From National Book Award winner Deirdre Bair, the definitive biography of Saul Steinberg, one of The New Yorker 's most iconic artists.
The issue date was March 29, 1976. The New Yorker cost 75 cents. And on the cover unfolded Saul Steinberg's vision of the world: New York City, the Hudson River, and then...well, it's really just a bunch of stuff you needn't concern yourself with. Steinberg's brilliant depiction of the world according to self-satisfied New Yorkers placed him squarely in the pantheon of the magazine's—and the era's—most celebrated artists.
But if you look beyond the searing wit and stunning artistry, you'll find one of the most fascinating lives of the twentieth century. Born in Romania, Steinberg was educated in Milan andwas already famous for his satirical drawings when World War II forced him to immigrate to the United States. On a single day, Steinberg became a US citizen, a commissioned officer in the US Navy, and a member of the OSS, assigned to spy in China, North Africa, and Italy. After the war ended, he returned to America and to his art. He quickly gained entree into influential circles that included Saul Bellow, Vladimir Nabokov, Willem de Kooning, and Le Corbusier. His wife was the artist Hedda Sterne, from whom heseparated in 1960 but never divorced and with whom he remained in daily contact for the rest ofhis life. This conveniently freed him up to amass a coterie of young mistresses and lovers. But his truly great love was the United States, wherehe traveled extensively by bus, train, and car, drawing, observing, and writing.
His body of work is staggering and influential in ways we may not yet even be able to fully grasp, quite possibly because there has not been a full-scale biography of him until now.Deirdre Bair had access to 177 boxes of documents and more than 400 drawings. In addition, she conducted several hundred personal interviews. Steinberg's curious talent for creating myths about himself did not make her joban easy one, but the result is a stunning achievementto admire and enjoy.

Best known for his barbed and brilliant art for <u>The New Yorker</u>, Saul Steinberg (1914&#8211;1999) did much more. He executed public murals, designed fabrics and stage sets, was an inventive collagist and printmaker, and turned his magic touch to the fields of painting, sculpture, advertising, and even wartime propaganda. This is the first comprehensive look at Steinberg’s extraordinary contribution to 20th-century art, which was that of a modern-day illuminator, putting word and image in play to create art that spoke to the eyes, and minds, of readers.
An introduction by poet Charles Simic tracks the origins of Steinberg’s darkly comic sensibility in the “Balkan bazaar” of his native Romania. Joel Smith shows how architectural training and an early rise to fame as a cartoonist in Fascist-era Milan honed the artist’s gift for subtle graphic invention, and explores why one of the most visible, prolific, potent, and cosmopolitan careers in postwar American art has so thoroughly evaded serious study. Tracing the evolving motives that underlie Steinberg’s multi-layered activity, this handsome volume also raises fundamental questions about the historiography of modernism and the vexed status of “the middlebrow avant-garde” in an age of museum-bound art.
Previously unseen sketches, documents, and printed matter from the artist’s papers illustrate the essay, career chronology, and entries for 120 objects featured in this important book.

This is the story of Linus Torvalds, the maverick Finnish computer genius who invented the powerful LINUX operating system. As well as being free, LINUX is more powerful and stable than anything that Microsoft can offer, thus making Torvalds Bill Gates' number one enemy. Today, LINUX is exploding on to the market, and its creator is household. Linus Torvalds is already a folk hero within the technolgy world, often mobbed at trade shows and forever asked to give interviews by the media. But Torvalds is a most unlikely celebrity: a family man, he lives in a cramped house in Santa Clara with his wife, Tove, a Finnish karate champion, and their two daughters. He claims to this day that he invented LINUX "just for fun". --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

