For readers of Laura Hillenbrand's Seabiscuit and Unbroken, the dramatic story of the American rowing team that stunned the world at Hitler's 1936 Berlin Olympics
Daniel James Brown’s robust book tells the story of the University of Washington’s 1936 eight-oar crew and their epic quest for an Olympic gold medal, a team that transformed the sport and grabbed the attention of millions of Americans. The sons of loggers, shipyard workers, and farmers, the boys defeated elite rivals first from eastern and British universities and finally the German crew rowing for Adolf Hitler in the Olympic games in Berlin, 1936.
The emotional heart of the story lies with one rower, Joe Rantz, a teenager without family or prospects, who rows not for glory, but to regain his shattered self-regard and to find a place he can call home. The crew is assembled by an enigmatic coach and mentored by a visionary, eccentric British boat builder, but it is their trust in each other that makes them a victorious team. They remind the country of what can be done when everyone quite literally pulls together—a perfect melding of commitment, determination, and optimism.
Drawing on the boys’ own diaries and journals, their photos and memories of a once-in-a-lifetime shared dream, The Boys in the Boat is an irresistible story about beating the odds and finding hope in the most desperate of times—the improbable, intimate story of nine working-class boys from the American west who, in the depths of the Great Depression, showed the world what true grit really meant. It will appeal to readers of Erik Larson, Timothy Egan, James Bradley, and David Halberstam's The Amateurs.
[该内容由Taobao.com 乐读书屋提供]

The follow-up to Pinker’s groundbreaking The Better Angels of Our Nature presents the big picture of human progress: people are living longer, healthier, freer, and happier lives, and while our problems are formidable, the solutions lie in the Enlightenment ideal of using reason and science.
Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data: In seventy-five jaw-dropping graphs, Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West, but worldwide. This progress is not the result of some cosmic force. It is a gift of the Enlightenment: the conviction that reason and science can enhance human flourishing.
Far from being a naïve hope, the Enlightenment, we now know, has worked. But more than ever, it needs a vigorous defense. The Enlightenment project swims against currents of human nature–tribalism, authoritarianism, demonization, magical thinking–which demagogues are all too willing to exploit. Many commentators, committed to political, religious, or romantic ideologies, fight a rearguard action against it. The result is a corrosive fatalism and a willingness to wreck the precious institutions of liberal democracy and global cooperation.
With intellectual depth and literary flair, Enlightenment Now makes the case for reason, science, and humanism: the ideals we need to confront our problems and continue our progress.

When Hisham Matar was nineteen years old he came across the Sienese School of painting for the first time. In the year in which Matar's life was shattered by the disappearance of his father the work of the great artists of Siena seemed to offer him a sense of hope. Over the years since then, Matar's feelings towards these paintings would deepen and, as he says, 'Siena began to occupy the sort of uneasy reverence the devout might feel towards Mecca or Rome or Jerusalem'.
A Month in Siena is the encounter, twenty-five years later, between the writer and the city he had worshipped from afar. It is a dazzling evocation of an extraordinary place and its effect on the writer's life. It is an immersion in painting, a consideration of grief and a profoundly moving contemplation of the relationship between art and the human condition.

A practical guide to managing your attention--the most powerful resource you have to get stuff done, become more creative, and live a meaningful life
Our attention has never been as overwhelmed as it is today. Many of us recognize that our brains struggle to multitask. Despite this, we feel compelled to do so anyway while we fill each moment of our lives to the brim with mindless distraction. Hyperfocus provides profound insights into how you can best take charge of your attention to achieve a greater sense of purpose and productivity throughout the day.
The most recent neuroscientific research reveals that our brain has two powerful modes that can be unlocked when we use our attention effectively: a focused mode (hyperfocus), which is the foundation for being highly productive, and a creative mode (scatterfocus), which enables us to connect ideas in novel ways. Hyperfocus helps you access each of the two mental modes so you can concentrate more deeply, think more clearly, and work and live more deliberately every day. Chris Bailey examines such topics such as:
* identifying and dealing with the four key types of distraction and interruption;
* establishing a clear physical and mental environment in which to work;
* controlling motivation and working fewer hours to become more productive;
* taking time-outs with intention;
* multitasking strategically; and
* learning when to pay attention and when to let your mind wander wherever it wants to.
By transforming how you think about your attention, Hyperfocus reveals that the more effectively you learn to take charge of it, the better you'll be able to manage every aspect of your life.

