Rescuing Socrates: How the Great Books Changed My Life and Why They Matter for a New Generation
【著者】Roosevelt Montás
【出版社】Princeton University Press (November 16, 2021)
【馆藏地】理科馆外教中心（东）
【索书号】I106 /M766 /E
【简 介】A Dominican-born academic tells the story of how the Great Books transformed his life―and why they have the power to speak to people of all backgrounds
What is the value of a liberal education? Traditionally characterized by a rigorous engagement with the classics of Western thought and literature, this approach to education is all but extinct in American universities, replaced by flexible distribution requirements and ever-narrower academic specialization. Many academics attack the very idea of a Western canon as chauvinistic, while the general public increasingly doubts the value of the humanities. In Rescuing Socrates, Dominican-born American academic Roosevelt Montás tells the story of how a liberal education transformed his life, and offers an intimate account of the relevance of the Great Books today, especially to members of historically marginalized communities.
Montás emigrated from the Dominican Republic to Queens, New York, when he was twelve and encountered the Western classics as an undergraduate in Columbia University’s renowned Core Curriculum, one of America’s last remaining Great Books programs. The experience changed his life and determined his career―he went on to earn a PhD in English and comparative literature, serve as director of Columbia’s Center for the Core Curriculum, and start a Great Books program for low-income high school students who aspire to be the first in their families to attend college.
Weaving together memoir and literary reflection, Rescuing Socrates describes how four authors―Plato, Augustine, Freud, and Gandhi―had a profound impact on Montás’s life. In doing so, the book drives home what it’s like to experience a liberal education―and why it can still remake lives.
The social instinct : How Cooperation Shaped the World
【著者】Nichola Raihani
【出版社】Griffin (August 22, 2023)
【馆藏地】理科馆理科书库
【索书号】C912.4 /R149 /E
【简介】In the tradition of Richard Dawkins's The Selfish Gene, Nichola Raihani's The Social Instinct is a profound and engaging look at the hidden relationships underpinning human evolution, and why cooperation is key to our future survival.
Cooperation is the means by which life arose in the first place. It’s how life progressed through scale and complexity, from free-floating strands of genetic material to nation states. But given what we know about evolution, cooperation is also something of a puzzle. How does cooperation begin, when on a Darwinian level, all the genes in the body care about is being passed on to the next generation? Why do meerkats care for one another’s offspring? Why do babbler birds in the Kalahari form colonies in which only a single pair breeds? And how come some reef-dwelling fish punish each other for harming fish from another species?
A biologist by training, Raihani looks at where and how collaborative behavior emerges throughout the animal kingdom, and what problems it solves. She reveals that the species that exhibit cooperative behaviour most similar to our own tend not to be other apes; they are birds, insects, and fish, occupying far more distant branches of the evolutionary tree. By understanding the problems they face, and how they cooperate to solve them, we can glimpse how human cooperation first evolved. And we can also understand what it is about the way we cooperate that makes us so distinctive–and so successful.
Russia in the Early Modern World: The Continuity of Change
【著 者】Donald Ostrowski
【出版社】Lexington Books (January 25, 2022)
【馆藏地】理科馆外教中心（东）
【索书号】K512.4 /O85 /E
【简介】 A fundamental problem in studying early modern Russian history is determining Russia’s historical development in relationship to the rest of the world. The focus throughout this book is on the continuity of Russian policies during the early modern period (1450–1800) and that those policies coincided with those of other successful contemporary Eurasian polities. The continuities occurred in the midst of constant change, but neither one nor the other, continuities or changes alone, can account for Russia’s success. Instead, Russian rulers from Ivan III to Catherine II with their hub advisors managed to sustain a balance between the two. During the early modern period, these Russian rulers invited into the country foreign experts to facilitate the transfer of technology and know-how, mostly from Europe but also from Asia. In this respect, they were willing to look abroad for solutions to domestic problems. Russia looked westward for military weaponry and techniques at the same time it was expanding eastward into the Eurasian heartland. The ruling elite and by extension the entire ruling class worked in cooperation with the ruler to implement policies. The Church played an active role in supporting the government and in seeking to eliminate opposition to the government.