美国革命是一次奇怪的革命。“在其他的革命中，人们拔剑出鞘是为了捍卫受到侵犯的自由，反抗那正在威胁着社会核心的压迫。”但很难说美国革命是由于这个爆发的。北美的保皇主义者彼得·奥利弗（Peter Oliver）批评说：“这是地球上从未有过的最胡闹和不自然的叛乱。”
对北美在 英国治理下的生活的优劣，可以用几个量化指标来做一个简单的审视。第一个指标是人均税负。以不列颠本土人民在1765年人均税负为100，弗吉尼亚、康涅狄格、纽约、马萨诸塞、马里兰、宾夕法尼亚诸州的税负只在2到4之间（0.1到0.22美元之间）。第二个指标是居民身高。英法七年战争期间美洲殖民地新兵的平均身高大约是1.727米，比同期的英国新兵的身高平均要高上7到8厘米。也就是说，几乎在200年前，殖民地人民的身高就达到了现代水平。根据常识，身高反映营养水平，间接反映生活水平。第三个指标是收入水平，1760年代北美人的人均收入是60美元（相当于现在的1920美元）。第四个指标是经济学家所估算出的英国贸易法规给北美施加的直接间接经济负担——平均每个人损失0.26美元。
无论如何，英国在北美的统治说不上严酷。正相反，可以说是善治的典范。正因为如此，当时的北美人民普遍都有英国认同。
那么，为什么北美还会独立出去，就是一个值得回答的问题。本书认为，要回答这个问题，需要我们转变两个旧观念：1，不要把北美的独立看作是殖民地对帝国的反抗，而应该看出，美国革命其实是一场英国内战。北美独立不是战争的起因和目的，而只是内战的结果；2，应该从英帝国的整体环境来考虑美国革命问题。
首先，与其说美洲革命是一场反抗暴政的起义，不如说这是一次“跳船”行动。从根源上来看，使北美人离心离德的原因，在于他们对英国统治的不放心。再具体一点，就是英国国内政治的弊陋和腐败导致它统治合法性的丧失。再追根溯源一点，就是十八世纪英国正在经历政治转型和社会转型，在这种转型中，君主立宪制与议会制的争斗、大众社会与大众政治的兴起、政治改革呼声与社会运动都在摧毁殖民地人民对英国政治的信心。直到1775年，殖民地人士都确定自己在处于一场由政治和社会腐败引发的宪法危机之中，这种危机心态极大的影响了他们对英国诸项殖民地政策的判断。
其次，英帝国的政治结构是有严重缺陷的，而这种缺陷反过来激发了北美与英国之间的矛盾。在长达十多年的时间里面，英美双方一直在寻找一条帝国框架下满足彼此需要的合法出路，他们思考了若干种方案，比如让北美向不列颠议会派出代表，或不列颠与北美组成共主体制，或成立帝国总议会，又或建立一个倾斜式双头帝国，但是这些方案都遇到了严重的困难而无法实行。
由于宪法结构上的缺陷，导致北美和不列颠两方的妥协空间减少，敏感性与脆弱性增高。
最后，不列颠人的应对实在不当。尽管从国王到大臣未必存心为恶，但是他们的反应却不好，一是回避真正的政治问题，把美洲问题简单归结为一小撮人野心作祟，把政治冲突庸俗化；二，在冲突显性化之后，却又实施“边缘政策”，又把政治斗争“零和”化。这些行动策略极严重的恶化了局势。
总之，本书的观点可总结为：
1.美国革命其实是一场英国内战，内战的结果是北美独立。
2.美国革命也是第二次英国革命——美国独立运动与英国革命之间存在继承关系。
3.18世纪英国的政治与社会转型制造着一场总危机，北美人士的抗争是英国抗争运动的一部分。
4.大英帝国的政治结构存在根本缺陷，这种结构上的缺陷转化成实际的政治对抗。
5.英国统治者无意镇压，北美抗争者无意决裂，但存在循环刺激，恶性升级。
6.在革命/改良的关键时刻，英式保守主义并不胜任。
最后，本书也提出，对美国独立这个案例的研究，有助于我们突破既有的国家分裂理论的限制（现实冲突视角、情感-心理视角、资源动员视角、政治过程视角等），从变迁、结构、话语、互动等更动态、更历史的角度来审视国家分裂问题。

西方民主制号称是古希腊民主政体的继承者，但古希腊民主政体对权力与知识的思考却和我们迥然相异。我们认为专家因拥有专门的知识而具有了治理他人的资格，但古希腊人却认为专业能力本身并不会使统治具有合法性。世界上首批公职人员的身份是公共奴隶，他们具备普通希腊人所欠缺的各种知识，他们的身影充斥于各个管理部门，可古希腊人很清楚知识会垄断权力。本书从各个层面剖析古希腊公共奴隶的来龙去脉，重新对权力和知识进行了一番梳理。