She was known to the world as Emily Doe when she stunned millions with a letter. Brock Turner had been sentenced to just six months in county jail after he was found sexually assaulting her on Stanford's campus. Her victim impact statement was posted on BuzzFeed, where it instantly went viral--viewed by eleven million people within four days, it was translated globally and read on the floor of Congress; it inspired changes in California law and the recall of the judge in the case. Thousands wrote to say that she had given them the courage to share their own experiences of assault for the first time.
Now she reclaims her identity to tell her story of trauma, transcendence, and the power of words. It was the perfect case, in many ways--there were eyewitnesses, Turner ran away, physical evidence was immediately secured. But her struggles with isolation and shame during the aftermath and the trial reveal the oppression victims face in even the best-case scenarios. Her story illuminates a culture biased to protect perpetrators, indicts a criminal justice system designed to fail the most vulnerable, and, ultimately, shines with the courage required to move through suffering and live a full and beautiful life.
Know My Name will forever transform the way we think about sexual assault, challenging our beliefs about what is acceptable and speaking truth to the tumultuous reality of healing. It also introduces readers to an extraordinary writer, one whose words have already changed our world. Entwining pain, resilience, and humor, this memoir will stand as a modern classic.

"Think Again is a must-read for anyone who wants to create a culture of learning and exploration, whether at home, at work, or at school... In an increasingly divided world, the lessons in this book are more important than ever."
--Bill and Melinda Gates
The bestselling author of Give and Take and Originals examines the critical art of rethinking: learning to question your opinions and open other people's minds, which can position you for excellence at work and wisdom in life
Intelligence is usually seen as the ability to think and learn, but in a rapidly changing world, there's another set of cognitive skills that might matter more: the ability to rethink and unlearn. In our daily lives, too many of us favor the comfort of conviction over the discomfort of doubt. We listen to opinions that make us feel good, instead of ideas that make us think hard. We see disagreement as a threat to our egos, rather than an opportunity to learn. We surround ourselves with people who agree with our conclusions, when we should be gravitating toward those who challenge our thought process. The result is that our beliefs get brittle long before our bones. We think too much like preachers defending our sacred beliefs, prosecutors proving the other side wrong, and politicians campaigning for approval--and too little like scientists searching for truth. Intelligence is no cure, and it can even be a curse: being good at thinking can make us worse at rethinking. The brighter we are, the blinder to our own limitations we can become.
Organizational psychologist Adam Grant is an expert on opening other people's minds--and our own. As Wharton's top-rated professor and the bestselling author of Originals and Give and Take, he makes it one of his guiding principles to argue like he's right but listen like he's wrong. With bold ideas and rigorous evidence, he investigates how we can embrace the joy of being wrong, bring nuance to charged conversations, and build schools, workplaces, and communities of lifelong learners. You'll learn how an international debate champion wins arguments, a Black musician persuades white supremacists to abandon hate, a vaccine whisperer convinces concerned parents to immunize their children, and Adam has coaxed Yankees fans to root for the Red Sox. Think Again reveals that we don't have to believe everything we think or internalize everything we feel. It's an invitation to let go of views that are no longer serving us well and prize mental flexibility over foolish consistency. If knowledge is power, knowing what we don't know is wisdom.

Q. Why do you drive on the left side of the road? A. In the violent Middle Ages you kept to the left for the simple reason that you never knew who you'd meet on your travels. You made sure that a stranger passed on the right so you could go for your sword in case he proved unfriendly.
This witty and accessible book explains how our national characteristics - our sense of humour, our hobbies, our favourite foods and our behaviour with the opposite sex - are all defined by our nation's extraordinary geography, geology, climate and weather.
You will learn how we would be as freezing cold as Siberia without the Gulf Stream; why today's cramped train seats are exactly the same size as Roman chariots; why the Midlands became the home of the British curry. It identifies the materials that make England, too: the faint pink Aberdeen granite of kerbstones; that precise English mix of air temperature, smell and light that hits you the moment you touch down at Heathrow.

I imagined lamplight, shadows, soft voices, clothes put away, the low sound of late news on the radio. And I thought as I crossed the bridge at Baggot Street to face the last stretch of my own journey home that no matter what I had done, I had not done that.' In the captivating stories that make up "The Empty Family", Colm Toibin delineates with a tender and unique sensibility lives of unspoken or unconscious longing, of individuals, often willingly, cast adrift from their history. From the young Pakistani immigrant who seeks some kind of permanence in a strange town to the Irish woman reluctantly returning to Dublin and discovering a city that refuses to acknowledge her long absence each of Toibin's stories manage to contain whole worlds: stories of fleeing the past and returning home, of family threads lost and ultimately regained.

by j. m. coetzee. viking, 1997

看完了。

书名已经说明白了，是库切少年时候的事情，个人回忆加上文学色彩吧。

他在另外一个城里住的时候，也还好，虽然已经有种族、宗教等各方面问题。搬回（他们很早就搬到另外一个较小所以乡土的地方）cape town以后，各方面不如意。爸爸丢了工作从此一蹶不振。他不喜欢cape town这个大城市的原因在于自己上的学校里面每个人的虚伪。一个教英文的爱尔兰人处处骂英国，不认真地教书，又偏向那些有英国色彩的孩子们，骂库切心中英雄的俄国。

