年轻的伊丽莎白登上王位，她必须处理好各种重大的政治问题和自己的个人生活，两者之间的冲突往往超乎她的想象。

In early twentieth-century China, age-old traditions of homosocial and homoerotic relationships between women suddenly became an issue of widespread public concern. Discussed formerly in terms of friendship and sisterhood, these relationships came to be associated with feminism, on the one hand, and psychobiological perversion, on the other—a radical shift whose origins have long been unclear.
In this first ever book-length study of Chinese lesbians, Tze-lan D. Sang convincingly ties the debate over female same-sex love in China to the emergence of Chinese modernity. As women's participation in social, economic, and political affairs grew, Sang argues, so too did the societal significance of their romantic and sexual relations. Focusing especially on literature by or about women-preferring women, Sang traces the history of female same-sex relations in China from the late imperial period (1600-1911) through the Republican era (1912-1949). She ends by examining the reemergence of public debate on lesbians in China after Mao and in Taiwan after martial law, including the important roles played by globalization and identity politics.

Making the radical argument that the nation-state was born of colonialism, this book calls us to rethink political violence and reimagine political community beyond majorities and minorities.
In this genealogy of political modernity, Mahmood Mamdani argues that the nation-state and the colonial state created each other. In case after case around the globe―from the New World to South Africa, Israel to Germany to Sudan―the colonial state and the nation-state have been mutually constructed through the politicization of a religious or ethnic majority at the expense of an equally manufactured minority.
The model emerged in North America, where genocide and internment on reservations created both a permanent native underclass and the physical and ideological spaces in which new immigrant identities crystallized as a settler nation. In Europe, this template would be used by the Nazis to address the Jewish Question, and after the fall of the Third Reich, by the Allies to redraw the boundaries of Eastern Europe’s nation-states, cleansing them of their minorities. After Nuremberg the template was used to preserve the idea of the Jews as a separate nation. By establishing Israel through the minoritization of Palestinian Arabs, Zionist settlers followed the North American example. The result has been another cycle of violence.
Neither Settler nor Native offers a vision for arresting this historical process. Mamdani rejects the “criminal” solution attempted at Nuremberg, which held individual perpetrators responsible without questioning Nazism as a political project and thus the violence of the nation-state itself. Instead, political violence demands political solutions: not criminal justice for perpetrators but a rethinking of the political community for all survivors―victims, perpetrators, bystanders, beneficiaries―based on common residence and the commitment to build a common future without the permanent political identities of settler and native. Mamdani points to the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa as an unfinished project, seeking a state without a nation.

What happens when an entire modern state's material culture becomes abruptly obsolete? How do ordinary people encounter what remains? In this ethnography, Jonathan Bach examines the afterlife of East Germany following the fall of the Berlin Wall, as things and places from that vanished socialist past continue to circulate and shape the politics of memory.
What Remains traces the unsettling effects of these unmoored artifacts on the German present, arguing for a rethinking of the role of the everyday as a site of reckoning with difficult pasts. Bach juxtaposes four sites where the stakes of the everyday appear: products commodified as nostalgia, amateur museums dedicated to collecting everyday life under socialism, the "people's palace" that captured the national imagination through its destruction, and the feared and fetishized Berlin Wall. Moving from the local, the intimate, and the small to the national, the impersonal, and the large, this book's interpenetrating chapters show the unexpected social and political force of the ordinary in the production of memory. What Remains offers a unique vantage point on the workings of the everyday in situations of radical discontinuity, contributing to new understandings of postsocialism and the intricate intersection of material remains and memory.

本书集中研究了近代中国人日本留学活动史，具体而言：以近代中国人日本留学活动的发展变迁史为研究对象，按近代历史时期的划分的四个阶段，具体研究清末、北洋政府时期、国民政府时期、日伪政权治域下、日据时期台湾学生留日教育活动的政策变迁，探究各个时期留学教育活动的实况，总结各个时期留日教育活动的特点及趋势，挖掘对当前留日教育乃至整个留学教育活动的启示意义。

