Ancient Rome matters. Its history of empire, conquest, cruelty and excess is something against which we still judge ourselves. Its myths and stories - from Romulus and Remus to the Rape of Lucretia - still strike a chord with us. And its debates about citizenship, security and the rights of the individual still influence our own debates on civil liberty today. SPQR is a new look at Roman history from one of the world's foremost classicists. It explores not only how Rome grew from an insignificant village in central Italy to a power that controlled territory from Spain to Syria, but also how the Romans thought about themselves and their achievements, and why they are still important to us. Covering 1,000 years of history, and casting fresh light on the basics of Roman culture from slavery to running water, as well as exploring democracy, migration, religious controversy, social mobility and exploitation in the larger context of the empire, this is a definitive history of ancient Rome. SPQR is the Romans' own abbreviation for their state: Senatus Populusque Romanus, 'the Senate and People of Rome'.

The death of the Roman Empire is one of the perennial mysteries of world history. Now, in this groundbreaking book, Peter Heather proposes a stunning new solution: Centuries of imperialism turned the neighbors Rome called barbarians into an enemy capable of dismantling an Empire that had dominated their lives for so long. A leading authority on the late Roman Empire and on the barbarians, Heather relates the extraordinary story of how Europe's barbarians, transformed by centuries of contact with Rome on every possible level, eventually pulled the empire apart. He shows first how the Huns overturned the existing strategic balance of power on Rome's European frontiers, to force the Goths and others to seek refuge inside the Empire. This prompted two generations of struggle, during which new barbarian coalitions, formed in response to Roman hostility, brought the Roman west to its knees. The Goths first destroyed a Roman army at the battle of Hadrianople in 378, and went on to sack Rome in 410. The Vandals spread devastation in Gaul and Spain, before conquering North Africa, the breadbasket of the Western Empire, in 439. We then meet Attila the Hun, whose reign of terror swept from Constantinople to Paris, but whose death in 453 ironically precipitated a final desperate phase of Roman collapse, culminating in the Vandals' defeat of the massive Byzantine Armada: the west's last chance for survival. Peter Heather convincingly argues that the Roman Empire was not on the brink of social or moral collapse. What brought it to an end were the barbarians.

In his earlier bestsellers Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse, Jared Diamond transformed our understanding of what makes civilizations rise and fall. Now, in the final book in this monumental trilogy, he reveals how successful nations recover from crisis through selective change — a coping mechanism more commonly associated with personal trauma.
In a dazzling comparative study, Diamond shows us how seven countries have survived defining upheavals in the recent past — from US Commodore Perry’s arrival in Japan to the Soviet invasion of Finland to Pinochet’s regime in Chile — through a process of painful self-appraisal and adaptation, and he identifies patterns in the way that these distinct nations recovered from calamity. Looking ahead to the future, he investigates whether the United States, and the world, are squandering their natural advantages, on a path towards political conflict and decline. Or can we still learn from the lessons of the past?
Adding a psychological dimension to the awe-inspiring grasp of history, geography, economics, and anthropology that marks all Diamond’s work, Upheaval reveals how both nations and individuals can become more resilient. The result is a book that is epic, urgent, and groundbreaking.

