Social scientists, whether earnest graduate students or tenured faculty members, clearly know the rules that govern good writing. But for some reason they choose to ignore those guidelines and churn out turgid, pompous, and obscure prose. Distinguished sociologist Howard S. Becker, true to his calling, looks for an explanation for this bizarre behavior not in the psyches of his colleagues but in the structure of his profession. In this highly personal and inspirational volume he considers academic writing as a social activity.
Both the means and the reasons for writing a thesis or article or book are socially structured by the organization of graduate study, the requirements for publication, and the conditions for promotion, and the pressures arising from these situations create the writing style so often lampooned and lamented. Drawing on his thirty-five years' experience as a researcher, writer, and teacher, Becker exposes the foibles of the academic profession to the light of sociological analysis and gentle humor. He also offers eminently useful suggestions for ways to make social scientists better and more productive writers. Among the topics discussed are how to overcome the paralyzing fears of chaos and ridicule that lead to writer's block; how to rewrite and revise, again and again; how to adopt a persona compatible with lucid prose; how to deal with that academic bugaboo, "the literature." There is also a chapter by Pamela Richards on the personal and professional risks involved in scholarly writing.
In recounting his own trials and errors Becker offers his readers not a model to be slavishly imitated but an example to inspire. Throughout, his focus is on the elusive work habits that contribute to good writing, not the more easily learned rules of grammar and punctuation. Although his examples are drawn from sociological literature, his conclusions apply to all fields of social science, and indeed to all areas of scholarly endeavor. The message is clear: you don't have to write like a social scientist to be one.

《我曾侍候过英国国王(赫拉巴尔精品集)》讲述了：在中国，谁都知道米兰·昆德拉。但谁会知道博胡来米尔·赫拉巴尔？捷克作家博·赫拉巴尔，这位法学博士为自己重新建构的一生是这样的：服过兵役、当过推销员、仓库管理员、炼钢工，后来又做废品回收站打包工、舞台布景工。49岁时第一部作品才得以出版，而此后获得的国内、国际奖项多达30多个，很多作品被改编电影和戏剧，并获柏林电影节金奖及奥斯卡最佳外语片奖。这部小说以一个餐厅服务员的打经历，展示了捷克斯洛伐克近半世纪的社会生活画面。它又是一部作家回忆录式的“传记”，通篇描绘了旅馆、饭店、食堂、酒家和餐厅的生活，处处流露出布拉格帅克式的幽默、揶揄和调侃。赫拉巴尔的生命是这样结束的：1997年2月3日，人们发现原来即将愈出院的这位作家从医院五楼窗口坠落身亡，陆续推出的这套“赫拉巴尔精品集”，系中国青年出版社完整购进版权，著名翻译家由捷文直接译出。

许鞍华是香港电影新浪潮旗手，在长达三十多年的创作生涯中矢志不渝奋斗不止，是华语影坛独树一帜、成就卓著的女性作者。本书全面剖析她的创作生涯与作品特色，共分两大部分：上编由许鞍华自述从影以来的创作经历，并对每部作品的优劣得失做出自我检讨；下编由许鞍华的创作同仁、昔日搭档畅谈对与许鞍华合作的印象，并收录了多位香港著名文化学者、电影学者及影评人如金庸、关锦鹏、关本良、罗卡、石琪、卓伯棠、李焯桃等，对许鞍华其人其作（包括创作类型、叙事方法、音画语言、电影结构、女性身份等）进行全面而深入的阐述。

《遇到百分之百的女孩》为作者1981-1983年间，为一本杂志写的18篇连载小说。除一篇外，均是一二千字的超短篇小说。各篇内容不一，有写遇到“百分之百的女孩”后的遐想，有写半夜值班的惊魂故事，有写穷人搬家的苦恼等。这些作品有的惊险，有的滑稽，有的深沉，有的故事完整，有的注重感想，像一篇速写。其总的风格是有趣好玩又富有回味，是一本可读性很强的休闲读物。

