《蛇》的故事情节，如果细细加以梳理，读者不难发现，它有着推理小说的某些影子。一名邮票商，邂逅一名少女，两人相恋。少女成了他的情人。
关于这名少女的情况，读者知之甚少。她的姓名，连邮票商也不知道。按照他的随意虚构，姑且叫她米丽亚姆吧。她的本来已不甚清晰的特征（外形的和性格的），在故事的演化进程中，也发生嬗变。米丽亚姆，飘忽不定，令人难以捉摸和把握。邮票商因此萌生嫉妒。他的醋意越来越厉害，越来越使他失去理智。末了，邮票商用毒药谋害了米丽亚姆，并吞吃了她的尸体。
这起谋杀案的凶手，就是叙述者自己——邮票商。所以，案件没有一丁点儿扑朔迷离的地方，一切都清清楚楚，昭然若揭。不料，当凶手自首，案件进入审讯阶段时，却节外生枝，疑窦丛生了。这倒不是推理小说中通常发生的在确认凶手上的疑惑，而是对于罪行是否成立，对于所谓被害者的尸体的下落，对于是否确有尸体，进而对于是否确有被害者，发生了怀疑。很可能，这一切全是叙述者、一个谎言癖者的信口开河，凭空捏造！这么一来，习见的推理小说的叙述结构，在这儿完完全全地颠倒过来了。在推理小说中，通常的叙述脉络是：发现案子的蛛丝马迹，紧紧追踪与探究，渐次解开纷乱的谜团。最终撕下凶手的面具，使其真相暴露于光天化日之下。
而在《蛇》中，读者看到一个颠倒了的次序：凶手自案件发生时便已经确认，然而，随着叙事的进展，竟无法落实凶手行凶的任何一个证据。按照这一模式追溯，凶杀案从根本上被推倒了。叙述者——“凶手”的过错，仅仅是他让司法机构着实徒劳地忙碌了一番而已。

Editorial Reviews
Product Description
In traditional human societies, the stranger was a threat, to be disarmed at once by an act of force or by a ritual of hospitality. Under no conditions could a stranger be ignored or taken for granted. Yet in all great cities today, human beings seem to live out their entire lives in "a world of strangers." How did it become possible for millions of people to do this? How is city life possible? The unique value of A World of Strangers lies in Dr. Lofland's expert use of rich historical and anthropological sources to answer these questions. She demonstrates that "a potentially chaotic and meaningless world of strangers was transformed into a knowable and predictable world of strangers by the same mechanism humans always use to make their world livable: it was ordered." Lofland offers a brilliant analysis of the various devices used at different times in history to create social and psychological order in cities, concluding with an analysis of the contemporary city, in which the location of the encounter between strangers has come to replace personal appearance as a means of evaluating others. Dr. Lofland also describes how city people initially learn and then act upon the ordering principles dominant in their society. A World of Strangers is a wonderfully wise and readable account of how we have come to live as we do.
From the Publisher
Titles of related interest from Waveland Press: Banfield, The Unheavenly City Revisited (ISBN 0881335290); Gmelch-Zenner, Urban Life: Readings in Urban Anthropology, Fourth Edition (ISBN 157766194X); Howell, Hard Living on Clay Street: Portraits of Blue Collar Families (ISBN 0881335266); and Shannon et al., Urban Problems in Sociological Perspective, Fourth Edition (ISBN 1577661958).