Book Description
In this fascinating book, Diamond seeks to understand the fates of past societies that collapsed for ecological reasons, combining the most important policy debate of this generation with the romance and mystery of lost worlds.
Amazon.com
Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed is the glass-half-empty follow-up to his Pulitzer Prize-winning Guns, Germs, and Steel. While Guns, Germs, and Steel explained the geographic and environmental reasons why some human populations have flourished, Collapse uses the same factors to examine why ancient societies, including the Anasazi of the American Southwest and the Viking colonies of Greenland, as well as modern ones such as Rwanda, have fallen apart. Not every collapse has an environmental origin, but an eco-meltdown is often the main catalyst, he argues, particularly when combined with society's response to (or disregard for) the coming disaster. Still, right from the outset of Collapse, the author makes clear that this is not a mere environmentalist's diatribe. He begins by setting the book's main question in the small communities of present-day Montana as they face a decline in living standards and a depletion of natural resources. Once-vital mines now leak toxins into the soil, while prion diseases infect some deer and elk and older hydroelectric dams have become decrepit. On all these issues, and particularly with the hot-button topic of logging and wildfires, Diamond writes with equanimity.
Because he's addressing such significant issues within a vast span of time, Diamond can occasionally speak too briefly and assume too much, and at times his shorthand remarks may cause careful readers to raise an eyebrow. But in general, Diamond provides fine and well-reasoned historical examples, making the case that many times, economic and environmental concerns are one and the same. With Collapse, Diamond hopes to jog our collective memory to keep us from falling for false analogies or forgetting prior experiences, and thereby save us from potential devastations to come. While it might seem a stretch to use medieval Greenland and the Maya to convince a skeptic about the seriousness of global warming, it's exactly this type of cross-referencing that makes Collapse so compelling.
--Jennifer Buckendorff
From Publishers Weekly
In his Pulitzer Prize–winning bestseller Guns, Germs, and Steel, geographer Diamond laid out a grand view of the organic roots of human civilizations in flora, fauna, climate and geology. That vision takes on apocalyptic overtones in this fascinating comparative study of societies that have, sometimes fatally, undermined their own ecological foundations. Diamond examines storied examples of human economic and social collapse, and even extinction, including Easter Island, classical Mayan civilization and the Greenland Norse. He explores patterns of population growth, overfarming, overgrazing and overhunting, often abetted by drought, cold, rigid social mores and warfare, that lead inexorably to vicious circles of deforestation, erosion and starvation prompted by the disappearance of plant and animal food sources. Extending his treatment to contemporary environmental trouble spots, from Montana to China to Australia, he finds today's global, technologically advanced civilization very far from solving the problems that plagued primitive, isolated communities in the remote past. At times Diamond comes close to a counsel of despair when contemplating the environmental havoc engulfing our rapidly industrializing planet, but he holds out hope at examples of sustainability from highland New Guinea's age-old but highly diverse and efficient agriculture to Japan's rigorous program of forest protection and, less convincingly, in recent green consumerism initiatives. Diamond is a brilliant expositor of everything from anthropology to zoology, providing a lucid background of scientific lore to support a stimulating, incisive historical account of these many declines and falls. Readers will find his book an enthralling, and disturbing, reminder of the indissoluble links that bind humans to nature. Photos.
From Booklist
Defining collapse as "extreme decline," the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997), which posed questions about Western civilization's domination of much of the world, now examines the reverse side of that coin. Diamond ponders reasons why certain civilizations have collapsed. With an eye on the implications for the present and future, he bases his analysis on his newly phrased version of an old maxim about what history teaches: "The past offers us a rich database from which we can learn." Drawing examples from this database, from Polynesian culture on Easter Island to the Viking outposts in Greenland to the Mayan civilization in Central America, the author finds "the fundamental pattern of catastrophe" that is apparent in these populations that once flourished and then collapsed. The template he holds up is a construct based on five factors, including environmental damage, climate change, and hostile neighbors. In addition, Diamond casts his critical but acute and inclusive gaze on the issue of why civilizations fail to see collapse coming. A thought-provoking book containing not a single page of dense prose. Expect demand from civic- and history-minded readers.
Brad Hooper
From School Library Journal
Adult/High School–This powerful call to action should be read by all high school students. Diamond eloquently and persuasively describes the environmental and social problems that led to the collapse of previous civilizations and threaten us today. The book's organization makes researching particular regions or types of damage accessible. Unfamiliar words are defined, and mention of a place or issue that has been described in greater detail elsewhere includes relevant page numbers. Students may become impatient with the folksy Montana fishing stories in part one, but once the fascinating account of the vanished civilizations begins, readers are taken on an extraordinary journey. Using the Mayan empire, Easter Island, the Anasazi, and other examples, the author shows how a combination of environmental factors such as habitat destruction, the loss of biodiversity, and degradation of the soil caused complex, flourishing societies to suddenly disintegrate. Modern societies are divided into those that have begun to collapse, such as Rwanda and Haiti; those whose conservation policies have helped to avert disaster, such as Iceland and Japan; and those currently dealing with massive problems, such as Australia and China. Diamond is a cautious optimist. Some of his most compelling stories show how two groups of people sharing the same land, such as the Norse and Inuit in Greenland, can end up in completely different situations depending on how they address their problems. The solutions discussed are of vital importance: how societies respond to environmental degradation will determine how teens will live their adult lives. As Diamond points out, in a collapsing civilization, being rich just means being the last to starve. Black-and-white photos are included.
–Kathy Tewell, Fairfax County Public Library, VA
Book Dimension
length: (cm)21.7 　　　 　　　　　 　　　　　 width:(cm)14