From Scientific American
Who knew that elephant trunk tastes like piglet? Or that more than a millennium ago, a writer declared that Chinese "competed to eat their trunks, the taste of which is said to be fatty and crisp, and to be particularly well suited to being roasted." Elephants, it turns out, once roamed across nearly all of China, as did rhinoceroses. Indeed, for 1,000 years the standard armor worn by Chinese soldiers was made from rhino hide. Yet these days rhinos are completely extinct in China, and elephants linger only in protected enclaves in the far southwest of the country. China being China, everything has been carefully documented, so we know that these large mammals retreated gradually over the past 4,000 years, half a step ahead of smaller, two-legged ones. Mark Elvin, an Australian scholar, brilliantly uses that prolonged elephantine trail of tears as the guiding metaphor for his new book, The Retreat of the Elephants: An Environmental History of China. Frankly, I didn't know that I was interested in the history of Chinese elephants, or that I was yearning for an environmental history of China, until I read this book. But Elvin combines an illuminating account of the 4,000-year-long collision of humans and nature with delightful tidbits about everything under the Chinese sun. One could not have written such an environmental history about, for instance, Britain or Russia. From China's point of view, such countries are modern ingenues with barely any history to speak of. But in China, we hear, for example, that the Duke of Zhou, more than 3,000 years ago, drove "elephants far away" from the Yellow River valley. A record from 548 B.C. describes the ivory trade, and later we begin to get detailed accounts of battles over crops between peasants and elephants in, say, A.D. 962. Of course, just because something has been recorded does not mean it is true. One account from 1608 reports of trained elephants in the Ming Dynasty court: "If an elephant commits an offense, or injures a human, the imperial command will be issued for him to be beaten.... Only when the beating has been concluded will he rise to his feet to give thanks for the favor received.... In the sixth lunar month they are bathed and mated. The coupling takes place in the water with a female who floats with her face upward, in all respects like a human being." Hmmm. Floating face upward? So that's how Ming Dynasty historians made love. Elvin is particularly fascinating on the history of China's long wrestling match with water. Chinese civilization may have evolved out of efforts to irrigate the land, and there is an intriguing record of the quest to tame water and land, which would typically succeed for a while until the water rebelled. The problems were especially acute with the Yellow River, which was not called that in ancient times. Then, a little more than two millennia ago, the Qin and Han dynasties promoted farming along the upper reaches of the river, and the resulting erosion filled the water with sediment that made it muddy and gave it its present name. The sediment raised the riverbed until it was held in place only by man-made dikes that required constant attention--because the water, in essence, flowed aboveground, not below it. Periodically dikes broke, sometimes catastrophically. A flood in 1117 is said to have killed more than one million people, making it perhaps the worst such disaster since Noah. The Yellow River dramatically changed course in 1194, moving to the south of the Shandong Peninsula, until in 1853 it moved north again. Elvin meticulously recounts China's hydrology, so we learn, for example, that between 1195 and 1578 the Yellow River delta advanced only 39 meters a year (as sediment built up), whereas from 1579 to 1591 it advanced 1,538 meters a year. Sometimes the sheer weight of detail is numbing, particularly in later chapters offering case studies within China. Readers without an intrinsic fascination with China may find this a book to browse, not to read cover to cover. But as a window into the history of the Middle Kingdom, and an extended account of human interactions with the environment, this is a magisterial work. What gives this book special resonance is the impact China will have on the global environment in the coming decades. The industrial revolution in the West has been so destructive of nature that we should be wary of what the industrialization of China and India will mean. I congratulate my Chinese friends when they buy their first cars, one after the other, but collectively the result of Chinese industrialization will be to swallow up nonrenewable resources, to increase carbon emissions and presumably global warming, and to send acid rain drizzling down on much of the globe. Yet this book does not really illuminate the road ahead. Elvin tells us that it was originally intended to carry us to the present day, but he ends up pretty much grinding to a halt a couple of hundred years ago. The even more gruesome period since--and, brace yourself, the predations still ahead of us--will have to be the subject of a companion volume. Alas, the Chinese elephants have already been driven to the country's fringe and have nowhere else to go. And unless they figure out how to mate even when the female is not floating faceup in a pool of water, they're really in trouble.
Nicholas D. Kristof is a columnist for the New York Times. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of China and is co-author, with his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, of China Wakes: The Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power.

