1779. Eight-year-old Ludwig van Beethoven, called "Louis", is already known as a musical prodigy. He learns to go his own way - much to the dismay of the people around him. Some years later, he meets Mozart during times of political upheaval. The unconventional genius and French Revolution are sparking a fire in Louis' heart; he doesn't want to serve a master - only the arts. Facing times of family tragedies and unrequited love, he almost gives up. However, Louis makes it to Vienna to study under Haydn in 1792, and the rest is history. Who was this man, whose music has since touched countless hearts and minds? At the end of his life, the master is isolated by loss of loved ones and hearing. Surely though, he was way ahead of his times.

The renowned historian Keith Thomas has written a peerless study of the place of civility in the shaping of English society between the early sixteenth and the late eighteenth centuries. Dramatic changes in court fashion and manners took place, but equally important was the emergence of an urban trading and manufacturing class with new values and standards of behavior. Traditional notions of class, gender, social custom, and "Englishness" would all be affected by the upheavals of the period. Civility emerged in contrast to barbarism, as England took its first steps towards global domination. Displaying a true master's grasp of the period, Thomas offers a compelling and wide-ranging analysis of the connections between changing notions of civility, the justification of colonial expansion, and the invention of race.

Throughout the ages man has struggled with his perceived place in the natural world. The idea of humans cultivating the Earth to suit specific needs is one of the greatest points of contention in this struggle. For how would have civilization progressed, if not by the clearance of the forests, the cultivation of the soil, and the conservation of wild landscape into human settlement? Yet what of the healing powers of unexploited nature, its long-term importance in the perpetuation of human civilization, and the inherent beauty of wild scenery? At no time were these questions addressed as pointedly and with such great consequence as in England between the sixteenth and late eighteenth centuries. "Between 1500 and 1800 there occurred a whole cluster of changes in the way in which men and women, at all social levels, perceived and classified the natural world around them," explains Keith Thomas. "New sensibilities arose toward animals, plants, and landscape. The relationship of man to other species was redefined; and his right to exploit those species for his own advantage was sharply challenged."
Man and the Natural World aims not just to explain present interest in preserving the environment and protecting the rights of animals, but to reconstruct an earlier mental world. Thomas seeks to expose the assumptions beneath the perceptions, reasonings, and feelings of the inhabitants of early modern England toward the animals, birds, vegetation, and physical landscape among which they spent their lives, often in conditions of proximity which are now difficult for us to appreciate. It was a time when a conviction of man's ascendancy over the natural world gave way to a new concern for the environment and sense of kinship with other species. Here, for example, Thomas illustrates the changing attitudes toward the woodlands. John Morton observed in 1712, "In a country full of civilized inhabitants" timber could not be "suffered to grow. It must give way to fields and pastures, which are of more immediate use and concern to life." Shortly thereafter, in 1763, Edwin Lascelles pronounced the "The beauty of a country consists chiefly in the wood." People's relationships with animals were also in the process of dramatic change as seen in their growing obsession with pet keeping. The use of human names for animals, the fact that pets were rarely eaten, though not for gastronomic reasons, and pets being included in family portraits and often fed better than the servants all demonstrated a major shift in man's position on human uniqueness.
The issues raised in this fascinating work are even more alive today than they were just ten years ago. Preserving the environment, saving the rain forests, and preventing the extinction of species may seem like fairly recent concerns, however, Man and the Natural World explores how these ideas took root long ago. These issues have much to offer not only environmental activists, but historians as well, for it is impossible to disentangle what the people of the past thought about plants and animals from what they thought about themselves.