Tracing the extraordinary trajectory of the great Roman emperor’s life, Goldsworthy covers not only the great Roman emperor’s accomplishments as charismatic orator, conquering general, and powerful dictator but also lesser-known chapters during which he was high priest of an exotic cult, captive of pirates, seducer not only of Cleopatra but also of the wives of his two main political rivals, and rebel condemned by his own country. Ultimately, Goldsworthy realizes the full complexity of Caesar’s character and shows why his political and military leadership continues to resonate some two thousand years later.
In the introduction to his biography of the great Roman emperor, Adrian Goldsworthy writes, “Caesar was at times many things, including a fugitive, prisoner, rising politician, army leader, legal advocate, rebel, dictator . . . as well as husband, father, lover and adulterer.” In this landmark biography, Goldsworthy examines Caesar as military leader, all of these roles and places his subject firmly within the context of Roman society in the first century B.C.

For three decades in the fifth century b.c. the ancient world was torn apart by a conflict that was as dramatic, divisive, and destructive as the world wars of the twentieth century: the Peloponnesian War. Donald Kagan, one of the world’s most respected classical, political, and military historians, here presents a new account of this vicious war of Greek against Greek, Athenian against Spartan. The Peloponnesian War is a magisterial work of history written for general readers, offering a fresh examination of a pivotal moment in Western civilization. With a lively, readable narrative that conveys a richly detailed portrait of a vanished world while honoring its timeless relevance, The Peloponnesian War is a chronicle of the rise and fall of a great empire and of a dark time whose lessons still resonate today.

Most startups fail. But many of those failures are preventable. The Lean Startup is a new approach being adopted across the globe, changing the way companies are built and new products are launched.
Eric Ries defines a startup as an organization dedicated to creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty. This is just as true for one person in a garage or a group of seasoned professionals in a Fortune 500 boardroom. What they have in common is a mission to penetrate that fog of uncertainty to discover a successful path to a sustainable business.
The Lean Startup approach fosters companies that are both more capital efficient and that leverage human creativity more effectively. Inspired by lessons from lean manufacturing, it relies on “validated learning,” rapid scientific experimentation, as well as a number of counter-intuitive practices that shorten product development cycles, measure actual progress without resorting to vanity metrics, and learn what customers really want. It enables a company to shift directions with agility, altering plans inch by inch, minute by minute.
Rather than wasting time creating elaborate business plans, The Lean Startup offers entrepreneurs—in companies of all sizes—a way to test their vision continuously, to adapt and adjust before it’s too late. Ries provides a scientific approach to creating and managing successful startups in a age when companies need to innovate more than ever.

When first published in 1959, this book revolutionized contemporary thinking about science and knowledge. It remains the one of the most widely read books about science to come out of the twentieth century.

《家庭论》中提出了一个研究关于家庭的经济学或理性选择的方法。不过，《家庭论》名并非特指家庭的经济方面，这是因为大多数非经济学家和经济学家总是喜欢把“经济学”仅仅局限于研究家庭的物质生活内容，即收入和支出类型。我的构想则更为远大，我力图用研究人类物质行为的工具和理论框架去分析婚姻、生育、离婚、家庭内的劳动分工、威望和其他非物质行为。也就是说，《家庭论》包含着研究家庭的经济学方法，其意义不仅在于对家庭生活的物质方面的探讨，更重要的是用一种新的理论框架去分析家庭生活的各个方面。

One of the world’s leading philosophers offers aspiring thinkers his personal trove of mind-stretching thought experiments.
Over a storied career, Daniel C. Dennett has engaged questions about science and the workings of the mind. His answers have combined rigorous argument with strong empirical grounding. And a lot of fun.
Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking offers seventy-seven of Dennett’s most successful "imagination-extenders and focus-holders" meant to guide you through some of life’s most treacherous subject matter: evolution, meaning, mind, and free will. With patience and wit, Dennett deftly deploys his thinking tools to gain traction on these thorny issues while offering readers insight into how and why each tool was built.
Alongside well-known favorites like Occam’s Razor and reductio ad absurdum lie thrilling descriptions of Dennett’s own creations: Trapped in the Robot Control Room, Beware of the Prime Mammal, and The Wandering Two-Bitser. Ranging across disciplines as diverse as psychology, biology, computer science, and physics, Dennett’s tools embrace in equal measure light-heartedness and accessibility as they welcome uninitiated and seasoned readers alike. As always, his goal remains to teach you how to "think reliably and even gracefully about really hard questions."
A sweeping work of intellectual seriousness that’s also studded with impish delights, Intuition Pumps offers intrepid thinkers—in all walks of life—delicious opportunities to explore their pet ideas with new powers.

