Along with other participants in the rise of Oriental studies, Kircher aimed to revolutionize the study of the past by mastering Near Eastern languages and recovering ancient manu*s hidden away in the legendary libraries of Cairo and Damascus. The spectacular flaws of his scholarship have fostered an image of Kircher as an eccentric anachronism, a throwback to the Renaissance hermetic tradition. Stolzenberg argues against this view, showing how Kircher embodied essential tensions of a pivotal phase in European intellectual history, when pre-Enlightenment scholars pioneered modern empirical methods of studying the past while still working within traditional frameworks, such as biblical history and beliefs about magic and esoteric wisdom.
Tragic Sense of Life
Tragic Sense of Life
Richards, Robert J.
¥253.10
Prior to the First World War, more people learned of evolutionary theory from the voluminous writings of Charles Darwin's foremost champion in Germany, Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919), than from any other source, including the writings of Darwin himself. But, with detractors ranging from paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould to modern-day creationists and advocates of intelligent design, Haeckel is better known as a divisive figure than as a pioneering biologist. Robert J. Richards's intellectual biography rehabilitates Haeckel, providing the most accurate measure of his science and art yet written, as well as a moving account of Haeckel's eventful life.
Africa as a Living Laboratory
Africa as a Living Laboratory
Tilley, Helen
¥270.76
Tropical Africa was one of the last regions of the world to experience formal European colonialism, a process that coincided with the advent of a range of new scientific specialties and research methods. Africa as a Living Laboratory is a far-reaching study of the thorny relationship between imperialism and the role of scientific expertise-environmental, medical, racial, and anthropological-in the colonization of British Africa.A key source for Helen Tilley's analysis is the African Research Survey, a project undertaken in the 1930s to explore how modern science was being applied to African problems. This project both embraced and recommended an interdisciplinary approach to research on Africa that, Tilley argues, underscored the heterogeneity of African environments and the interrelations among the problems being studied. While the aim of British colonialists was unquestionably to transform and modernize Africa, their efforts, Tilley contends, were often unexpectedly subverted by scientific concerns with the local and vernacular. Meticulously researched and gracefully argued, Africa as a Living Laboratory transforms our understanding of imperial history, colonial development, and the role science played in both.
Air's Appearance
Air's Appearance
Lewis, Jayne Elizabeth
¥394.36
In Air's Appearance, Jayne Elizabeth Lewis enlists her readers in pursuit of the elusive concept of atmosphere in literary works. She shows how diverse conceptions of air in the eighteenth century converged in British fiction, producing the modern literary sense of atmosphere and moving novelists to explore the threshold between material and immaterial worlds.?Air's Appearance links the emergence of literary atmosphere to changing ideas about air and the earth's atmosphere in natural philosophy, as well as to the era's theories of the supernatural and fascination with social manners-or, as they are now known, "e;airs."e; Lewis thus offers a striking new interpretation of several standard features of the Enlightenment-the scientific revolution, the decline of magic, character-based sociability, and the rise of the novel-that considers them in terms of the romance of air that permeates and connects them. As it explores key episodes in the history of natural philosophy and in major literary works like Paradise Lost, "e;The Rape of the Lock,"e; Robinson Crusoe, and The Mysteries of Udolpho, this book promises to change the atmosphere of eighteenth-century studies and the history of the novel.
Trams or Tailfins?
Trams or Tailfins?
Logemann, Jan L.
¥394.36
In the years that followed World War II, both the United States and the newly formed West German republic had an opportunity to remake their economies. Since then, much has been made of a supposed "e;Americanization"e; of European consumer societies-in Germany and elsewhere. Arguing against these foggy notions, Jan L. Logemann takes a comparative look at the development of postwar mass consumption in West Germany and the United States and the emergence of discrete consumer modernities.?In Trams or Tailfins?, Logemann explains how the decisions made at this crucial time helped to define both of these economic superpowers in the second half of the twentieth century. While Americans splurged on private cars and bought goods on credit in suburban shopping malls, Germans rebuilt public transit and developed pedestrian shopping streets in their city centers-choices that continue to shape the quality and character of life decades later. Outlining the abundant differences in the structures of consumer society, consumer habits, and the role of public consumption in these countries, Logemann reveals the many subtle ways that the spheres of government, society, and physical space define how we live.