阅读《下沉年代》，如同坐在第一排观看美国梦的午夜葬礼
“这是一个时代苍凉的侧影：受挫的努力，被辜负的信任，凋零的生机，以及日渐黯淡的希望。力透纸背的书写，栩栩如生的人物，呈现了美国三十多年的沧桑巨变，也为当下社会撕裂的悲剧写下了发人深省的前传。”——刘擎，华东师范大学教授
————
☆ 延续《光荣与梦想》时间线的美国社会内层新史，一部定义我们时代的史诗
☆ 一本书写尽美国梦碎三十年：四个人的一生，四个阶层的剧痛，一代人的失败挽歌
☆ 许倬云、刘擎、周濂、欧逸文推荐，荣获美国国家图书奖，超20家机构年度好书：
《纽约时报》年度关注作品 | 美国国家公共电台 年度最佳好书 | 《金融时报》年度最佳好书 | 《华盛顿邮报》年度最佳政治作品 | 《新共和》年度好书 | 《出版人周刊》年度最佳好书 | 《科克斯书评》年度最佳非虚构作品 | 苹果iBooks年度最佳好书 | 美国亚马逊年度最佳好书 | 《波士顿环球报》年度最佳好书......
☆《纽约客》资深作家操刀，新世纪非虚构顶峰之作，入选 Slate 25年来最佳50本非虚构
————
仿佛在一夜之间，世界轰然倒塌。所有老派的行事规矩和道德准则被抛在一旁，华盛顿的说客比政客还多，纽约交易部门不再有禁忌，佛罗里达州的楼价跌到谷底，铁锈地带的钢铁工厂相继关门，南方的农场不再耕种烟草。富者更富，穷人更穷。
美国国家图书奖得主乔治·帕克跟踪四位不同阶层的60后美国人——追逐美国梦的南方白人农民，失去工厂岗位的非裔女性工人，在华尔街和华盛顿之间穿梭的精英，借互联网经济发迹的硅谷大佬——展现四段沉浮人生，揭开四种阶层剧痛，写出一代人的愤怒与悲哀。
这是唯一一代生活不断下沉的美国人：他们生在战后经济增长的黄金年代，摸爬滚打半生后，却迎来传统社会结构的轰然倒塌。
在主角的故事之外，此书如电影镜头般扫视美国近三十余年的社会变迁，绘成一幅文化、经济、政治交织的全景流动长卷。作者为政客纽特·金里奇、作家雷蒙德·卡佛、沃尔玛创始人山姆·沃尔顿、说唱歌手Jay-Z等人立传，以十位时代偶像映射出十种或回响、或沉沦的时代精神；也记下成千上万迷失在房地产市场的投机者，成千上万占领华尔街的抗议者，成千上万挣扎在生存线上的沉默者，写尽美国梦碎三十年。
阅读《下沉年代》，如同坐在第一排观看美国梦的午夜葬礼。这是献给每一个美国人的安魂曲，也是一本关于时代转折及世界剧变的当下启示录。
————
乔治·帕克指出今天的美国正在解体，旧日熟悉的机构，如地方小银行、工会会所、工厂厂房、教堂，以及地方活动主体的各种从事社会服务的“俱乐部”，正在逐渐消失殆尽。美国国内不仅有阶级的区别，还有人群之间的区别，个体也在寻找自己的属性和类别。各个群体，也都在为自己争取更好的地位。社会成员中弱势者，又在争取个人完全的自由和平等。如此横切、竖切的后果，是美国最后会被切割成为许多孤立、离散的个人。——许倬云，历史学家
这是一个时代苍凉的侧影：受挫的努力，被辜负的信任，凋零的生机，以及日渐黯淡的希望。力透纸背的书写，栩栩如生的人物，呈现了美国30多年的沧桑巨变，也为当下社会撕裂的悲剧写下了发人深省的前传。——刘擎，华东师范大学教授
《下沉年代》有点像黄仁宇的《万历十五年》，试图通过一个年代，书写更为漫长的社会变迁。《纽约客》资深作家帕克巧妙地将大人物和小人物交错着写，兼顾造就时代的人和被时代造就（或毁灭）的人。——方柏林，旅美学者
如同乔治·奥威尔的作品，乔治·帕克的写作带着一股道义之力。《下沉年代》，一本横扫一切、铿锵有力、以至于每个人都应该阅读的作品。——大卫·格雷恩，著有《花月杀手》
《下沉年代》是我们国家过去三十年来发生的非凡故事。乔治·帕克写就了一部定义我们时代的史诗，读起来奇妙、亲切和真实。——戴斯特·费尔金斯，著有《跑步在最绝望的城市》
乔治·帕克呈现了我们生活和时代的历史，以洞察的眼光捕捉到我们失去的美国。——劳伦斯·赖特，著有《末日巨塔》
现在，那些在第二次经济大萧条中破碎的心灵和生命，为自己找到了雄辩的代言人和狂热的捍卫者：乔治·帕克。《下沉年代》是美国的悲剧，亦是文学的胜利。——大卫·弗鲁姆，美国知名时评人