The Sunday Times bestselling biography of one of the towering figures in British history who became Prime Minister at the age of twenty-four, written by the youngest-ever leader of the Tory Party. The younger William Pitt -- known as the 'schoolboy' -- began his days as Prime Minister in 1783 deeply underestimated and completely beleaguered. Yet he annihilated his opponents in the General Election the following year and dominated the governing of Britain for twenty-two years, nearly nineteen of them as Prime Minister. No British politician since then has exercised such supremacy for so long. Pitt presided over dramatic changes in the country's finances and trade, brought about the union with Ireland, but was ultimately consumed by the years of debilitating war with France. Domestic crises included unrest in Ireland, deep division in the royal family, the madness of the King and a full-scale naval mutiny. He enjoyed huge success, yet died at the nadir of his fortunes, struggling to maintain a government beset by a thin majority at home and military disaster abroad; he worked, worried and drank himself to death. Finally his story is told with the drama, wit and authority it deserves.

Matlab is used within nearly all investment banks and is a requirement in most quant job ads. There is no other book written for finance practitioners that covers this Enables readers to implement financial and econometric models in Matlab All central concepts and theories are illustrated by Matlab implementations which are accompanied by detailed descriptions of the programming steps needed All concepts and techniques are introduced from a basic level Chapter 1 introduces Matlab and matrix algebra, it serves to make the reader familiar with the use and basic capabilities if Matlab. The chapter concludes with a walkthrough of a linear regression model, showing how Matlab can be used to solve an example problem analytically and by the use of optimization and simulation techniques Chapter 2 introduces expected return and risk as central concepts in finance theory using fixed income instruments as examples, the chapter illustrates how risk measures such as standard deviation, Modified duration, VaR, and expected shortfall can be calculated empirically and in closed form Chapter 3 introduces the concept of diversification and illustrates how the efficient investment frontier can be derived - a Matlab is developed that can be used to calculate a given number of portfolios that lie on an efficient frontier, the chapter also introduces the CAPM Chapter 4 introduces econometric tools: principle component analysis is presented and used as a prelude to yield-curve factor models. The Nelson-Siegel model is used to introduce the Kalman-Filter as a way to add time-series dynamics to the evolution of yield curves over time, time series models such as Vector Autoregression and regime-switching are also presented Supported by a website with online resources - www.kennyholm.com where all Matlab programs referred to in the text can be downloaded. The site also contains lecture slides and answers to end of chapter exercises

Based on two popular talks from author Lea Verou—including "CSS3 Secrets: 10 things you may not know about CSS"—this practical guide provides intermediate to advanced CSS developers with more than 40 undocumented techniques and tips for using CSS3 to create better websites.
The talks that spawned this book have been top-rated by attendees in every conference they were presented, and praised in industry media such as .net magazine.
Get information you won’t find in any other book
Learn through small, easily digestible chapters
Helps you understand CSS more deeply so you can improve your own solutions
Apply Lea’s techniques to practically every CSS problem you face
Gain tips from a rockstar author who serves as an Invited Expert in W3C’s CSS Working Group

First published in 2000, Dipesh Chakrabarty's influential Provincializing Europe addresses the mythical figure of Europe that is often taken to be the original site of modernity in many histories of capitalist transition in non-Western countries. This imaginary Europe, Dipesh Chakrabarty argues, is built into the social sciences. The very idea of historicizing carries with it some peculiarly European assumptions about disenchanted space, secular time, and sovereignty. Measured against such mythical standards, capitalist transition in the third world has often seemed either incomplete or lacking. Provincializing Europe proposes that every case of transition to capitalism is a case of translation as well--a translation of existing worlds and their thought--categories into the categories and self-understandings of capitalist modernity. Now featuring a new preface in which Chakrabarty responds to his critics, this book globalizes European thought by exploring how it may be renewed both for and from the margins.

Did Newton "unweave the rainbow" by reducing it to its prismatic colors, as Keats contended? Did he, in other words, diminish beauty? Far from it, says acclaimed scientist Richard Dawkins; Newton's unweaving is the key to much of modern astronomy and to the breathtaking poetry of modern cosmology. Mysteries don't lose their poetry because they are solved: the solution often is more beautiful than the puzzle, uncovering deeper mysteries. With the wit, insight, and spellbinding prose that have made him a best-selling author, Dawkins takes up the most important and compelling topics in modern science, from astronomy and genetics to language and virtual reality, combining them in a landmark statement of the human appetite for wonder. This is the book Richard Dawkins was meant to write: a brilliant assessment of what science is (and isn't), a tribute to science not because it is useful but because it is uplifting.