School, Society, and State
School, Society, and State
Steffes, Tracy L.
¥394.36
"e;Democracy has to be born anew every generation, and education is its midwife,"e; wrote John Dewey in his classic work The School and Society. In School, Society, and State, Tracy Steffes places that idea at the center of her exploration of the connections between public school reform in the early twentieth century and American political development from 1890 to 1940.American public schooling, Steffes shows, was not merely another reform project of the Progressive Era, but a central one. She addresses why Americans invested in public education and explains how an array of reformers subtly transformed schooling into a tool of social governance to address the consequences of industrialization and urbanization. By extending the reach of schools, broadening their mandate, and expanding their authority over the well-being of children, the state assumed a defining role in the education-and in the lives-of American families.In School, Society, and State, Steffes returns the state to the study of the history of education and brings the schools back into our discussion of state power during a pivotal moment in American political development.
American Railroads
American Railroads
Stover, John F.
¥211.90
Few scenes capture the American experience so eloquently as that of a lonely train chugging across the vastness of the Great Plains, or snaking through tortuous high mountain passes. Although this vision was eclipsed for a time by the rise of air travel and trucking, railroads have enjoyed a rebirth in recent years as profitable freight carriers.A fascinating account of the rise, decline, and rebirth of railroads in the United States, John F. Stover's American Railroads traces their history from the first lines that helped eastern seaports capture western markets to today's newly revitalized industry. Stover describes the growth of the railroads' monopoly, with the consequent need for state and federal regulations; relates the vital part played by the railroads during the Civil War and the two World Wars; and charts the railroads' decline due to the advent of air travel and trucking during the 1950s.In two new chapters, Stover recounts the remarkable recovery of the railroads, along with other pivotal events of the industry's recent history. During the 1960s declining passenger traffic and excessive federal regulation led to the federally-financed creation of Amtrak to revive passenger service and Conrail to provide freight service on bankrupt northeastern railroads. The real savior for the railroads, though, proved to be the Staggers Rail Act of 1980, which brought prosperity to rail freight carriers by substantially deregulating the industry. By 1995, renewed railroad freight traffic had reached nearly twice its former peak in 1944.Bringing both a seasoned eye and new insights to bear on one of the most American of industries, Stover has produced the definitive history of railroads in the United States.
War on Error
War on Error
Moezzi, Melody
¥150.29
War on Error brings together the stories of twelve young people, all vastly different but all American, and all Muslim. Their approaches to religion couldn't be more diverse: from a rapper of Korean and Egyptian descent to a bisexual Sudanese American to a converted white woman from Colorado living in Cairo and wearing the hijab. These individuals, whether they were born to the religion or came to it on their own, have made their own decisions about how observant they'll be, whether or not to fast, how often to pray, and what to wear. Though each story is unique, each is also seen through the searching eyes of Melody Moezzi, herself an American Muslim of Iranian descent. She finds that the people she interviews are horrified that, in a post-9/11 world, they have seen their religion come to be represented, in the minds of many Americans, by terrorism. These thoughtful and articulate individuals represent the truth about the faith and its adherents who are drawn to the logic, compassion, and tolerance they find in Muslim teachings. Moezzi, ever comfortable with contradiction and nuance, is a likable narrator whose underlying assumption that "e;faith is greater than dogma"e; is strengthened as she learns more about her religion and faces her own biases and blind spots. This fresh new voice, combined with the perceptions and experiences of her fellow American Muslims, make for a read that is both illuminating and enjoyable.