独创，锋利，勇敢，至关重要。我这么多年来读到最好的非虚构作品之一。——凯瑟琳·布，著有《地下城》
乔治·帕克为二战后的美国社会契约写出一曲忧伤但又如爵士乐般轻快的安魂曲。在这片越来越吵、难以抑制的土地上，你会为那些活在越来越沉默的绝望生活中的人们发笑和落泪。——大卫·M. 肯尼迪，普利策奖得主
————
结合小说般的叙事和严谨的纪实报道，乔治·帕克撕开美国表面下的破碎裂痕。通过贯穿大城市和小城镇的经济衰退，他以敏锐的眼光审视银行家和华尔街，同时追踪我们诸多经济基础设施的痛苦解体。他精准描绘了奋斗者和普通工人的肖像，对富人、野心家、乃至恶臭的名流进行了快照般的捕捉，生动展现了富层阶级与平民之间日益扩大的鸿沟。——美国国家图书奖授奖辞
从现在开始的一百年里，第一本能让人理解这个时代的书，可能是乔治·帕克的《下沉年代》，一部既详尽又意义深远的里程碑作品。——《西雅图时报》
一本兼具野心和慈意之书，以多重角度看待当下的美国。书中充满蜂鸣般的悲情和愤怒，对那些困在校准不当的金融机械齿轮的人们传达了特别的同情。——《纽约时报》
从沃尔特·惠特曼到约翰·多斯·帕索斯，从诺曼·梅勒和厄普代克到汤姆·沃尔夫和亨特·汤普森，小说家和记者总能在普通美国人的生活中发现顽强且机敏的个人主义，对机遇的坚硬信念，以及走出黑暗时代的道路。当下，帕克对国家现状进行了灰暗的描写，令人痛心，却也真实准确。他没有提供虚假希望，亦不给出好莱坞式结局，但是在另一种美国创造力中，在雷蒙德·卡佛式故事和爱德华·霍珀式画像中，在人的尊严和心灵中，他找到了一种力量——当人们因生活崩溃而深感孤独时，这种埋藏在肌肉记忆中的力量会爬升上来。——《华盛顿邮报》
《下沉年代》是一部将叙事推向极限的非虚构作品，直抵通常只有虚构作品才能达到的罕见层级。它写了一部伟大小说所能写尽的一切，但更为特别的是，它也完成了小说似乎不再愿意做的事——更为有趣，更愿意做实验。作者帕克迅速转换视角，打乱叙事，相信读者会在令人震惊的平行叙事中做出自己的判断。——《Esquire》
《下沉年代》是一段献给迷失时光的抒情安魂曲，为了那些被裁减的梦想和屈服的希望。这本书让人着迷，也令人心碎，它是一部丰盈的艺术之作，展示了所有失去希望和允诺的美国人如何受苦。——《每日科斯》
作为《纽约客》特约作家，乔治·帕克是美国最好的非虚构作家之一。就其敏锐性而言，《下沉年代》更像是一本小说，而不是非虚构作品。此书更有感染力。——《金融时报》
一本庞大、高度原创的纪实作品，证明了在这个世界上，新闻报道的未来并不黯淡。帕克的写作是一场险峻的冒险，让人为之侧目。——《纽约书评》
这是最好的时代，也是最坏的时代，帕克出色的叙事如同狄更斯本人第一次将所有这些历史都融入一本书中。这本书事关各种各样的人，无论贫富，他们都陷入经济动荡和社会变革的持续风暴中。人们周围的一切都在变化，珍爱之物尽被销毁。帕克以绝对专业的纪实手法讲述了人们的故事，却比大多数美国当代小说敢于做到的要更加详尽，更有质感，当然，也更具野心。——《洛杉矶时报》
帕克发出一种异常清晰、充满人道的美国之声，它继承了纪实文学的传统，让常人生活超越日常。当我们的后代审视这个现代帝国的遗迹，并从中筛选出文化残骸，这样的美国之声便是延续久远的微小宝藏。——《独立报》
除了本身题材外，《下沉年代》更像是一本实验小说，以其书写的范围、对当代生活质感的体现及包容不同思想的方式，从扬斯敦的社区组织者写到自由主义互联网大亨，它会让读者们联想到“美国三部曲”和《无尽的玩笑》。诸如书写鲍威尔的传记体文章，发在《巴黎评论》中也并不违和，因为这本书不只是关于真相，更是充满智慧、讽刺和惊人的想象力。——《巴黎评论》
帕克的叙事是文学性的，而非规范性的：他不提供政策建议，也不谋求崇高。如同一本伟大的政治小说，《下沉年代》以前所未有的清晰揭示了一个问题，但让读者自己去寻找解决方案。但是，这既是一个绝望的故事，也是一个坚韧的故事。帕克的角色们会做出或好或坏的决定，享受意外好运和不幸，他们竭力维持，他们屈服于生活，接着又更加努力。他们的生活值得被细细讲述，不仅因为具有启发性，更因为它们是如此美丽动人。——《华盛顿月报》