If you're involved with a startup, analytics help you find your way to the right product and market before the money runs out. But with a flood of information available, where do you start? This book shows you what to measure, how to analyze it, and how to report it, whether you're evaluating your business model, testing new features, enticing investors, or reporting progress to advisers. Written by Alistair Croll (founder of Coradiant) and Ben Yoskovitz (co-founder of Year One Labs), Lean Analytics lays out practical, proven steps to take your startup from initial idea to product/market fit and beyond. Examples and case studies show entrepreneurs and intrapreneneurs (entrepreneurs inside larger organizations) how to identify and measure a startup's single most important metric, and how to iterate until you get it right. While the authors primarily cover technology startups, their lessons can be applied far beyond the Web. Even traditional businesses are embracing a lean, learn-first approach, as demonstrated by owners of a San Francisco deli that used a temporary "pop-up" method to optimize their menu and operations before launching a permanent restaurant.

Five years and more than 100,000 copies after it was first published, it's hard to imagine anyone working in Web design who hasn't read Steve Krug's "instant classic" on Web usability, but people are still discovering it every day. In this second edition, Steve adds three new chapters in the same style as the original: wry and entertaining, yet loaded with insights and practical advice for novice and veteran alike. Don't be surprised if it completely changes the way you think about Web design. Three New Chapters! * Usability as common courtesy -- Why people really leave Web sites * Web Accessibility, CSS, and you -- Making sites usable and accessible * Help! My boss wants me to ______. -- Surviving executive design whims "I thought usability was the enemy of design until I read the first edition of this book. Don't Make Me Think! showed me how to put myself in the position of the person who uses my site. After reading it over a couple of hours and putting its ideas to work for the past five years, I can say it has done more to improve my abilities as a Web designer than any other book. In this second edition, Steve Krug adds essential ammunition for those whose bosses, clients, stakeholders, and marketing managers insist on doing the wrong thing. If you design, write, program, own, or manage Web sites, you must read this book." -- Jeffrey Zeldman, author of Designing with Web Standards

Effectively measuring the usability of any product requires choosing the right metric, applying it, and effectively using the information it reveals. Measuring the User Experience provides the first single source of practical information to enable usability professionals and product developers to do just that. Authors Tullis and Albert organize dozens of metrics into six categories: performance, issues-based, self-reported, web navigation, derived, and behavioral/physiological. They explore each metric, considering best methods for collecting, analyzing, and presenting the data. They provide step-by-step guidance for measuring the usability of any type of product using any type of technology.
. Presents criteria for selecting the most appropriate metric for every case
. Takes a product and technology neutral approach
. Presents in-depth case studies to show how organizations have successfully used the metrics and the information they revealed

每一个岗位都是公司为了解决阶段性业务问题而设置的解决方案。随着行业的发展和大环境的变化，各种岗位都可能会有消失的那一天。但“产品经理”岗位的本质——产品创新，却是公司永恒不变的追求。
本书是“人人都是产品经理”系列图书的第三本，要带领读者去思考产品经理如何自我反思、完成进化。这个问题的答案是做产品，而不是做产品经理。我们应该要关注的是无数公司设置“产品经理”这个岗位要解决的问题——产品创新。
所谓产品创新，其实就是通过改善现有产品或者创造新产品来进一步满足用户需求、开辟新的市场。时代瞬息万变、产品层出不穷，“夺得用户”早已是一款产品成功的必要条件之一。
如何做产品创新？
最初的想法从哪里来？
如何低成本验证你的新想法？
如何简便地验证某种功能的必要性？
如何让渠道更好地发挥效果？
针对产品创新过程中的各个关键问题，作者基于十多年的工作经验和创新实践案例，总结了一套应对多变时代的低成本创新方法——5MVVP，其中包含了案头研究、原型设计、产品开发、运营推广、复制组合五个阶段中的五轮冲刺，能帮助产品工作者有效地想清楚、做出来、推出去，打造“爆款”新品，构建产品矩阵。

