Joe Simpson and his climbing partner, Simon Yates, had just reached the top of a 21,000-foot peak in the Andes when disaster struck. Simpson plunged off the vertical face of an ice ledge, breaking his leg. In the hours that followed, darkness fell and a blizzard raged as Yates tried to lower his friend to safety. Finally, Yates was forced to cut the rope, moments before he would have been pulled to his own death. The next three days were an impossibly grueling ordeal for both men. Yates, certain that Simpson was dead, returned to base camp consumed with grief and guilt over abandoning him. Miraculously, Simpson had survived the fall, but crippled, starving, and severely frostbitten was trapped in a deep crevasse. Summoning vast reserves of physical and spiritual strength, Simpson crawled over the cliffs and canyons of the Andes, reaching base camp hours before Yates had planned to leave. How both men overcame the torments of those harrowing days is an epic tale of fear, suffering, and survival, and a poignant testament to unshakable courage and friendship.

Drawing on a wealth of new archival material, including personal correspondence and diaries, Robert Leonard tells the fascinating story of the creation of game theory by Hungarian Jewish mathematician John von Neumann and Austrian economist Oskar Morgenstern. Game theory first emerged amid discussions of the psychology and mathematics of chess in Germany and fin-de-siecle Austro-Hungary. In the 1930s, on the cusp of anti-Semitism and political upheaval, it was developed by von Neumann into an ambitious theory of social organization. It was shaped still further by its use in combat analysis in World War II and during the Cold War. Interweaving accounts of the period's economics, science, and mathematics, and drawing sensitively on the private lives of von Neumann and Morgenstern, Robert Leonard provides a detailed reconstruction of a complex historical drama.

作者珍．莫里斯在第二次世界大戰將近結束時第一次來到威尼斯，當時它仍然流露出奇特的孤立感和疏離；這也是威尼斯在歐洲數世紀以來如此獨特的原因。威尼斯是一個一半歡樂，一半憂鬱的城市，但卻不是為眼前的不安憂鬱，而是為古老的遺憾。作者因為熱愛威尼斯的感傷和浮華；喜歡它造就過去帝國輝煌那種徘徊不去的蔑視；它特性中主要的歲月和腐敗的味道；於是她一再重返威尼斯，並記錄下她對威尼斯的熱愛與威尼斯過往的輝煌。作者簡介
珍．莫里斯（Jan Morris）
（撰寫此書時，名為詹姆斯．艾里斯）是英國威爾斯人，她的一生分為兩個主要時期，一為她在北威爾斯的書房、她在南威爾斯黑山（Black Mountains）的鄉間住宅，以及其後在旅居國外。她曾寫過以威尼斯海外帝國和威尼斯動物生活的書籍，除了有關大英帝國的《大英和平》（Pax Britannica）三部曲，還有關於牛津、曼哈頓、雪梨、香港、西班牙和威爾斯的記述，加上二本自傳式著作、六冊旅遊散文集和小說《哈弗最後的來信》（Last letters from Hav）；後者曾列入英國布克文學獎（Booker Prize）候選作品。她編輯過《Oxford Book of Oxford》和維吉妮亞?吳爾芙（Virginai Woolf）的旅行寫作。她同時為威爾斯大學榮譽文學博士。

Out of 193 countries that are currently UN member states, we've invaded or fought conflicts in the territory of 171. That's not far off a massive, jaw-dropping 90 per cent. Not too many Britons know that we invaded Iran in the Second World War with the Soviets. You can be fairly sure a lot more Iranians do. Or what about the time we arrived with elephants to invade Ethiopia? Every summer, hordes of British tourists now occupy Corfu and the other Ionian islands. Find out how we first invaded them armed with cannon instead of camera and set up the United States of the Ionian Islands. Think the Philippines have always been outside our zone of influence? Think again. Read the surprising story of our eighteenth-century occupation of Manila and how we demanded a ransom of millions of dollars for the city. This book takes a look at some of the truly awe-inspiring ways our country has been a force, for good and for bad, right across the world. A lot of people are vaguely aware that a quarter of the globe was once pink, but that's not even half the story. We're a stroppy, dynamic, irrepressible nation and this is how we changed the world, often when it didn't ask to be changed!

How can we best understand the impact of revolutionary technologies on the business cycle, the economy, and society? Why is economics meaningless without history and without an understanding of institutional and technical change? Does the 'new economy' mean the 'end of history'? These are some of the questions addressed in this authoritative analysis of economic growth from the Industrial Revolution to the 'new economy' of today. Chris Freeman has been one of the foremost researchers on innovation for a long time and his colleague Francisco Louca is an outstanding historian of economic theory and an analyst of econometric models and methods. Together they chart the history of five technological revolutions: water-powered mechanization, steam-powered mechanization, electrification, motorization, and computerization. They demonstrate the necessity to take account of politics, culture, organizational change, and entrepreneurship, as well as science and technology in the analysis of economic growth. This is a well-informed, highly topical, and persuasive study of interest across all the social sciences.