A widespread conviction in the need to rescue China’s children took hold in the early twentieth century. Amid political upheaval and natural disasters, neglected or abandoned children became a humanitarian focal point for Sino-Western cooperation and, ultimately, intervention in family life. Chinese academics and officials sought new scientific measures, educational institutions, and social reforms to improve children’s welfare. Successive regimes encouraged teachers to shape children into Qing subjects, Nationalist citizens, or Communist comrades.
In Raising China’s Revolutionaries, Margaret Mih Tillman offers a novel perspective on the political and scientific dimensions of experiments with early childhood education from the early Republican period through the first decade of the People’s Republic. She traces transnational advocacy for child welfare and education, examining Christian missionaries, philanthropists, and the role of international relief during World War II. Tillman provides in-depth analysis of similarities and differences between Nationalist and Communist policy and cultural notions of childhood. While both drew on preschool institutions to mobilize the workforce and shape children’s political subjectivity, the PRC rejected the Nationalists’ commitment to the modern, bourgeois family. With new insights into the roles of experts, the cultural politics of fundraising, and child welfare as a form of international exchange, Raising China’s Revolutionaries is an important work of institutional and transnational history that illuminates the evolution of modern concepts of childhood in China.

The modern research university is a global institution with a rich history that stretches into an ivy-laden past, but for as much as we think we know about that past, most of the writings that have recorded it are scattered across many archives and, in many cases, have yet to be translated into English. With this book, Paul Reitter, Chad Wellmon, and Louis Menand bring a wealth of these important texts together, assembling a fascinating collection of primary sources many translated into English for the first time that outline what would become the university as we know it. The editors focus on the development of American universities such as Cornell, Johns Hopkins, Harvard, and the Universities of Chicago, California, and Michigan. Looking to Germany, they translate a number of seminal sources that formulate the shape and purpose of the university and place them next to hard-to-find English-language texts that took the German university as their inspiration, one that they creatively adapted, often against stiff resistance.
Enriching these texts with short but insightful essays that contextualize their importance, the editors offer an accessible portrait of the early research university, one that provides invaluable insights not only into the historical development of higher learning but also its role in modern society.

牛奶是被认为接近完美的食物，尤其是在健康饮食盛行的当下，它已经成为中国人餐桌上不可替代的餐食。但是，牛奶并不是一开始就被广为接受的，在江南，尤其是在上海不以奶制品为主的传统饮食结构中，牛奶从未受到热捧，更是因为本身含有细菌，具有饮用安全威胁，而一度遭到人们的冷落。
那么，牛奶是如何登上日常餐桌的？
牛奶消毒是如何成为一种卫生制度？
上海又是如何成为今日牛奶管理制度肇始之地的？
本书将带领读者回溯20世纪的中国，重看牛奶管理制度的变迁历史，细探行业标准的形成过程，深究上海乳业面临的困境与挑战。