他对他爸爸一向就瞧不惯，因为他嫌他太没有文化和修养（他是Afrikaans－－应该指的是被归化的欧洲人，库切的祖父是地道的几乎古板的英国人，几乎从零开始自己的事业，买了个自己的农场，做到那个小镇的市长；库切有几位叔叔，一位后来一直经营那农场－－这个是他向往的地方，也就是说他属于那个地方，虽然他知道那个地方永远不会属于他），只会看例如报纸或者报纸上填字游戏一类的东西，即使爸爸是念过莎士比亚和华兹华斯并向他推荐又有跟他一起讨论的愿望，这也无济于事；虽然是律师，却被别人骗取钱财，为了他自己的被人认识和交上朋友的感觉，所以还是个蠢律师；没有勇气面对生活的问题，最后装作找工作却躲在酒馆喝到很晚和家里睡大觉，却会吹嘘，并为了别人买这样的吹嘘而高兴，不管那别人出于什么样的问题。也可以用弗洛伊德来解释，不过我拒绝那样通行一切地方的公式。

妈妈在他少年时候各个方面都尽力保护。妈妈的祖父是个德国人，疯疯癫癫地写过一本书，被他其中一位女儿自己掏腰包印刷到处兜售，却仍然被遗忘－－库切也觉得那书无趣且写那书的人定然已经疯了。妈妈写的英文很棒。对于妈妈这样的关爱他有反感，因为规则是有人爱就意味着你得爱回去，他又不想负爱回去的责任和义务，所以时时地逃避或者故意装作不看到不受用。然而，最后因为生活的问题妈妈将要不再履行爱孩子这件事情的时候，他却觉得眷恋，觉得失去的可怕；另一方面，当妈妈为了维持家庭不去谴责以及甚至逐赶爸爸（库切觉得应该这样做）的时候，为了尽作为母亲的责任将一切都肩负下来牺牲自我的时候，库切又嘲笑这样的牺牲。


这人到处觉得不安全和受隔离，尤其放在南非大的社会环境里面。当时的人群分作三类，一类是白人，一类是colorful people（我估计是混血儿），再一类就是土著。他有土著的朋友，很有趣的玩耍，然而知道如果有一天这土著有机会往回打的话，他们会毫不留情；喜欢和一位叔叔经营的爷爷的农场上面的土著帮工玩儿，对于那里的严格等级制度不理解。他甚至喜欢固执古板的英国士兵，穿着红色服装，尽管这样很容易成为当地武装的打击对象；一起迈着正步前进，虽然如此定然有利于埋伏在石头后面的土著们痛击－－他也因此不喜欢这些土著，除了他的朋友－－对他他也不抱着幻想，知道有一天他会冷酷到底。

他就总想胜过别人，又怕为人嘲笑－－费尽一切想保持自己的尊严，所以非常judgemental；这人很难成为朋友，是恶毒的人，不是好人，你却又会觉得有些时候又值得亲近，有些时候又会为了朋友而站出来。

虽然很政治话，却是通过够文学的手段达到的。文笔真正优美，英文有节奏，不长也不短，文字既不过度简单也不绚丽地吓拽。

本雅名说文学的标准首先是文学的才是政治的。这本书，我觉得都是够的吧。 政治里面有感情，感情里面有政治。念起来有些juicy的生动，有些时候甚至会觉得那样到处都异化的现实里面竟有生活的乐趣和意思。

他有另外一本书叫做Youth，是这个的续集，也许到时候会看。

有一点：他故意让人觉得小地方的好，而大城市如cape town是没有诚意的，似乎陷入了城乡通常认为的对立之中了。

Evolutionary psychology—the compelling science
of human nature—has clarified the prehistoric origins
of human behavior and influenced many fields ranging
from economics to personal relationships. In Spent
Geoffrey Miller applies this revolutionary science’s
principles to a new domain: the sensual wonderland
of marketing and status seeking that we call American
consumer culture. Starting with the basic notion that
the goods and services we buy unconsciously advertise
our biological potential as mates and friends, Miller
examines the hidden factors that dictate our choices in
everything from lipstick to cars, from the magazines
we read to the music we listen to. With humor and
insight, Miller analyzes an array of product choices
and deciphers what our decisions say about ourselves,
giving us access to a new way of understanding—and
improving—our behaviors. Like Freakonomics or The
Tipping Point, Spent is a bold and revelatory book that
illuminates the unseen logic behind the chaos of consumerism
and suggests new ways we can become happier
consumers and more responsible citizens.
A leading evolutionary
psychologist probes the hidden
instincts behind our working,
shopping, and spending

