In this magnificent synthesis of military, technological, and social history, William H. McNeill explores a whole millennium of human upheaval and traces the path by which we have arrived at the frightening dilemmas that now confront us. McNeill moves with equal mastery from the crossbow--banned by the Church in 1139 as too lethal for Christians to use against one another--to the nuclear missile, from the sociological consequences of drill in the seventeenth century to the emergence of the military-industrial complex in the twentieth. His central argument is that a commercial transformation of world society in the eleventh century caused military activity to respond increasingly to market forces as well as to the commands of rulers. Only in our own time, suggests McNeill, are command economies replacing the market control of large-scale human effort. The Pursuit of Power does not solve the problems of the present, but its discoveries, hypotheses, and sheer breadth of learning do offer a perspective on our current fears and, as McNeill hopes, "a ground for wiser action."
"No summary can do justice to McNeill's intricate, encyclopedic treatment. . . . McNeill's erudition is stunning, as he moves easily from European to Chinese and Islamic cultures and from military and technological to socio-economic and political developments. The result is a grand synthesis of sweeping proportions and interdisciplinary character that tells us almost as much about the history of butter as the history of guns. . . . McNeill's larger accomplishment is to remind us that all humankind has a shared past and, particularly with regard to its choice of weapons and warfare, a shared stake in the future."--Stuart Rochester, "Washington Post Book World "
"Mr. McNeill's comprehensiveness and sensitivity do for the reader what Henry James said that Turgenev's conversation did for him: they suggest 'all sorts of valuable things.' This narrative of rationality applied to irrational purposes and of ingenuity cannibalizing itself is a work of clarity, which delineates mysteries. The greatest of them, to my mind, is why human beings have never learned to cherish their own species."--Naomi Bliven, "The New Yorker
"

In the wake of the Scientific Revolution, the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries saw the complete demolition of traditional structures of authority, scientific thought, and belief by the new philosophy and the philosophers, including Voltaire, Diderot, and Rousseau. The Radical Enlightenment played a part in this revolutionary process, which effectively overthrew all justification for monarchy, aristocracy, and ecclesiastical power, as well as man's dominance over woman, theological dominance of education, and slavery. Despite the present day interest in the revolutions of the eighteenth century, the origins and rise of the Radical Enlightenment have received limited scholarly attention. The greatest obstacle to the movement finding its proper place in modern historical writing is its international scope: the Radical Enlightenment was not French, British, German, Italian, Jewish or Dutch, but all of these at the same time.

In this wide-ranging volume, Jonathan Israel offers a novel interpretation of the Radical Enlightenment down to La Mettie and Diderot, two of its key exponents. Particular emphasis is placed on the pivotal role of Spinoza and the widespread underground international philosophical movement known before 1750 as Spinozism.

The word
means rebirth, and the most obvious example of this phenomenon was the regeneration of Europe's classical Roman roots. The Renaissance began in northern Italy in the late 14th century and culminated in England in the early 17th century. Emphasis on the dignity of man
(though not of woman) and on human potential distinguished the Renaissance from the previous Middle Ages. In poetry and literature, individual thought and action were prevalent, while depictions of the human form became a touchstone of Renaissance art. In science and medicine the macrocosm and
microcosm of the human condition inspired remarkable strides in research and discovery, and the Earth itself was explored, situating Europeans within a wider realm of possibilities. Organized thematically, the
covers all aspects of life in Renaissance Europe:
History; religion; art and visual culture; architecture; literature and language; music; warfare; commerce; exploration and travel; science and medicine; education; daily life.

Theory of Value offers a rigorous, axiomatic, and formal analysis of producer behavior, consumer behavior, general equilibrium, and the optimality of the market mechanism for resource allocation.

本书是法国当代著名先锋小说家乔治•佩雷克的处女作。小说将一桩多角恋情和第一次世界大战“导火索”——奥地利王储菲迪南大公在萨拉热窝被刺杀身亡的著名历史事件相互穿插，交叉叙述，使得一个原本为妻子开枪射杀不忠的丈夫的日常谋杀案产生了不可思议的互文效果。一个关于爱情、嫉妒、征服、控制、背叛的世俗故事和轰轰烈烈的“萨拉热窝刺杀事件”背后承载的关于奴役、反抗、民主、自由的历史意义形成奇妙的组合，小说的实验性、开放性也得以完美地呈现。

人类的发明智慧，常常源于自然
……………
※编辑推荐※
☆ 精彩案例追寻仿生故事，通俗语言揭秘仿生发明
☆ 高清标本照片+手绘原理图，轻松看懂仿生发明的科学基础
☆ 丰富模块涵盖物种信息，贯穿历史文化与奇思妙想
☆ 当自然赋予科技灵感，方知自然之智慧与慷慨
……………
※内容简介※
亿万年来，大自然中种类繁多的植物和动物经过优胜劣汰的进化过程，形成了千奇百怪的形态和功能，这些多样性中包含了大量可以帮助解决技术问题的方法。于是，懂得观察的工程师、建筑师和科学家就向慷慨的大自然学习那些简单而有效的想法，进而发展出了仿生学……
本书以精彩案例讲述植物和动物如何启发了发明家、工程师、建筑师、科学家，也讲述了仿生学如何成为现代科学研究中最有前景的学科之一。在每一个对页里，左页介绍一种植物或动物启发一种或多种仿生发明的故事，另有多个小模块，向我们展示了这种植物或动物的物种信息、奇特策略以及由它们引发的“想象出的发明”；右页则是该植物或动物的标本照片，以及由插画师蒂特瓦内（Titwane）绘制的发明原理图。
日新月异的科技可能已经将书中所称的“我们或许能够发明”和“正在研究”变成了现实，而“目前已得到广泛应用”或许已经过时。但无论如何，这些仿生发明的故事依然充满趣味，我们从中看到的大自然的巧妙与慷慨，也永不过时。更多关于仿生学的妙趣有待读者朋友们在阅读过程中悉心发现。
.....................
※获奖记录※
2017年豆瓣年度图书科学·新知榜单第5

This book is an introduction to pattern theory, the theory behind the task of analyzing types of signals that the real world presents to us. It deals with generating mathematical models of the patterns in those signals and algorithms for analyzing the data based on these models. It exemplifies the view of applied mathematics as starting with a collection of problems from some area of science and then seeking the appropriate mathematics for clarifying the experimental data and the underlying processes of producing these data. An emphasis is placed on finding the mathematical and, where needed, computational tools needed to reach those goals, actively involving the reader in this process. Among other examples and problems, the following areas are treated: music as a realvalued function of continuous time, character recognition, the decomposition of an image into regions with distinct colors and textures, facial recognition, and scaling effects present in natural images caused by their statistical selfsimilarity.

《石油地缘政治》主要内容：国际原油价格自2004年以来飞速飙升，这究竟是因石油市场自身的结构性缺陷所致，还是背后隐藏着更为深刻巨大的国际政治与战略问题？中国与美国作为首当其冲的能源消费大国，所面临的紧迫问题，在于原油供应及石油产品的输送安全等等。世界的能源供求关系已被打乱，从委内瑞拉到俄罗斯、从里海到波斯湾、从地中海沿岸到西非的几内亚湾，无一不受影响。更为严重的是，石油成为恐怖分子威胁破坏全球原油市场的武器，世界充满了前所未有的不确定性。

1.本书与《法语发音》（一）相衔接，用于提高法语发音的水平。
2.用轻松的发音技巧，克服法语中的易混淆音的发音难点，发出和法国人一样的语音。
3.本书既可作课堂教材，也可用于自学。