Moral Foods: The Construction of Nutrition and Health in Modern Asia investigates how foods came to be established as moral entities, how moral food regimes reveal emerging systems of knowledge and enforcement, and how these developments have contributed to new Asian nutritional knowledge regimes. The collection’s focus on cross-cultural and transhistorical comparisons across Asia brings into view a broad spectrum of modern Asia that extends from East Asia, Southeast Asia, to South Asia, as well as into global communities of Western knowledge, practice, and power outside Asia.
The first section, “Good Foods,” focuses on how food norms and rules have been established in modern Asia. Ideas about good foods and good bodies shift at different moments, in some cases privileging local foods and knowledge systems, and in other cases privileging foreign foods and knowledge systems. The second section, “Bad Foods,” focuses on what makes foods bad and even dangerous. Bad foods are not simply unpleasant or undesirable for aesthetic or sensory reasons, but they can hinder the stability and development of persons and societies. Bad foods are symbolically polluting, as in the case of foreign foods that threaten not only traditional foods, but also the stability and strength of the nation and its people. The third section, “Moral Foods,” focuses on how themes of good versus bad are embedded in projects to make modern persons, subjects, and states, with specific attention to the ambiguities and malleability of foods and health. The malleability of moral foods provides unique opportunities for understanding Asian societies’ dynamic position within larger global flows, connections, and disconnections.
Collectively, the chapters raise intriguing questions about how foods and the bodies that consume them have been valued politically, economically, culturally, and morally, and about how those values originated and evolved. Consumers in modern Asia are not simply eating to satisfy personal desires or physiological needs, but they are also conscripted into national and global statemaking projects through acts of ingestion. Eating, then, has become about fortifying both the person and the nation.

Asians and Latinos comprise the vast majority of contemporary immigrants to the United States, and their growing presence has complicated America's prevailing White-Black race hierarchy. "Imperial Citizens" uses a global framework to investigate how Asians from U.S.-dominated homelands learn and understand their place along U.S. color lines. With interviews and ethnographic observations of Koreans, the book does what others rarely do: venture to the immigrants' home country and analyze racism there in relation to racial hierarchies in the United States. Attentive to history, the book considers the origins, nature, and extent of racial ideas about Koreans/Asians in relation to White and Black Americans, investigating how immigrants engage these ideas before they depart for the United States, as well as after they arrive. The author shows that contemporary globalization involves not just the flow of capital, but also culture. Ideas about American color lines and citizenship lines have crossed oceans alongside U.S. commodities.

关于本书
本书凝结了著者近二十年来近世医疗社会史研究的心得，侧重考察医学知识的建构与传播、医疗制度与资源的发展、疾病观念的变化与社会的关系。著者跳出传统的医史研究，试图发掘医疗史与近世中国社会与文化历史息息相关的历史。由于医学知识的传播，不同社会阶层所获得的医疗资源也相当丰富，其中女性作为医疗者的角色不容忽视。另一方面，明清以来国人对各类疾病与疗法的观念也随着上述的变化而改变。近世中国医疗史所呈现的社会理性，与近代西方所呈现者并不相同，中西医的相遇与融合，激荡出色彩纷呈的社会文化意涵。这一融合的过程，至今依然在持续。
http://site.douban.com/widget/notes/283957/note/194005236/

该书是“中央研究院”院士梁其姿的新力作，该书围绕了明清至近代大变局中的两个着力点——启蒙教育与施善济贫，讲述了家族、地方社会与国家谋求稳定的重要关系。本书分为两个部分，前部分是有关启蒙教育的三篇论文，讨论了明清至近代蒙学的形式与内容，兼具慈善性质的义学制度在清初世变时期开始普及。第二部分的七篇有关施善济贫的论文，则从不同角度探讨济贫的论述与活动如何在不同历史时期的事变中试图重整甚至巩固传统伦理与社会秩序。语言引人入胜。
或许政治经济社会不断的､无常的变化，其实是人类历史的常态。但人总是缅怀过去或力求保持熟悉的社会秩序与价值观，对变化所意味着的风险与未知充满疑虑。因此说，明清至近代时期的家族、地方社会，乃至于中央政府致力于谋求稳定、预防变化，或在激变的形势里力图维持平稳的表象，不足为奇。
启蒙教育和施善济贫是明清至近代的家族地方社会与国家谋求稳定的两个着力点。在社会经济发生急剧变化之时，这两种活动被用来稳定急变中的社会，它们特别有利于宣扬经典中的理想世界与伦理关系，以合理化现存的社会与政治秩序。