毕加索曾提醒我们：“每个孩子都是个艺术家，问题在于如何确保他长大后依然是。”
《给孩子最好的成长力》源于作者在耶鲁大学儿童研究中心从事早期教育相关工作的经验。她带领我们深入当前的早期教育文化，充分暴露了天下父母的担心：如果没有合适的策略和工具，我们的小爱因斯坦可能会远远落后。
本书建议的核心是，我们与孩子的关系才是重要的学习工具，因为，在孩子的大脑中，爱和学习是两个相辅相成的概念。更幸运的是，孩子的大脑里本就拥有成长需要的所有要素。如果我们肯有爱但不加评判地观察他们，他们会告诉我们前进的方向。
本书提醒我们，孩子所在之处就是课堂，幼小的孩子天生可以在几乎任何地点和任何事情中学习。当我们学会恢复孩子早期学习的“游戏生境”，找到孩子的更佳学习区域，我们就会看到他们的活力与力量。

A counter-terrorist operation, codenamed Wildlife, is being mounted on the British crown colony of Gibraltar. Its purpose: to capture and abduct a high-value jihadist arms buyer. Its authors: an ambitious Foreign Office Minister, a private defense contractor who is also his bosom friend, and a shady American CIA operative of the evangelical far-right. So delicate is the operation that even the Minister’s personal private secretary, Toby Bell, is not cleared for it.
Three years later, a disgraced Special Forces Soldier delivers a message from the dead. Was Operation Wildlife the success it was cracked up to be—or a human tragedy that was ruthlessly covered up? Summoned by Sir Christopher (“Kit”) Probyn, retired British diplomat, to his decaying Cornish manor house, and closely observed by Kit’s daughter, Emily, Toby must choose between his conscience and duty to his Service. If the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing, how can he keep silent?

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A renowned historian captures a critical moment in Chinese history
Zhang Dai is recognized as one of the finest historians and essayists of China??s Ming dynasty. When he was born into a wealthy family in 1597, the Ming dynasty had been in place for 229 years. Zhang??s early life was marked by the expansive sense of progress that permeated Ming culture: the flourishing of reformist schools of Buddhism; wide-scale philanthropy; the education of women; a celebration of the visual arts, writing, and music; intellectual pursuit of medicine and science??this was truly a time of cultural creativity and renaissance in China.
When the Ming dynasty was overthrown in the Manchu invasion of 1644, Zhang Dai??s family lost their fortune and their way of life. Zhang Dai fled to the countryside, where, as a writer of tremendous skill, acuity, and passion, he spent his final forty years recounting his previous life as a way of leaving a legacy to his children and rebuilding a spirit shattered by the violent upheaval he had witnessed.
Celebrated China scholar Jonathan Spence has pored over Zhang Dai??s extraordinary documents and vividly brings to life seventeenth-century China. This absorbing book illuminates a culture??s transformation and reveals how China??s history affects its place in the world today.

The Penguin History of Europe series reaches the twentieth century with acclaimed scholar Ian Kershaw’s long-anticipated analysis of the pivotal years of World War I and World War II
 
The European catastrophe, the long continuous period from 1914 to 1949, was unprecedented in human history—an extraordinarily dramatic, often traumatic, and endlessly fascinating period of upheaval and transformation. This new volume in the Penguin History of Europe series offers comprehensive coverage of this tumultuous era. Beginning with the outbreak of World War I through the rise of Hitler and the aftermath of the Second World War, award-winning British historian Ian Kershaw combines his characteristic original scholarship and gripping prose as he profiles the key decision makers and the violent shocks of war as they affected the entire European continent and radically altered the course of European history. Kershaw identifies four major causes for this catastrophe: an explosion of ethnic-racist nationalism, bitter and irreconcilable demands for territorial revisionism, acute class conflict given concrete focus through the Bolshevik Revolution, and a protracted crisis of capitalism.
 
Incisive, brilliantly written, and filled with penetrating insights, To Hell and Back offers an indispensable study of a period in European history whose effects are still being felt today. 

I imagined lamplight, shadows, soft voices, clothes put away, the low sound of late news on the radio. And I thought as I crossed the bridge at Baggot Street to face the last stretch of my own journey home that no matter what I had done, I had not done that.' In the captivating stories that make up "The Empty Family" Colm Toibin delineates with a tender and unique sensibility lives of unspoken or unconscious longing, of individuals, often willingly, cast adrift from their history. From the young Pakistani immigrant who seeks some kind of permanence in a strange town to the Irish woman reluctantly returning to Dublin and discovering a city that refuses to acknowledge her long absence each of Toibin's stories manage to contain whole worlds: stories of fleeing the past and returning home, of family threads lost and ultimately regained.