Book Description
This is the first environmental history of China during the three thousand years for which there are written records. It is also a treasure trove of literary, political, aesthetic, scientific, and religious sources, that allow the reader direct access to the views and feelings of the Chinese people towards their environment and their landscape. Elvin chronicles the spread of the Chinese style of farming that eliminated the habitat of the elephants that populated the country alongside much of its original wildlife; the destruction of most of the forests; the impact of war on the environmental transformation of the landscape; and the re-engineering of the countryside through water-control systems, some of gigantic size. He documents the histories of three contrasting localities within China to show how ecological dynamics defined the lives of the inhabitants. And he shows that China in the eighteenth century, on the eve of the modern era, was probably more environmentally degraded than northwestern Europe around this time. Indispensable for its new perspective on long-term Chinese history and its explanation of the roots of China's present-day environmental crisis, this book opens a door into the Chinese past.

《村上朝日堂的卷土重》是村上春树随笔系列之一，由48篇短文组成，内容大致可分为两类，一是关于作者本人的，如他的家庭情况、个人爱好习性、早年的生活和创作、成名后的曲闻逸事，一是作者对社会问题的种种看法和议论，如关于选举、大众阅读、人到中年、健康及电影、音乐。

全书共16篇，是日本作家村上春树1991－1992年在美国讲学期间写下的散文，内容均为作者在美国的亲身经历，见闻，题材丰富，涉及面广，有对美国社会文化现状的描述，有通过具体事件对美国和日本两国文化差异进行的分析，有作者在美国生活的各种趣闻轶事，还有作者对自已少年时代、恋爱结婚、成名前开酒吧谋生以及家庭生活、夫妻关系的回顾等等。本书风格一如他的小说，即生动、机智、幽默，又不乏深入的思考，是一本可读性强的有趣小书。 他坦言自己高中时代不怎么用功，一味和女孩厮混、泡酒吧、打麻将，甚至吸烟，补习了一年才考进早稻田大学文学院的戏剧专业。考上后还是不太用功，找工作面试时被人一口回绝，气得他差点儿破口大骂（《“金字塔”景观》）。他自嘲几年大学生活“惟一的收获”就是谈恋爱得到了现在的夫人阳子（有人考证说是《挪威的森林》中绿子的原型）。而且他没毕业就结了婚，婚后东筹西借千辛万苦开了一间酒吧，像“拉车的马”一样起早贪晚干了七年。每天“一大早就要把一袋子元葱细细切碎”，因而练就了一手切元葱不流泪的绝活（《远离卷心菜卷》）。他还详细谈了四十岁以后为保持“男孩”形象所做的般般努力和由此产生的种种烦恼。 这些主要篇幅写的是美国，其中有关日本和美国的比较，读来尤其有趣。

，《好兵帅克》也可以说是一部历史小说，因为它从内部描写了欧洲近代史上一个最古老的王朝——奥匈帝国崩溃的过程。作品几乎是严格按照第一次世界大战编年顺序写的，从第二卷（帅克入伍后由布拉格开拔前方）起，战局、事件、路线，都与当年的奥匈军队作战史基本吻合，甚至帅克所在的联队番号以及作品中有些人物（卢卡施、万尼克、杜布等）也不是虚构的。然而此书的价值并不在于它如何忠于史实，而在于作者哈谢克以卓绝的漫画式手法，准确、深刻地剖析了奥匈帝国的政府、军队、法院、警察机关以至医院、教会的反动而又虚弱的本质。通过手里拿着“叛国者”帽子到处寻找拘捕对象的特务布里契奈德，以及那草菅人命的军医，我们可以看到奥匈帝国是怎样一座黑暗、残暴的监狱。为了揭露所谓“神职人员”这种寄生虫，作者在卡兹和拉辛两个神甫的形象上着了浓重的笔墨。这个帝国的一切残酷、肮脏、荒谬与丑恶，都没能逃脱哈谢克那支锋利、辛辣的笔，他无情地揭露了这个庞大帝国所加于捷克民族的种种灾难，并塑造出帅克这个平凡而又极富于机智的不朽形象。
当然，这部小说暴露得最彻底、抨击得最有力的还是奥匈帝国所炫耀的军队。反动统治者为了驱使人民替他们那腐朽政权去当炮灰，不得不制造一些虚伪的“军人荣誉感”，鼓吹“忠君爱国”的黩武思想，用宗教麻醉、政治欺骗以及特务和集中营等强制手段，硬把包括老弱病残在内的人们推上火线。作者形象地描写了那个军队中主权式的官兵关系和掠夺者与被掠夺者之间的军民关系，揭示出临阵拼凑起来的“友”军之间互相倾轧，以至职业军官对后备军官和自愿军官的轻蔑。这样的军队既谈不上效率、纪律，更没有“士气”可言。军官们以彼此贻误对方的公事来报私仇，士兵比赛着怠工；列车开走了，军官还躲在车站后面同妓女讲着价钱。这样的军队对“自己人”是那样残酷，对待俘虏和敌方老百姓更不如禽兽。《好兵帅克》这部小说的力量就在于：它以生动有力、令人笑破肚皮的情节，富于说服力地告诉我们：一个不义的军队，无论它在数量上如何庞大，到头来只能失败，灭亡。

