Drawing on a range of examples from Western and developing cultures, this book offers a re-reading of the contemporary society as the product of both individual and collective identity and behaviour. Marxist interpretations of the expansion in the range and number of material goods have tended to view people as estranged from the objects they produce, while massive consumption reinforces the fragmented and individualistic nature of capitalism. In this book, the author develops a more positive theory of material culture, revealing the creative potential in the relationship between people and goods. He argues that rather than being oppressed by them, people redefine material objects to make them express themselves and their cultures. He shows that everyday objects reflect not only personal tastes and attributes, but also moral principles and social ideals.

本书是用于中国近现代音乐史研究和教学的史料汇编，时限为1840-1919年。近代史下限常定为1949年，但考虑到1919年以后的音乐史料便于查找，因此，这部分史料未被收入本书，只是沿用“近代”概念。书中收录的史料，大多是从“五四”运动以前的期刊、报纸以及书籍中收集到的，个别也利用了现代出版物。
本史料所反映的是1840年至1919年期间，以新音乐为主潮、转型时期的音乐文化，以资音乐理论工作者借鉴和参考。至于该时期的传统音乐的史料，当另编成册。
本书共分六辑，每辑按时间先后为序。

"Funkenstein's powerful essay belongs to that genre of intellectual history which has addressed itself to... the metaphysical foundations of modern science. As such, it is almost exclusively concerned with affinities and tensions between ideas. And traced they are with consummate skill... Liberation from naive conceptions of historical continuity gives Funkenstein leave to concentrate on a finely nuanced exegesis of those philosophers who fall within his purview. The result is a work of discernment and distinction."--J. H. Brooke, The Times Higher Education Supplement

First published in 1967, "Writing and Difference, " a collection of Jacques Derrida's essays written between 1959 and 1966, has become a landmark of contemporary French thought. In it we find Derrida at work on his systematic deconstruction of Western metaphysics. The book's first half, which includes the celebrated essay on Descartes and Foucault, shows the development of Derrida's method of deconstruction. In these essays, Derrida demonstrates the traditional nature of some purportely nontraditional currents of modern thought - one of his main targets being the way in which "structuralism" unwittingly repeats metaphysical concepts in its use of linguistic modes.

呈现在我们眼前的，是事实本来的面目，抑或是一种建构？当代美国社会学界最具原创性的理论家杰弗里·亚历山大认为，文化社会学是一种揭示社会潜在意识的社会精神分析学。他在《社会生活的意义:一种文化社会学的视角》一书中，以大屠杀、水门事件、公民社会、文化创伤、电脑科技的诞生等一系列经验的个案研究为例，向我们展示了话语、符码等这些无形的文化结构是如何建构事实、如何化为具体的感知、行动和制度的。

Siegfried Kracauer was one of the 20th century's major cultural critics, a prolific scholar and a theorist of film. In this volume his writings on modern society are translated into English. This book is a celebration of the masses - their tastes, amusements, and everyday lives. Taking up themes of modernity, such as isolation and alienation, urban culture and the relation between the group and the individual, Kracauer explores a kaleidoscope of topics: shopping arcades; the cinema; bestsellers and their readers; photography; dance; hotel lobbies; Kafka; the Bible; and boredom. For Kracauer, the most revelatory facets of modern life in the West lie on the surface, in the ephemeral and the marginal. Of special fascination to him is the United States, where he eventually settled after fleeing Germany and whose culture he sees as defined almost exclusively by "the ostentatious display of surface". With these essays, written in the 1920s and early 1930s and edited by the author in 1963, Kracauer was the first to demonstrate that studying the everyday world of the masses can bring great rewards. This work remains a tribute to popular culture and its interdisciplinary essays continue to shed light not only on Kracauer's later work but also on ideas of the Frankfurt School, the genealogy of film theory and cultural studies, Weimar cultural politics, and the exigencies of intellectual exile. In his introduction, Thomas Levin situates Kracauer in a turbulent age, illuminates the forces that influenced him - including his friendships with Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, and other Weimar intellectuals - and provides the context necessary for understanding his ideas.

古希腊罗马神话人物，共收条目 1200，书后附译名对照表，以及拉丁希腊语译音表。

《瀛寰志略》由上海书店出版社出版。