《人人都是产品经理2.0——写给泛产品经理》继续定位在-1~3 岁的产品经理。这里特别要强调，“-1 岁”指的是“泛产品经理”群体，比如自认为是“产品新人”的“职场老人”，需要自己做产品的早期创业者，对产品感兴趣并且工作中可能要承担部分职责的技术、设计、运营等人员，其他行业对互联网产品感兴趣的从业者等，《人人都是产品经理2.0——写给泛产品经理》可以说是为他们量身定做的。
内容方面，《人人都是产品经理2.0——写给泛产品经理》全然不同于上一版《人人都是产品经理》，可以算是给上册（个人成长）配了下册（产品生长）。《人人都是产品经理2.0——写给泛产品经理》将从人开始，以人结束，中间说事，以一个产品从无到有的过程为框架——想清楚、做出来、推出去，外加一章综合案例。其中，最重要的想清楚、做出来、推出去，对应着互联网公司里三个最核心的岗位——产品、技术、运营，而《人人都是产品经理2.0——写给泛产品经理》的内容重点，则对应着“产品”。

★耶鲁大学新锐学者 约瑟夫•诺思 犀利 之作！
★荣登2018年度克里斯蒂安•高斯奖短名单。乔纳森•卡勒 、布鲁斯•罗宾斯赞誉推荐！
★勾勒 文学研究 史，聚焦 政治、文化 与学术、学科建设 的角力。
★无论学界内外，凡对文学与政治、文化、社会之关联有兴趣的，皆可阅读。
————
▼ 内容介绍
聚焦 文学研究 学科史，以及 政治、文化与学科建设 的关联。
百年学科史，一部政治与学术博弈的文化简史，反思当下学科专业化。
本书是哥伦比亚大学博士、耶鲁大学助理教授约瑟夫•诺思的代表作。他勾画了文学研究作为一门学科，自20世纪20年代至今的历史轮廓，展示其如何从一种广泛业余的普遍批评，日益学术化、学科化的过程，并探讨得与失。书中，他悉心梳理关键流派，如实用批评、新批评、文化研究等；分析代表人物，如雷蒙•威廉斯、伊格尔顿、詹明信、D.A.米勒……
————
▼ 学界推荐
弗朗西斯•马尔赫恩，《新左派评论》
无论学界内外，只要对今天的文学文化的政治一面，有严肃实际兴趣的人都应阅读。
·
乔纳森•卡勒 （批评家，康奈尔大学英语与比较文学教授。）
这本书真的是一个了不起的成就，是我读过的关于批评历史的罕见的书。
·
《洛杉矶书评》
对英美世界的文学批评这一学术领域的大胆、生动、引人入胜的论述。
·
《新共和》
诺思的论述风格，是令人信服的清晰和自信。他让我想起了早期学者——以大众作为受众的学者。
·
芮塔•菲尔斯基 （文学理论、文化研究等领域杰出学者）
约瑟夫•诺思对批评史提出了一个大胆、反直觉的观点:转向在文化历史背景下阅读文本，不是文学研究激进化的标志，恰恰相反，这是一种后退。

你是否也在为了期待的未来，而不断克制自己的现在？
深爱的人就在身边，却只能远离；
当下的幸福触手可及，却选择推开；
生活明明有诸多欢乐，却无法去享受……
《窄门》中的阿莉莎也是如此，
当内心赖以生存的信仰，一次又一次逼迫自己束缚自己真实的欲望，
阿莉莎终于挣扎着发出绝望的呼唤：
“我真的心甘情愿做出牺牲吗？”
读完《窄门》，你也将从心底里真正释怀——
当我不再自己束缚自己，我终于拥有了自由而广阔的人生。

◎奇葩说导师、得到App课程主理人刘擎讲透西方思想史
◎马东、罗振宇、陈嘉映、施展等倾情推荐
◎邀请你穿越时空，与19位闪烁着光芒的思想家对话
◎来一次思想的碰撞、一场观念的探险
人生的意义，人们向往的自由和公平的价值，人类文明的复杂冲突与未来趋势……这些让你困惑的大小问题，过去也困扰过韦伯、尼采、萨特等杰出的头脑。他们尽最大努力做出阐释，为后人提供了宝贵的思想标识。在这部讲义里，刘擎介绍了现代视域下的19位思想大家，广泛而系统地讨论工具理性的利 弊，如何面对虚无主义，消费主义对人的异化，财富分配的公平正义和全球化等议题。思想不惑，精神明亮。你将在这19位大家的生平故事中，理解他们建构思想大厦的地基与框架。你还会在思想大厦之上，直面个人生活和社会公共领域的诸多难题，收获审慎而真诚的回答。