他以文字名满全球。
他的“蓝调”令万千人神迷忧伤。
文字是他的符号，“跑者蓝调”何尝不是？
不再是浮华迷茫，不再是旖旎感伤，不再羚羊挂角无迹可寻——写了几十年“别人”的文字，他第一次只写自己：小说之外、故事之外、文字之外，均是不施雕琢娓娓道来，清淡如云，宁静如水……

《阿勒泰的角落》是关于新疆的最美丽文字，这是现代版《呼兰河传》。由作者1998-2003年之间陆续完成并在《文汇报》、《南方周末》等发表的短篇散文集结成册。作者以天然而纯真的笔调描述阿勒泰地区哈萨克族日常生活点滴趣事：做裁缝、可爱的孩子、来来去去的陌生人。她刻画的不是一组有关新疆的异域风情，她刻画的是我们内心的牧歌：白雪和阳光，青草和白桦林，优美、明亮。李娟 阿勒泰的角落，给你带来最生动的故事！
《阿勒泰的角落》适用于：青年，女性，对新疆好奇的读者，文艺青年。

《告别圆舞曲》曾荣获意大利最佳外国文学奖，是米兰·昆德拉重要的小说代表作，于1969－1970年间在波希米亚完成。该作品构思巧妙，极富黑色幽默风格，是公认的当代文学杰作，在全世界34个国家和地区出版。小说以苏联入侵布拉格为政治背景，通过小号手、美国商人、疗养院护士和获释囚徒等8个人物反复曲折的爱情故事，在哲学层面深刻探讨了诸多人生繁杂矛盾的困境和难题。

村上春树以现实主义手法创作的小说，长篇中只有《挪威的森林》，短篇集中则是这本《旋转木马鏖战记》。这部短篇集是在《挪威的森林》（1987）之前的 1985年出版的，作为手法可以说是《挪威的森林》的前奏。村上春树后来自己也承认如果没有这次实践，恐怕永远不可能写出《挪威的森林》那部现实主义长篇。

女孩十九岁，漂亮，是由不法中国人偷运到日本被迫接客的“妓女” 。小说开始不久，悲惨场景就出现了：天黑以后她在情爱旅馆接客时，因突然来了月经而被一个叫白川的日本人打得鼻青脸肿，衣物也被抢走，赤身裸体蜷缩在墙角吞声掩泣，床单上满是血迹。半夜在餐馆里独自看书的女主人公玛丽因为会讲中国话，通过吹长号的大学生高桥的介绍，被旅馆女经理找来当翻译处理这场“麻烦”，故事情节由此铺展开去。
本书由日本著名作家、《挪威的森林》的作者村上春树所作。故事发生在冬天的东京，时间跨度只有晚上12点到早晨6点七个小时，采用两条平行线结构，分别叙述一对年轻的姐妹，一个在黑夜中昏睡，一个在思考和行动。

《童年与故乡》出版于1934年，是作者童年生活的记录。四十篇散文，两百幅漫画，非常生动有趣地描述了他的童年，家庭，学校，军队，初恋等天真烂漫的生活履历，同时旁触到北欧的大自然和它的动物，山林以及纯朴粗野的农民生活。图画文字都有独特的风格。
由于德文原版为手写、手绘，为了使中文译本“更加生色”，译者吴朗西先生便也遵从德文版体例，请好友丰子恺亲自书写配图文字。
丰子恺先生也认为：“古尔布兰生的画，充分具有写实的根底，而又加以夸张的表现，所以能把人物和景物的姿态活跃地表出。他的文字近于散文诗，也很生动。他把童年在故乡所为，所见，所闻的精彩的片段，用绘画和文字协力地表现出了。有的地方文字和绘画交互错综，分不出谁是宾主。这种艺术表现的方式，我觉得很特殊，很有趣味。”
1951年，上海文化生活出版社出版《童年与故乡》中文版，便是依照德文版版式（开本比德文版略小），文字部分由丰子恺手书，插图部分依原作。吴朗西先生妙笔生花的翻译、丰子恺先生意趣盎然的钢笔行草，与作者的漫画天衣无缝地结合在一起。
此次《读库》整理再版，我们依照1934年出版的德文原版样式，采纳中文版中丰子恺先生的手写体正文，及德文版中的插图素材，经认真修复整理，重新进行拼版制作，并恢复为德文版的开本规格，同时保留了吴朗西先生的“译者后记”与丰子恺先生的“写者后记”。
为方便当代青少年读者阅读，我们将吴朗西先生的译文整理为简体中文，以印刷体附后。