“言语有如微小剂量的砷，一段时间以后就会发生作用。”犹太人、语文学者克莱普勒在可怖的生存环境中、在德累斯顿的犹太人居所里记下了他的观察——第三帝国时期，语言是如何走向堕落的。作为一部诞生于恐怖年代的经历之书，本书以骇人而真实的方式呈现出纳粹统治残忍的日常性。
这本“世纪之作”既是历史书写的杰作，也是一流的历史文献。它记录了一位语言和文学家在无望的纳粹时代实施的自我拯救，令所有的历史书籍在它面前相形见绌。
“在我的日记本里，LTI这个符号最初是个语言游戏，带有模仿戏谑的意味，然后很快就成为一种仓促的记忆的紧急救助了，作为在手帕上系的一种结扣，没过多久，它又成为那全部苦难岁月里的一种正当防卫，成为一种向我自己发出的SOS呼叫。”
——维克多﹒克莱普勒

In 1949, at the end of a long period of wars, one of the biggest challenges facing leaders of the new People’s Republic of China was how much they did not know. The government of one of the world’s largest nations was committed to fundamentally reengineering its society and economy via socialist planning while having almost no reliable statistical data about their own country. Making It Count is the history of efforts to resolve this “crisis in counting.” Drawing on a wealth of sources culled from China, India, and the United States, Arunabh Ghosh explores the choices made by political leaders, statisticians, academics, statistical workers, and even literary figures in attempts to know the nation through numbers.
Ghosh shows that early reliance on Soviet-inspired methods of exhaustive enumeration became increasingly untenable in China by the mid-1950s. Unprecedented and unexpected exchanges with Indian statisticians followed, as the Chinese sought to learn about the then-exciting new technology of random sampling. These developments were overtaken by the tumult of the Great Leap Forward (1958–61), when probabilistic and exhaustive methods were rejected and statistics was refashioned into an ethnographic enterprise. By acknowledging Soviet and Indian influences, Ghosh not only revises existing models of Cold War science but also globalizes wider developments in the history of statistics and data.
Anchored in debates about statistics and its relationship to state building, Making It Count offers fresh perspectives on China’s transition to socialism.

While diplomats and soldiers carve out empires, civilians play a crucial role in building nationstates. Constructing Empire shows how planners, architects, and civilians contributed to constructing a modern colonial enclave in the Japanese puppet state of Manchuria. Before 1931, Japanese imperialism in Manchuria resembled that of other imperialists elsewhere in China, but beginning in 1932 the Japanese sought to surpass their rivals by transforming the northeastern city of Changchun into a grand capital for the new state of Manchukuo. This book sheds light on colonial attitudes, changing definitions of national identity, and the responsibilities that civilians bear for historical events.

How did Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, and Cubans become known as “Hispanics” and “Latinos” in the United States? How did several distinct cultures and nationalities become portrayed as one? Cristina Mora answers both these questions and details the scope of this phenomenon in Making Hispanics. She uses an organizational lens and traces how activists, bureaucrats, and media executives in the 1970s and '80s created a new identity category—and by doing so, permanently changed the racial and political landscape of the nation.
Some argue that these cultures are fundamentally similar and that the Spanish language is a natural basis for a unified Hispanic identity. But Mora shows very clearly that the idea of ethnic grouping was historically constructed and institutionalized in the United States. During the 1960 census, reports classified Latin American immigrants as “white,” grouping them with European Americans. Not only was this decision controversial, but also Latino activists claimed that this classification hindered their ability to portray their constituents as underrepresented minorities. Therefore, they called for a separate classification: Hispanic. Once these populations could be quantified, businesses saw opportunities and the media responded. Spanish-language television began to expand its reach to serve the now large, and newly unified, Hispanic community with news and entertainment programming. Through archival research, oral histories, and interviews, Mora reveals the broad, national-level process that led to the emergence of Hispanicity in America.

《父母昨日书:李锐、范元甄通信集(1938-1949)(套装全2册)》是他们的长女李南央按照这些原始信件整理、编辑的。除了原件明显的错别字外，没有做一字一句的改动。被李锐誉为“党外的党史学家”的朱正先生对《父母昨日书》做了审校、加注，并写了序。他认为 “对於后世史家来说，这《父母昨日书》是一份极为难得的史料。”“ 一部活的党史”。

雷蒙德·威廉斯在本书中考察了近代英国的教育、识字（图书、新闻报刊）、“标准英语”的发展，英语作家、戏剧的社会历史进程，20世纪英国小说的形成。在这些考察的基础上，他发现一种文化的变革正在发生，并且与之前英国曾经经历过的民主革命与工业革命一样重要。正是以他的英国文化史研究为依据，雷蒙德·威廉斯提出了在长时段内存在着一种文化革命的理论。