从数字货币及智能合约技术层面，解读了区块链技术在金融领域的运用。“如果你正在寻找一本在技术层面解释比特币是如何运作的，并且你有一定计算机科学和编程的基本知识，这本书应该很适合你。”
《区块链：技术驱动金融》回答了一系列关于比特币如何运用区块链技术运作的问题，并且着重讲述了各种技术功能，以及未来会形成的网络。比特币是如何运作的？它因何而与众不同？你的比特币安全吗？比特币用户如何匿名？区块链如何帮助比特币实现没有身份的共识？我们可以在比特币这一平台上创建什么应用程序？加密数字货币可以被监管吗？创建一种新的数字货币将会带来什么样的变化？未来将会如何发展？
读完这本书，你会了解到所有比特币和其他数字货币相关的知识，对区块链技术具备基础性认识，能够区别那些完全虚构的故事。你将会对于需要什么样的安全软件，如何与比特币网络进行交互有了基础概念，也可以将区块链的概念整合应用于自己的项目中。你，将会成为时代的引领者！

It is the summer of 1997. In England， Alec Valentine is returning home to care for his ailing mother， Alice， a task that only reinforces his deep sense of inadequacy. In San Francisco， his older brother Larry prepares to come home as well， knowing it will be hard to conceal that his acting career is sliding toward sleaze and his marriage is faltering. In Paris， on the other hand， the Hungarian exile László Lázár， whose play Alec is translating， seems to have it all--a comfortable home， critical acclaim， a loving boyfriend， and a close circle of friends. Yet he cannot shake off the memories of the 1956 uprising and the cry for help he left unanswered. As these unforgettable characters soon learn， the moment has come to assess the turns taken and the opportunities missed. For each of them will soon take part in acts of liberation， even if they are not necessarily what they might have expected.Evoking an extraordinary range of emotions and insights， Oxygen lives and breathes beyond the final page.

A chronicle of life of an eighteenth-century man born without the ability to feel pain, this amazing book "offers a panoply of literary pleasures" (Washington Post Book World). Winner of Britain's James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the 1999 IMPAC Award. "Astoundingly good" (New York Times Book Review).

本书描绘了天生没有痛楚的男孩短短三十二年的一生。
一个生来没有痛觉的男孩——詹姆斯。到了十一岁才开口讲话。由于传染病肆虐、家庭变故，他开始流浪的日子，遭遇各种奇事：有人利用他没有痛觉的身体贩卖灵药，有人收藏他成为展示品……
“铁石心肠”的詹姆斯成为优秀的外科医生，在肌理血肉间挥汗操刀。直到他爱上女疯子多特，又瞬间失去她，詹姆斯开始感受到人类应有的七情六欲，开始懂得悲伤、流泪和身体的疼痛……
“痛”是身体的感觉；内心的痛是“痛苦”。本书深刻地探讨这两种存在于人身的痛楚。作者在繁复紧凑的情节中叙述詹姆斯充满传奇的一生，可谓文学作品中的极品！

Arvind Narayanan, Joseph Bonneau, Edward Felten, Andrew Miller, Steven Goldfeder, Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies, Princeton: Princeton University Press (forthcoming), 2016. This textbook closely follows the video lectures in the course. The official and professionally done version of the book will be out this summer.
Introduction to the book
There’s a lot of excitement about Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. Optimists claim that Bitcoin will
fundamentally alter payments, economics, and even politics around the world. Pessimists claim
Bitcoin is inherently broken and will suffer an inevitable and spectacular collapse.
Underlying these differing views is significant confusion about what Bitcoin is and how it works. We
wrote this book to help cut through the hype and get to the core of what makes Bitcoin unique.
To really understand what is special about Bitcoin, we need to understand how it works at a technical
level. Bitcoin truly is a new technology and we can only get so far by explaining it through simple
analogies to past technologies.
We’ll assume that you have a basic understanding of computer science — how computers work, data
structures and algorithms, and some programming experience. If you’re an undergraduate or
graduate student of computer science, a software developer, an entrepreneur, or a technology
hobbyist, this textbook is for you.
In this book we’ll address the important questions about Bitcoin. How does Bitcoin work? What
makes it different? How secure are your bitcoins? How anonymous are Bitcoin users? What
applications can we build using Bitcoin as a platform? Can cryptocurrencies be regulated? If we were
designing a new cryptocurrency today, what would we change? What might the future hold?
Each chapter has a series of homework questions to help you understand these questions at a deeper
level. In addition, there is a series of programming assignments in which you’ll implement various
components of Bitcoin in simplified models. If you’re an auditory learner, most of the material of this
book is also available as a series of video lectures. You can find all these on our Coursera course . You
should also supplement your learning with information you can find online including the Bitcoin wiki,
forums, and research papers, and by interacting with your peers and the Bitcoin community.
After reading this book, you’ll know everything you need to be able to separate fact from fiction when
reading claims about Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. You’ll have the conceptual foundations you
need to engineer secure software that interacts with the Bitcoin network. And you’ll be able to
integrate ideas from Bitcoin into your own projects.
https://www.coursera.org/course/bitcointech

Giacomo Casanova arrives in England in the summer of 1763 at the age of thirty-eight, seeking a respite from his restless travels and liaisons. But the lure of company proves too hard to resist and the dazzlingly pretty face of young Marie Charpillon even harder. Casanova's pursuit of this elusive bewitcher drives him from exhilaration to despair and to attempt to reinvent himself in the roles of labourer, writer and country squire. Based on a little-known episode in Casanova's life, this is a scintillating, poignant, often comic portrait of a far more complex figure than legend suggests and of the decadent society in which he operated.

A year of bones, of grave-dirt, relentless work. Of mummified corpses and chanting priests. A year of rape, suicide, sudden death. Of friendship too. Of desire. Of love...A year unlike any other he has lived. Deep in the heart of Paris, its oldest cemetery is, by 1785, overflowing, tainting the very breath of those who live nearby. Into their midst comes Jean-Baptiste Baratte, a young, provincial engineer charged by the king with demolishing it. At first Baratte sees this as a chance to clear the burden of history, a fitting task for a modern man of reason. But before long, he begins to suspect that the destruction of the cemetery might be a prelude to his own.

At the dawn of the Enlightenment, James Dyer is born unable to feel pain. A source of wonder and scientific curiosity as a child, he rises through the ranks of Georgian society to become a brilliant surgeon. Yet as a human being he fails, for he can no more feel love and compassion than pain. Until, en route to St Petersburg to inoculate the Empress Catherine against smallpox, he meets his nemesis and saviour.