Poster Art of the Disney Parks
【编者】Danny Handke, Vanessa Hunt
【出版社】Disney Editions; Updated edition (October 11, 2022)
【馆藏地】理科馆外教中心（东）
【索书号】J534 /H236(2) /E
【简介】 An expanded and updated second edition of the stunning collection of posters from Disney theme parks around the world! Features more than 85 new posters and concept art pieces and a lively narrative about their behind-the-scenes development.
Disney attraction posters have been an important means of communication since Disneyland began displaying them in 1956. These eye-catching pieces of artwork adorn the parks with flair and style, and are displayed to build excitement and disseminate information about the newest additions to the Disney landscape. As evidenced by the evolution of the attraction posters, art styles and design techniques have certainly changed over the years. These characteristics also differ from continent to continent. Posters from EPCOT, Tokyo Disneyland, Disneyland Paris, Hong Kong Disneyland, and Shanghai Disneyland exhibit the nuances in presentation that give each park’s pantheon of posters its signature look and story.
Botanical Entanglements: Women, Natural Science, and the Arts in Eighteenth-Century England
【著者】Anna K. Sagal
【出版社】University of Virginia Press (August 18, 2022)
【馆藏地】理科馆理科书库
【索书号】N915.61 /S129 /E
【简 介】 To this day, women face barriers in entering scientific professions, and in earlier eras the challenges were greater still. But in Botanical Entanglements, Anna Sagal reveals how women’s active participation in scientific discourses of the eighteenth century was enabled by the manipulation of social and cultural conventions that have typically been understood as limiting factors. By taking advantage of the intersections between domesticity, femininity, and nature, the writers and artists studied here laid claim to a specific authority on naturalist subjects, ranging from botany to entomology to natural history more broadly.
Through the Lens of Anthropology: An Introduction to Human Evolution and Culture
【编者】Robert Muckle, Laura Tubelle de González, Stacey L. Camp
【出版社】University of Toronto Press; 3rd edition (May 11, 2022)
【馆藏地】江湾馆三楼理科借阅区
【索书号】Q98 /M942(3) /E
【简介】Through the Lens of Anthropology is a concise introduction to anthropology that uses the twin themes of food and sustainability to connect evolution, biology, archaeology, history, language, and culture. The third edition remains a highly readable text that encourages students to think about current events and issues through an anthropological lens.
Beautifully illustrated with over 100 full-color images and maps, along with detailed figures and boxes, this is an anthropology book with a fresh perspective and a lively narrative that is filled with popular topics. The new edition has been updated to reflect the most recent developments in anthropology and the contributions of marginalized scholars, while the use of gender-neutral language makes for a more inclusive text. New content offers anthropological insight into contemporary issues such as COVID-19, Black Lives Matter, and #MeToo.
Through the Lens of Anthropology continues to be an essential text for those interested in learning more about the relevance and value of anthropology. The third edition is supplemented by a full suite of updated instructor and student resources. For more information visit www.lensofanthropology.com.
A Haven and a Hell: The Ghetto in Black America
【著者】Lance Freeman
【出版社】Columbia University Press (July 19, 2022)
【馆藏地】理科馆理科书库
【索书号】D771.262 /F855h /E
【简介】 The black ghetto is thought of as a place of urban decay and social disarray. Like the historical ghetto of Venice, it is perceived as a space of confinement, one imposed on black America by whites. It is the home of a marginalized underclass and a sign of the depth of American segregation. Yet while black urban neighborhoods have suffered from institutional racism and economic neglect, they have also been places of refuge and community.
