本书以英国东印度公司为主要研究对象，较为完整和细致地勾勒了它从起步到发展至顶峰，再到成为殖民地统治代理机构的转变，最后逐渐瓦解的全过程。 全书共11章，首先介绍了不断崛起的诸国东印度公司，其次叙述了胡椒、肉桂等香料及棉织物的进口与销售，进而分析了英国东 印度公司的融资形式、组织架构、商品构成等，随后介绍了南海公司及其引起的金融危机，以及此后东印度公司的业务变化，最后述及东印度公司的性质变化及其瓦解的过程。在当今社会已经进入“脱工业化时代”这一时代背景下，重新回顾商业资本家的发展历程显得尤为必要,从这一点来看，本书对于现代商业经济也具有一定的参考意义。

Ancient China collides with newfangled America in this epic tale of opium smugglers, sea pirates, and dueling clipper ships.
Brilliantly illuminating one of the least-understood areas of American history, best-selling author Eric Jay Dolin now traces our fraught relationship with China back to its roots: the unforgiving nineteenth-century seas that separated a brash, rising naval power from a battered ancient empire. It is a prescient fable for our time, one that surprisingly continues to shed light on our modern relationship with China. Indeed, the furious trade in furs, opium, and bêche-de-mer--a rare sea cucumber delicacy--might have catalyzed America's emerging economy, but it also sparked an ecological and human rights catastrophe of such epic proportions that the reverberations can still be felt today. Peopled with fascinating characters--from the "Financier of the Revolution" Robert Morris to the Chinese emperor Qianlong, who considered foreigners inferior beings--this page-turning saga of pirates and politicians, coolies and concubines becomes a must-read for any fan of Nathaniel Philbrick's Mayflower or Mark Kurlansky's Cod. Two maps, and 16 pages of color and 83 black-and-white illustrations.

在辽阔的亚洲大陆上，分布着东亚的中华文明、西亚文明、印度的梵文文明以及日本文明等，各种异质文明通过交通的纽带而建立联系，相互竞争并相互弥补，从而展开了亚洲史发展进程的宏大画卷，由此我们可以进一步认识全人类的真正历史。作者提出“西亚文明东流论”，并开辟了“亚洲史”这一全新的领域，着重考察各文明之间的交通联系，通过交通线的转移和变化，揭示文明兴衰与时代演进的历史大势。

城市的公共水资源建设和管理，是19世纪资本和权力博弈的有趣案例。作者指出，公共当局和私营公司既没有相同的利益也没有相同的目标，那么在涉及水资源这项事关重大的议题时，私人利益和公共利益究竟该如何取舍呢？在《君主与承包商：公共水设施的发展变迁》一书中，作者深入探究了19世纪的三个大都市，伦敦、纽约和巴黎的公共水网建设。

1994年，總統李登輝提出南向政策，許多重要的知識分子，從理論、歷史或自然等面向，著文為「南進」背書。學者陳光興由此感受到台灣思想及學術界的局限：在這塊被日本殖民五十年的土地上，大多數人竟閃爍著相同的帝國主義慾望。

由此出發，美國學術訓練出身的他，開始將視角轉向亞洲，檢視同樣遭受殖民歷史的地區，是否也產生相同的思想局限。

在十餘年闖蕩亞洲的思想實踐中，陳光興指出幾個曾經影響亞洲的重大歷史事件（帝國主義、殖民、冷戰體系），依舊發揮強大的影響力，牢牢地控制我們對世界的想像。

於是陳光興發展出去帝國、去殖民、去冷戰三位一體的的問題意識，並且明確指出，要逃離這種歷史宿命，就必須以「亞洲作為方法」：透過亞洲視野的想像，亞洲間的各個社會可以相互看見，轉化自身，提出根植亞洲經驗的世界觀。

在英國跨國出版社Routledge出資的狀況下，陳光興開始參與創辦 Inter-Asia Cultural Studies國際刊物，希望發展出亞洲知識分子的思想交流平台。對他來說，這就是「亞洲作為方法」的實踐。

本书提出了血酬和元规则等概述，这些概念代表了我力所能及的深度。所谓血酬，即流血拼命所得的酬报，体现着生命与生存资源的交换关系。从晚清到民国，吃这碗饭的人比产业工人多得多。血酬的价值，取决于所拼抢的东西，这就是“血酬定律”。这个道理很浅显，却可以推出许多惊人的结论。如果再引入一些因素，一层一层地推论下去，还可以解释书中的其他概念，成为贯穿全书的基本逻辑。因此，作者把“血酬定律”当作书名。

From the acclaimed author of River Town comes a rare portrait, both intimate and epic, of twenty-first-century China as it opens its doors to the outside world. A century ago, outsiders saw Chinaas a place where nothing ever changes. Today the coun-try has become one of the most dynamic regions on earth. That sense of time—the contrast between past and present, and the rhythms that emerge in a vast, ever-evolving country—is brilliantly illuminated by Peter Hessler in Oracle Bones , a book that explores the human side of China's transformation. Hessler tells the story of modern-day China and its growing links to the Western world as seen through the lives of a handful of ordinary people. In addition to the author, an American writer living in Beijing, the narrative follows Polat, a member of a forgotten ethnic minority, who moves to the United States in searchof freedom; William Jefferson Foster, who grew up in an illiterate family and becomes a teacher; Emily,a migrant factory worker in a city without a past; and Chen Mengjia, a scholar of oracle-bone inscriptions, the earliest known writing in East Asia, and a man whosetragic story has been lost since the Cultural Revolution. All are migrants, emigrants, or wanderers who find themselves far from home, their lives dramatically changed by historical forces they are struggling to understand. Peter Hessler excavates the past and puts a remarkable human face on the history he uncovers. In a narrative that gracefully moves between the ancient and the present, the East and the West, Hessler captures the soul of a country that is undergoing a momentous change before our eyes.

