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.

关于马克•布洛赫（1886-1944）的第一部传记。布洛赫是一名历史学家，两次世界大战的战士，抵抗运动的领袖，被逮捕后遭到严刑拷打，最终英勇就义。本书以大量私人书信、日记和资料为基础，参考众多尚未公开的档案，呈现了这位爱国者在第三共和国下的光辉一生。作为历史学家，布洛赫最为人熟知的或许是《历史学家的技艺》——对自己的人生事业所做的一系列发人深省的思考——以及《社会经济历史年鉴》杂志的联合创办人。他生活的时代阴云遍布，两次世界大战、反犹主义和集权主义使他深受影响。他勇于直面这些事件，最终成为某种智力型的英雄，他的一生则是竭力捍卫自由批判探索精神的缩影。

20世纪革命几乎席卷了全球。对中国来说，20世纪更是革命的世纪。如果要为20世纪中国寻找一个主题的话，那么这个主题恐怕只有“革命”最合适。避开革命而探讨20世纪中国历史几乎是难以想象的。革命不仅多次重构了最高权力结构，也全面重塑了当代中国的社会结构、价值伦理乃至普通百姓的日常生活。革命成为当代中国人最强烈、最深刻的记忆。本辑《新史学》正是以此为题展开，收录相关海内外学者论述。

中层理论的建构对于中国史研究的意义至少可表现在两个方面：一是尽量可使我们摆脱宏大叙事的纠缠。目前许多历史著作行文叙述总是宏阔而不细致，概论式的判断比比皆是，本质主义式的断语草草形成，里边唯独看不到日常生活状态下人的踪迹，人变成了冷冰冰的趋势与规律的符号表征。二是讨论如何改变史界只拉车不看路式的工匠型治史方式。作者新刊长序，收入其近十年的反思，趋向更加圆融的历史叙事。

《新史学:多学科对话的图景(套装上下册)》为我国现当代学术实力的一个集中反映。全国三十多位实力派精英学者，以“中国需要什么样的新史学——纪念粱启超《新史学》发表一百周年”为论域，从各自学科及研究的学术主题出发，对当下或历史中国的现代性、地方性知识、后现代等命题进行阐发，微言大义，很好地反映了多学科交叉背景下的中国历史学研究现状，具有很高的学术水平，对今后史学研究的探索大有裨益。可以说，这是一部在梁启超之后尝试展现当代”新史学”全貌的文粹，一部突破了传统单一学科研讨框架而策划的论文集著，一部中国史学界首次多学科交叉研讨会的全景记录，一部集萃了九大学科顶尖学者探究历史新型范式的长卷!

福建四堡是闽西群山中一处偏僻的村落，但在17世纪晚期至19世纪初叶，它却是繁华的雕版印刷业之乡，通过流动书贩和四堡人经营的大小书店，为中国南方提供了大量价格低廉的教科书、家用指南、医疗手册及传统名著。《文化贸易：清代至民国时期四堡的书籍交易》的作者通过对四堡地区出版业的长期实地考察、文献分析，穷十五年之功完成本书，对于晚清民国四堡的出版-销售业进行了细致的描述和深入的分析，进而使读者得以窥见南方基层社会的社会风俗、文化兴趣与精神状态，对于这一时期的文化史、社会史产生更为深刻的认识。

A survey of popular culture in 16th century Italy. Ginzburg’s study The Cheese & The Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-century Miller, first published in 1976, is one of those fascinating micro-histories which explores the remote lives of unknown and forgotten people. The story of Menocchio is one of a peasant life of obscurity but also one of strange and powerful ideas – confused and half-baked even – but powerful enough to bring him into conflict with the Inquisition and thereafter to the final purgatorial flames.
“I have said that, in my opinion, all was chaos … and out of that bulk a mass formed – just as cheese is made out of milk – and worms appeared in it, and these were the angels, and among that number of angels, there was also God, he too having been created out of that mass at the same time ….”
This was Menocchio’s own version of Genesis, recounted at his first interrogation: it has perhaps something in common with modern chaos theory. Sadly, the inquisitors did not appreciate the idea that God might have started out as a worm in a primordial curd. Nonetheless, this was Menocchio’s oft-repeated explanation, one he never recanted. More than an independent mind, Menocchio’s was a rebel spirit, harshly critical of Church and clergy and determined to have his say. His ‘learning’ was a fascinating hotch-potch of superstition, oral tradition, ‘strong’ ideas, misunderstood reading, peasant radicalism, paganism and ‘cottage cheese cosmology’. Ginzburg’s book details the patient mechanism of the Inquisition in Counter Reformation Italy as it sought to eradicate suspected heresy and heretical groups rather in the same way that Stalin suspected counter-revolution everywhere.
Bruno burned for the books he had written; Menocchio burned for the books he had misunderstood. Both burnings demonstrate among other things the truth of the old adage; a little learning can be a dangerous thing. Menocchio’s roasting generated more heat than light but at least it did not contradict the Laws of Thermodynamics. Today in Montereale the visitor will find the Domenico Scandella Social Centre. In the piazza there is a monument in the form of a large wheel of cheese with one slice missing. Our heretic has become a hero. Stephen Dedalus said of Bruno that, heretic or not, ‘he was terribly burnt’; so was the poor miller from Friuli.

在这本别开生面的书中，玛丽亚-露西娅·帕拉蕾丝一伯克考察了所谓“新史学”的特性。帕拉蕾丝一伯克在与九位引领了这场运动的学者的对话中，探讨了历史写作的新路径。在一系列的访谈中，阿萨·布里格斯、彼得-伯克、罗伯特·达恩顿、卡洛·金兹堡、杰克·古迪、丹尼尔·罗什、昆廷·斯金纳、基思·托马斯和娜塔莉·泽蒙·戴维斯，就他们的主要著作以及他们与别的重要史学家和理论家之间的关系，回答了相关的问题。
帕拉蕾丝一伯克促使每一位历史学家来说明他们的方法的合理性，反思自己的思想轨迹，她将历史学家们原本可能会深藏不露的经历和思想清晰地展现出来。这些访谈探究了历史学家们的个人经历和思想背景，为当代史学实践的可能性、问题和关注点提供了新的洞见。其结果就是这样一部生动而予人启迪的著作，它对于学生和研究者而言都会具有吸引力。
在来自意大利、法国、英国和美国的名声显赫的学者和一位敏锐的巴西提问者之间的这一系列对话。对于文化史这一激动人心的领域而言，是再好不过的入门书了。这位提问者具有一种杰出的能力，从她的对话人那儿套取极有意义的东西，让我们了解他们是怎么想的以及他们是些什么样的人。