Executive Summary:
Sweden did not become wealthy through social democracy, big government and a large welfare state. It developed economically by adopting free-market policies in the late 19th century and early 20th century. It also benefited from positive cultural norms, including a strong work ethic and high levels of trust.
As late as 1950, Swedish tax revenues were still only around 21 per cent of GDP. The policy shift towards a big state and higher taxes occurred mainly during the next thirty years, as taxes increased by almost one per cent of GDP annually
The rapid growth of the state in the late 1960s and 1970s led to a large decline in Sweden’s relative economic performance. In 1975, Sweden was the 4th richest industrialised country in terms of GDP per head. By 1993, it had fallen to 14th.
Big government had a devastating impact on entrepreneurship. After 1970, the establishment of new firms dropped significantly. Among the 100 firms with the highest revenues in Sweden in 2004, only two were entrepreneurial Swedish firms founded after 1970, compared with 21 founded before 1913.
High levels of equality and favourable social outcomes were evident before the creation of an extensive welfare state. Moreover, generous welfare policies have created numerous social problems, including high levels of dependency among certain groups.
Descendants of Swedes who migrated to the USA in the 19th century are characterised by favourable social outcomes, such as a low poverty rate and high employment, despite the less extensive welfare state in the USA. The average income of Americans with Swedish ancestry is over 50 per cent higher than Swedes in their native country.
Third World immigrants have been particularly badly affected by a combination of high welfare benefits and restrictive labour market regulations. In 2004, when the Swedish economy was performing strongly, the employment rate among immigrants from non- Western nations in Sweden was only 48 per cent.
Since the economic crisis of the early 1990s, Swedish governments have rolled back the state and introduced market reforms in sectors such as education, health and pensions. Economic freedom has increased in Sweden while it has declined in the UK and USA. Sweden’s relative economic performance has improved accordingly.

Outnumbered is a journey to the dark side of mathematics, from how it dictates our social media activities to our travel routes. Algorithms are running our society, and as Facebook's Cambridge Analytica scandal has revealed, we don't even realize how our data has been used against us. David Sumpter investigates whether mathematics is crossing dangerous lines when it comes to what we can make decisions about. Our increasing reliance on technology and the internet has opened a window for mathematicians and data researchers to gaze through into our lives. Using the data they are constantly collecting about where we travel, where we shop, what we buy, and what interests us, they can begin to predict our daily habits, and increasingly we are relinquishing our decision-making to algorithms. Are we giving this up too easily?Without understanding what mathematics can and can't do it is impossible to get a handle on how it is changing our lives. In this book, David Sumpter takes an algorithm-strewn journey to the dark side of mathematics. He investigates the equations that analyze us, influence us and will (maybe) become like us, answering questions like:Who are Cambridge Analytica, and what are they doing with our data?How does Facebook build a 100-dimensional picture of your personality?Are Google algorithms racist and sexist?Why do election predictions fail so drastically? Are algorithms that are designed to find criminals making terrible mistakes?What does the future hold as we relinquish our decision-making to machines?Featuring interviews with those working at the cutting edge of algorithm, Outnumbered explains how mathematics and statistics work in the real world, and what we should and shouldn't worry about.

中国社会科学院考古研究所陈星灿、《失落的卫星》作者刘子超推荐！
国内首次完整引进，“西域探险之父”斯文·赫定第四次亚洲探险全记录。
完整展现1899~1901斯文·赫定探险生涯中浓墨重彩的三年。
◉ 编辑推荐
斯文·赫定第四次深入亚洲腹地考察的实录，
一百多年前我国新疆 、西藏自然和人文景观的生动写照。
斯文 ·赫定的游记，一如他的素描，真实、朴素而传神。
——中国社会科学院考古研究所 陈星灿
一场非凡的发现之旅，一次动魄的阅读体验。
——《失落的卫星》作者刘子超
这是一部关于探险家的真实日常之作，完整呈现斯文·赫定成果斐然的一次亚洲探险。
全书用类似日记的形式重现在凄凉孤寂的荒野中度过的每一天，记录沿途三年间 6000 多英里路程的波澜壮阔。穿越塔克拉玛干沙漠，发现沉睡的楼兰古城，考察古罗布泊风貌，再次踏足西藏高原，向着神圣的拉萨一路前行。
◉ 内容简介
斯文·赫定的第四次亚洲之旅并不顺利，一路惊险连连，从藏北进入拉萨的尝试宣告失败，他和旅队不得不穿过大片未知的土地，回到罗布荒原，为再次进藏做准备。整夜的大风暴过后，一座消失已久的古城—楼兰出现在他们面前，为这支备受打击的旅队带来了巨大惊喜，也为新疆现代考古添上浓墨重彩的一笔。最终，他们未能抵达拉萨，但发现楼兰古城、重新界定罗布泊的位置等成果让这次亚洲之旅成为传奇。

C++ High Performance, Second Edition guides you through optimizing the performance of your C++ apps. This allows them to run faster and consume fewer resources on the device they're running on without compromising the readability of your codebase.
The book begins by introducing the C++ language and some of its modern concepts in brief. Once you are familiar with the fundamentals, you will be ready to measure, identify, and eradicate bottlenecks in your C++ codebase. By following this process, you will gradually improve your style of writing code. The book then explores data structure optimization, memory management, and how it can be used efficiently concerning CPU caches.
After laying the foundation, the book trains you to leverage algorithms, ranges, and containers from the standard library to achieve faster execution, write readable code, and use customized iterators. It provides hands-on examples of C++ metaprogramming, coroutines, reflection to reduce boilerplate code, proxy objects to perform optimizations under the hood, concurrent programming, and lock-free data structures. The book concludes with an overview of parallel algorithms.
By the end of this book, you will have the ability to use every tool as needed to boost the efficiency of your C++ projects.