Measuring Capital in the New Economy
Measuring Capital in the New Economy
Carol Corrado and John Haltiwanger
¥1024.16
As the accelerated technological advances of the past two decades continue to reshape the United States' economy, intangible assets and high-technology investments are taking larger roles. These developments have raised a number of concerns, such as: how do we measure intangible assetsAre we accurately appraising newer, high-technology capitalThe answers to these questions have broad implications for the assessment of the economy's growth over the long term, for the pace of technological advancement in the economy, and for estimates of the nation's wealth.In Measuring Capital in the New Economy, Carol Corrado, John Haltiwanger, Daniel Sichel, and a host of distinguished collaborators offer new approaches for measuring capital in an economy that is increasingly dominated by high-technology capital and intangible assets. As the contributors show, high-tech capital and intangible assets affect the economy in ways that are notoriously difficult to appraise. In this detailed and thorough analysis of the problem and its solutions, the contributors study the nature of these relationships and provide guidance as to what factors should be included in calculations of different types of capital for economists, policymakers, and the financial and accounting communities alike.
Improbability of Othello
Improbability of Othello
Altman, Joel B.
¥488.54
Shakespeare's dramatis personae exist in a world of supposition, struggling to connect knowledge that cannot be had, judgments that must be made, and actions that need to be taken.For them, probability-what they and others might be persuaded to believe-governs human affairs, not certainty. Yet negotiating the space of probability is fraught with difficulty. Here, Joel B. Altman explores the problematics of probability and the psychology of persuasion in Renaissance rhetoric and Shakespeare's theater.Focusing on the Tragedy of Othello, Altman investigates Shakespeare's representation of the self as a specific realization of tensions pervading the rhetorical culture in which he was educated and practiced his craft. In Altman's account, Shakespeare also restrains and energizes his audiences' probabilizing capacities, alternately playing the skeptical critic and dramaturgic trickster. A monumental work of scholarship by one of America's most respected scholars of Renaissance literature, The Improbability of Othello contributes fresh ideas to our understanding of Shakespeare's conception of the self, his shaping of audience response, and the relationship of actors to his texts.
Reading the World
Reading the World
Franklin-Brown, Mary
¥488.54
The thirteenth century saw such a proliferation of new encyclopedic texts that more than one scholar has called it the "e;century of the encyclopedias."e; Variously referred to as a speculum, thesaurus, or imago mundi-the term encyclopedia was not commonly applied to such books until the eighteenth century-these texts were organized in such a way that a reader could easily locate a collection of authoritative statements on any given topic. Because they reproduced, rather than simply summarized, parts of prior texts, these compilations became libraries in miniature.?In this groundbreaking study, Mary Franklin-Brown examines writings in Latin, Catalan, and French that are connected to the encyclopedic movement: Vincent of Beauvais's Speculum maius; Ramon Llull's Libre de meravelles, Arbor scientiae, and Arbre de filosofia d'amor; and Jean de Meun's continuation of the Roman de la Rose. Franklin-Brown analyzes the order of knowledge in these challenging texts, describing the wide-ranging interests, the textual practices-including commentary, compilation, and organization-and the diverse discourses that they absorb from preexisting classical, patristic, and medieval writing. She also demonstrates how these encyclopedias, like libraries, became "e;heterotopias"e; of knowledge-spaces where many possible ways of knowing are juxtaposed.?But Franklin-Brown's study will not appeal only to historians: she argues that a revised understanding of late medievalism makes it possible to discern a close connection between scholasticism and contemporary imaginative literature. She shows how encyclopedists employed the same practices of figuration, narrative, and citation as poets and romanciers, while much of the difficulty of the imaginative writing of this period derives from a juxtaposition of heterogeneous discourses inspired by encyclopedias.With rich and innovative readings of texts both familiar and neglected, Reading the World reveals how the study of encyclopedism can illuminate both the intellectual work and the imaginative writing of the scholastic age.