《寻找文化身份:一个嘉绒藏族村落的宗教民族志》除了学科、学术表述范式上的这种思考外，还有两个因素也促使作者采取这种形式进行表述和写作。第一，作者与研究、书写对象的特殊关系。村落是作者妻子的家乡，文本中出现的那些人物与作者都有着或近或远的亲戚关系，这使作者得以和他们内心的隐秘世界有了亲密接触。其二，作者从前中文专业的学科出身，导致作者对以小说这种叙述形式来报道和探究人物的个性、内心和行为动机有某种偏好，而民族志这种还没有完全定型、正在发展、变化和探索中的研究文体，也为作者进行的尝试提供了必要的可能性和创造空间。用格尔茨的话说，作者采取的是一种介乎科学与人文之间的“模糊的体裁”。
在表述上，《寻找文化身份:一个嘉绒藏族村落的宗教民族志》还有一个特点，就是“我”自己也作为一个被反思和书写的对象在文本中出场，与故事中的人物、与读者就文中涉及的问题展开对话和协商。这样做，主要有两个目的：一是通过追忆过去作者自己在汉族情境或场域中面对相同问题的亲身经历、感悟，通过表达与村落遭遇后诧异于村落成员应对相同问题的不同方式、思维、心态和期望以及诧异后作者内心发生的改变，来凸现汉族群与村民在文化上的区别，从而唤起读者对本文化和异文化的直觉，使读者也有一种设身处地、身临其境之感。二是增强文本写作和研究本身的透明度，使读者对研究一书写者在研究中涉及的学术背景和研究过程，甚至性情、趣味有所了解，从而建立一种与被动的“支配与被支配的知识”不同的、相对主动的“理解的知识”，参与到作者对对象的认识甚至于文本的建构中来。

Understanding politics in nations other than your own is a perilous exercise. If you were to read two newspaper articles on the same topic from different countries, you would likely find two very different interpretations of the same event. But how we think about what is written in our own country seems somehow less distorted, less wrong. So which side is right? And from what reference point can we begin to compare the two? "Culture Troubles" is a systematic reevaluation of the role of culture in political analysis. Here, Patrick Chabal and Jean-Pascal Daloz contend that it is unwise to compare different societies without taking into account culture, which in their interpretation is not a system of values, but rather a system of inherited meanings and symbols. This cultural approach, they argue, can attribute meaning to political comparison, and they outline the shape of that approach, one that draws from an eclectic range of sources. Illustrating the sharpness and acuity of their methods, they proceed with a comparative study of the state and political representation in three very different nations - France, Nigeria, and Sweden - to untangle the many ways that culture informs our understanding of political events. As a result, "Culture Troubles" offers a rational starting point from which we may begin to understand foreign politics.

相较于《退步集》及其“续编”，《荒废集》依然显示作者敏锐多变的观察和视角。“自由谈”九篇短稿是新的言路的尝试；三篇再谈鲁迅的讲演、三篇奥运会开幕式评析，以及回顾七十年代的长篇随笔，分量较重，前者是对历史与文艺的深层阐述，后者重现了十年浩劫中，几代人被荒废的命运。

著名社会学家费孝通教授，一生行行重行行，实地调查和考察总结中国农村经济发展的各种模式，写下了诸多不朽篇章。本书推出的是学界共认的中国乡土社会传统文化和社会结构理论研究的代表作《乡土中国》、《生育制度》、《乡土重建》和《皇权与神权》四篇著作，可供社会学工作或教学、研究者参考。