对于18世纪后期的执政者和有产阶级而言，法国大革命之后的那些年他们被强烈的焦虑缠绕。君主及其臣子生活在对叛乱的持续恐惧中，认为他们的权力和性命都处于危险之中。在他们自己偏执的想法推动下，他们选择通过监控网络、暴力手段和秘密警察镇压所有的威胁和叛乱，无论这些威胁和叛乱是真 实的还是虚幻的。从此，欧洲乃至整个世界，进入一个新的时代。
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在《幻影恐惧》中，屡获殊荣的历史学家亚当•查莫斯基认为，旨在防止动乱的严厉措施产生了灾难性的和深远的影响。正是这些措施激起了那些他们想要去镇压的叛乱。到这一时代结束的时候，在整个欧洲大陆，恐怖运动的第一次萌动已然十分明显。欧洲君主们的担心终于成为自我实现的预言。
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《幻影恐惧》探索这个麻烦不断而又引人入胜的时代，从埃德蒙•伯克到玛丽•雪莱的政治家和文化领袖被迫选边站，他们要么支持，要么反对蕴含在新生全能集权国家中的反革命精神。这个时期的政治动荡形势将直接导致1848年的革命和第一次世界大战中秩序的崩塌。我们仍然生活在这一政治妄想时代的遗产之下。这些怀疑和镇压的狂暴岁月是欧洲历史接下来发展的关键。在查莫斯基对这段专横的历史时刻的记载中，绝望的君主逼着世界走上了革命、恐怖和世界大战之路。
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充满才华和原创力。——《经济学家》
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查莫斯基的写作极富天赋，充满奇思妙想，尤其擅长讲述关于俄罗斯的故事。——《大西洋月刊》
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查莫斯基对荒谬的审查制度和无能警察的敏锐观察及其精彩刻画，定会让读者停不下来。——《现代史期刊》（Journal of Modern History）
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查莫斯基展示了暴政是怎样带来这些触目惊心、荒诞无稽的可怕结果……这是一个精彩纷呈的故事。——《泰晤士报》
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（这本书讲述了一段）从1789年到1848年国家管制在欧洲日益加强的历史……从作者对国家审查、监视、暴行的客观记述中，我们可以看出查莫斯基对于政治史和国际关系令人印象深刻的独到见解。在他看来，是这些暴政本身最终引来了不断的革命反抗。——《华尔街日报》
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这本经勤勉研究、完美撰写的学术著作论点丰富，让人十分信服。亚当•查莫斯基为反动的欧洲正统王朝专制提供了确凿的案例，华丽的贵族式辞藻也恰如其分地将其表现了出来。他在这个过程中将一整队不可侵犯的人物带进了历史的屠宰场。毫无疑问，这是一段修正主义的历史。
——安德鲁•罗伯茨，著有《战争风云:第二次世界大战新史》
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亚当•查莫斯基凭借独有的资质，优雅地剖析了紧接着法国大革命而产生的偏执、疑惧和阴谋论。他描绘出这个年代里现代警察国家的诞生，欧洲专制主义的起源以及后来我们所谓的阶级斗争的起点。《幻影恐惧》是一部及时的原创性历史书，它是一部通往过去的指南，同时也让人对当今有所反思。
——安妮•阿普尔鲍姆，著作《古拉格：一部历史》，获普利策奖
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一部令人印象极为深刻的重要著作。《幻影恐惧》具有学术性，文字优美而富有趣味，在纵览革命时代的反动欧洲过程中，几乎每一页都有令人赞叹的洞见。
——奥兰多•菲吉斯，著有《俄国革命史:1891-1991》
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极具吸引力……充满了引人入胜的细节和鲜明的旁白。亚当•查莫斯基像宫廷舞会的舞者一样书写：优雅、高贵、技艺精湛、步履稳健。
——英国《旁观者》杂志

启蒙运动决定性地开启了欧洲思想世俗化的进程，它宣扬理性与批判性思维，思想、宗教和言论自由，科学的价值，以及对进步的追求，至今影响深远。然而，这并非一场简单的、思想统一的运动。历经整个18世纪，运动的侧重点不断发生变化；伏尔泰、狄德罗、休谟和卢梭等启蒙哲人的思想，共识与分 歧并存；各国启蒙运动的政治和宗教宣言也不尽相同……
本书作者罗伊·波特用优美流畅的笔触，理清了启蒙运动中这些复杂难明之处，提供一种新的综合视野来审视这场运动的多个层面。只有清除掉根深蒂固的神话和偏见，我们才能重新评估启蒙运动的性质和意义。