史记是我国第一部通史。在史记之前，有以年代为次的“编年史”如春秋，有以地域为限的“国别史”如国语、战国策，有以文告档卷形式保存下来的“政治史”如尚书，可是没有上下几千年，包罗各方面，而又融会贯通，�络分明，像史记那样的通史。
唐刘知几的史通分叙六家，统归二体。所谓“二体”，就是“编年体”和“纪传体”，而史记是纪传体的创始。从此以后，历代的所谓“正史，从汉书到明史，尽管名目有改变（例如汉书改“书”为“志”，晋书改世家”为“载记”），门类有短缺（例如汉书无“世家”，后汉书、三国志等都无“表”、“志及世家”），但都有“纪”有“传”，绝无例外地沿袭了史记的体例。
据司马迁自序，史记全书本纪十二篇，表十篇，书八篇，世家三十篇，列传七十篇（包括太史公自序），共一百三十篇。今本史记一百三十卷，篇数跟司马迁自序所说的相符。但汉书司马迁传说其中“十篇缺，有录无书。三国魏张晏注：“迁没之后，亡景纪、武纪、礼书、乐书、兵书（按：即律书）、汉兴以来将相年表、日者传、三王世家、龟策列传、传靳列传。兀成之间，褚先生补缺，作武帝纪、三王世家、龟策、日者列传，言辞鄙陋，非迁本意也。可见司马迁编写史记，只能说是基本上完成，其中有若干篇，或者没有写定，或者已经定稿而后来散失了。

作者探讨1840至1956百多年间中国社会宏观结构的变迁的最新著作，观点新颖并富挑战性。作者不同意海内外的流行见解，即把中国近现代社会变迁视为传统社会的断裂，而认为共产党建立的政权不过是传统的某种变构。作者企图超越国共两党和西方学术界对中国近现代史的解释，用大量史料证明，传统深层结构如何左右中国现代化进程，中国近现代社会变迁其实是超稳定结构在对外开放条件下的行为模式。
中国近现代史风云变幻、扑朔迷离，本书则简明清晰地勾画出社会变迁的主线，以新的视角来考察一系列重大历史事件。

In the summer of 1937, Japanese troops occupied the campuses of Beijing’s two leading universities, Beida and Qinghua, and reduced Nankai, in Tianjin, to rubble. These were China's leading institutions of higher learning, run by men educated in the West and committed to modern liberal education. The three universities first moved to Changsha, 900 miles southwest of Beijing, where they joined forces. But with the fall of Nanjing in mid-December, many students left to fight the Japanese, who soon began bombing Changsha.In February 1938, the 800 remaining students and faculty made the thousand-mile trek to Kunming, in China’s remote, mountainous southwest, where they formed the National Southwest Associated University (Lianda). In makeshift quarters, subject to sporadic bombing by the Japanese and shortages of food, books, and clothing, students and professors did their best to conduct a modern university. In the next eight years, many of China’s most prominent intellectuals taught or studied at Lianda. This book is the story of their lives and work under extraordinary conditions.Lianda’s wartime saga crystallized the experience of a generation of Chinese intellectuals, beginning with epic journeys, followed by years of privation and endurance, and concluding with politicization, polarization, and radicalization, as China moved from a war of resistance against a foreign foe to a civil war pitting brother against brother. The Lianda community, which had entered the war fiercely loyal to the government of Chiang Kai-shek, emerged in 1946 as a bastion of criticism of China’s ruling Guomindang party. Within three years, the majority of the Lianda community, now returned to its north China campuses in Beijing and Tianjin, was prepared to accept Communist rule.In addition to struggling for physical survival, Lianda’s faculty and students spent the war years striving to uphold a model of higher education in which modern universities, based in large part on the American model, sought to preserve liberal education, political autonomy, and academic freedom. Successful in the face of wartime privations, enemy air raids, and Guomindang pressure, Lianda’s constituent universities eventually succumbed to Communist control. By 1952, the Lianda ideal had been replaced with a politicized and technocratic model borrowed from the Soviet Union.

在这部关于经济史和社会理论的经典著作中，卡尔·波兰尼分析了工业革命的大转型带来的经济和社会的巨大变化。他的分析不仅阐述了自我调适的自由市场的缺陷，而且阐述了资本主义市场带来的可怕的社会后果。新的序言和导言揭示了在全球化和自由贸易时代波兰尼的精辟分析所具有的新的价值。
当第二次世界大战接近尾声的时候，两本关于政治经济学的著作出版了。一本是哈耶克的《通向奴役之路》，它成为20世纪最后四分之一世纪里的自由市场革命的推动性力量。另一本是卡尔·波兰尼的《大转型》，它值得人们好好阅读，它是这个世纪最重要、最具创造性的著作，就扩展和加深对市场社会的批评而言，这个时代没有其他书比《大转型》做得更多了。

On its publication in 1957, The Poverty of Historicism was hailed by Arthur Koestler as 'probably the only book published this year which will outlive the century.'
A devastating criticism of fixed and predictable laws in history, Popper dedicated the book to all those 'who fell victim to the fascist and communist belief in Inexorable Laws of Historical Destiny.' Short and beautifully written, it has inspired generations of readers, intellectuals and policy makers. One of the most important books on the social sciences since the Second World War, it is a searing insight into the ideas of this great thinker.