In A Haven and a Hell, Lance Freeman examines how the ghetto shaped black America and how black America shaped the ghetto. Freeman traces the evolving role of predominantly black neighborhoods in northern cities from the late nineteenth century through the present day. At times, the ghetto promised the freedom to build black social institutions and political power. At others, it suppressed and further stigmatized African Americans. Freeman reveals the forces that caused the ghetto’s role as haven or hell to wax and wane, spanning the Great Migration, mid-century opportunities, the eruptions of the sixties, the challenges of the seventies and eighties, and present-day issues of mass incarceration, the subprime crisis, and gentrification. Offering timely planning and policy recommendations based in this history, A Haven and a Hell provides a powerful new understanding of urban black communities at a time when the future of many inner-city neighborhoods appears uncertain.
A World without Capitalism?: Alternative Discourses, Spaces, and Imaginaries
【著者】Christian W. Chun
【出版社】Routledge; 1st edition (December 16, 2021)
【馆藏地】理科馆理科书库
【索书号】H0 /C559 /E
【简介】In this book, Christian W. Chun examines the ways in which identities, discourses, and topographies of both capitalist and anti-capitalist imaginaries and realities are embodied in the everyday practices of people. A World without Capitalism? is a sociolinguistic ethnography that explores the heretofore limited research in applied linguistics and sociolinguistics on the discursive and materialized representations and enactments of capitalism.
Engaging across disciplinary fields, including applied linguistics, ethnography, political economy, philosophy, and cultural studies, Chun investigates in ethnographic detail how capitalism does and does not pervade people’s everyday experiences. This book aims to further contribute to a much-needed understanding of how discourses operate in the co-constructions of capitalist and anti-capitalist imaginaries and instantiated realities and practices as narrated, lived, and embodied by people and material artifacts.
This book is vital reading for students and researchers working in the fields of applied linguistics, discourse analysis, and cultural studies, as well as those interested in understanding capitalism and questioning how to live beyond it.
The Aperture for Modern CEOs: Aligning Purpose and Focus
【作 者】Dr. Sylvana Storey
【出版社】Business Expert Press (July 15, 2022)
【馆藏地】理科馆理科书库
【索书号】F272.91 /S884a /E
【简介】 In the 21st Century, the Chief Executive Officers role is both complex and multifaceted. As the key architects of culture in their organizations, how their actions, behaviors and mindset are role modeled and perceived is pivotal and how they in turn, evoke leadership in everyone is essential.
Along with input from Global CEOs, this book examines and assesses how CEOs defines, navigate and instill key activities of organizational life and provokes and challenges the nature of their practice.
It shares practical strategies on how CEOs ways of being can influence and contribute to the adoption and embedment of ways of working that better serve employees, stakeholders and organizations. Ultimately, in the pursuance of healthier organizations!
Key activities of organizational life include purpose and vision; strategy and structure; leaders’ actions, behavior and mindset; culture change and change drivers; new ways of thinking, doing and being and, activities for the future in terms of space, innovation and reimagining.
Secularism in the Arab World: Contexts, Ideas and Consequences
【著者】Aziz al-Azmeh
【出版社】Edinburgh University Press (March 18, 2020)
【馆藏地】理科馆外教中心（东）
【索书号】B911 /A324 /E
【简 介】This book is a translation of Aziz al-Azmeh’s seminal work Al-'Ilmaniya min mandhur mukhtalif that was first published in Beirut in 1992. Both celebrated and criticised for its reflections on Arab secularisation and secularism in the modern history of the Arab World, it is the only study to date to approach its subject as a set of historical changes which affected the regulation of the social, political and cultural order, and which permeated the concrete workings of society, rather than as an ideological discussion framed from the outset by the assumed opposition between Islam and secularism.
The author takes a comprehensive analytical perspective to show that an almost imperceptible yet real, multi-faceted and objective secularising process has been underway in the Arab world since the 1850s. The early onset was the result of adapting to systemic novelties introduced at the time and a reaction to the perceived European advance and local retardation. The need for meaningful reform, and the actions taken in order to put in place a new organisation of state and society based on modern organisational and educational criteria, rather than older, religious traditions, stemmed from the perceived weakness of Arab polities and from an internal drive to overcome this situation.
The book follows these themes into the close of the 20th century, marked with the rise of Islamism. A preface to the English translation takes a retrospective look at the theme from the vantage point of social, political and intellectual issues of relevance today.