Between the mid-eighteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries, Qing rulers, officials, and scholars fused diverse, fragmented perceptions of foreign territory into one integrated worldview. In the same period, a single "foreign" policy emerged as an alternative to the many localized "frontier" policies hitherto pursued on the coast, in Xinjiang, and in Tibet. By unraveling Chinese, Manchu, and British sources to reveal the information networks used by the Qing empire to gather intelligence about its emerging rival, British India, this book explores China's altered understanding of its place in a global context. Far from being hobbled by a Sinocentric worldview, Qing China's officials and scholars paid close attention to foreign affairs. To meet the growing British threat, they adapted institutional practices and geopolitical assumptions to coordinate a response across their maritime and inland borderlands. In time, the new and more active response to Western imperialism built on this foundation reshaped not only China's diplomacy but also the internal relationship between Beijing and its frontiers.

大卫·休谟，18世纪英国哲学家，历史学家，经济学家。休谟建立了近代欧洲哲学史上第一个不可知论的哲学体系。
本书1954年出版了英文首版，1980年出版了第二版，2001年牛津大学出版社再次以平装本形式修订重印。半个世纪以来，莫斯纳的《大卫·休谟传》一直是这位伟大的思想家 和作家的（现代） 最权威的传记。本书不仅对大卫·休谟的生平有详细的著述，披露了关于休谟的罕见史实，同时也还原了一个精彩纷呈的18世纪，更探究了休谟所有的智识领域和智识活动，探究了作为哲学家、政治理论家、经济学家、历史学家和文人的多重面向的休谟，休谟的哲学——作为一种心智倾向，它为自己找到了这些面向不同的表达方式——在本书中得到充分的体现。
在这个新版本中有详细的书目、索引和文本补充，使之成为学者和高年级学生研究休谟、认识论和哲学史的完美文本。它也是那些对18世纪和启蒙运动感兴趣的历史学家、文学学者以及任何对启蒙哲学感兴趣的读者的理想选择。中文版即是根据此版译出。
--学者及媒体推荐—
莫斯纳的著作是一项引人瞩目的学术成就，对于休谟研究者来说是一个不可或缺的工具；对于所有喜欢与研究18世纪启蒙运动和文学史的学者以及读者来说是一个取之不尽的知识宝藏。——Richard H. Popkin，哲学季刊
这部堪称典范的作品已经远超一本传记的价值。它是对18世纪热烈的智识研究的回应；它不仅关乎哲学研究，更是面向大众之书。——C.E. Vulliamy, 观察家
这是一部酝酿已久的著作，在经过近20年的漫长准备之后，它于1954年首次付梓。这部传记是作者漫长而快乐的研究生涯所孕育出来的丰盈厚重之作。作者兴趣广博、智力超群，对18世纪启蒙运动和休谟研究做出了无可估量的贡献。——泰晤士文学副刊

本书描绘了自苏格兰与英格兰的《联合法案》诞生至维多利亚女王登基期间英国国家的形成历程。通过描述那些对“英国性”形成至关重要事件，如新教信仰、帝国扩张红利、美国独立、统治精英及王室形象的变化、英法战争、女权发展、废奴运动、天主教徒解放运动、1832年议会改革法案等，作者琳达·科利向我们揭示了大不列颠如何凝聚成一个更加统一的国家。同时，她也通过历史维度向我们展示了“英国性”日后的发展方向。
1992年该书第一版问世，随即在联合王国和其他地方激起一场关于国家身份的大讨论，此后常销不衰，并于2009年推出修订版。科利在书中所运用的史料十分丰富，并配有大量18、19世纪的政治讽刺画，使之趣味盎然，引人入胜。
1993年沃尔夫森历史奖获奖图书
在以所有语言出版的关于国家身份问题的研究中，本书是最为闪耀、最有洞察力的研究成果”
——英国著名思想家、学者 汤姆·奈恩
琳达·科利的文笔清晰优雅……她所具有的历史概括力使其在同辈中出类拔萃……她扣人心弦的著作势必影响深远。
——英国著名历史学家E. P. 汤普森
这是一部充满开拓精神且不带个人主观色彩的著作。
——英国著名历史学家基思·托马森
本书有助于我们理解英国的过去，以及当前围绕未来英国的塑造和身份认同所展开的讨论。
——科林·多布森