One of the world’s leading philosophers offers aspiring thinkers his personal trove of mind-stretching thought experiments.
Over a storied career, Daniel C. Dennett has engaged questions about science and the workings of the mind. His answers have combined rigorous argument with strong empirical grounding. And a lot of fun.
Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking offers seventy-seven of Dennett’s most successful "imagination-extenders and focus-holders" meant to guide you through some of life’s most treacherous subject matter: evolution, meaning, mind, and free will. With patience and wit, Dennett deftly deploys his thinking tools to gain traction on these thorny issues while offering readers insight into how and why each tool was built.
Alongside well-known favorites like Occam’s Razor and reductio ad absurdum lie thrilling descriptions of Dennett’s own creations: Trapped in the Robot Control Room, Beware of the Prime Mammal, and The Wandering Two-Bitser. Ranging across disciplines as diverse as psychology, biology, computer science, and physics, Dennett’s tools embrace in equal measure light-heartedness and accessibility as they welcome uninitiated and seasoned readers alike. As always, his goal remains to teach you how to "think reliably and even gracefully about really hard questions."
A sweeping work of intellectual seriousness that’s also studded with impish delights, Intuition Pumps offers intrepid thinkers—in all walks of life—delicious opportunities to explore their pet ideas with new powers.

Using the free, open source R language, scientists, financial analysts, public policy professionals and programmers can build powerful statistical models capable of answering many of their most challenging questions. But, for non-statisticians, R can be difficult to learn - and most books on the subject assume far too much knowledge to help them. R for Non-Statisticians is the solution. Drawing on his extensive experience teaching new users through the NYC R User Group, professional statistician Jared Lander has written the perfect R tutorial for everyone who's new to statistical programming and modeling. Offering extensive hands-on practice and sample code, Lander covers all this and more: * Downloading, installing, and getting started with R * Navigating and mastering the R environment * Learning basic techniques, from control statements to data manipulation * Importing data from SAS, SPSS, Stata, web sites, or elsewhere * Performing essential statistical tests * Building, comparing, and diagnosing models * Developing your own R packages * Connecting with and learning from the global R user community By the time you're done, you won't just understand how to write R programs: you'll be ready to use R to tackle the statistical problems you care about most.

From John Locke to Sigmund Freud, philosophers and psychologists have long believed that we begin life as blank moral slates. Many of us take for granted that babies are born selfish and that it is the role of society—and especially parents—to transform them from little sociopaths into civilized beings. In Just Babies , Paul Bloom argues that humans are in fact hardwired with a sense of morality. Drawing on groundbreaking research at Yale, Bloom demonstrates that, even before they can speak or walk, babies judge the goodness and badness of others’ actions; feel empathy and compassion; act to soothe those in distress; and have a rudimentary sense of justice.

Still, this innate morality is limited, sometimes tragically. We are naturally hostile to strangers, prone to parochialism and bigotry. Bringing together insights from psychology, behavioral economics, evolutionary biology, and philosophy, Bloom explores how we have come to surpass these limitations. Along the way, he examines the morality of chimpanzees, violent psychopaths, religious extremists, and Ivy League professors, and explores our often puzzling moral feelings about sex, politics, religion, and race.

十九世紀中葉，東西兩半球各自發生了一場大規模內戰。西半球那場發生在崛起中的美國，東半球則發生在日益衰頹的中國。而當時的全球霸權英國，則在其間發揮了關鍵性影響。
大清帝國這場內戰，臺灣稱為「太平天國之亂」，共產中國則視之為革命或農民起義。奇特的是，太平天國的領導者洪秀全是當時中國為數極少的基督徒，他在屢試不第之後崩潰癱軟，斷斷續續做異夢四十天，數年後宣稱自己是上帝的第二個兒子，並開始領導宗教運動，隨後轉為政治軍事運動。
鴉片戰爭後，中國已嵌入全球貿易體系中，西方列強的外交與軍事力量對清廷或太平天國更有一定的影響力。西方各國的輿論甚至國會內部，對於是否干涉這場戰事各有看法，但才剛攻進北京並放火燒掉圓明園的英國最後卻選擇幫助滿清朝廷。日本明治維新的重要人物伊藤博文便認為，英國介入使得清廷多活了五十年，因而加大後來的動盪程度，並推遲中國的現代化進程。
作者從國際關係的角度切入，特別著重英美各國在外交與軍事上對太平天國戰事的影響，而不流於誇大。除了組建湘軍的曾國藩之外，也側重介紹了洪秀全的族弟洪仁玕，他為太平天國提出的「資政新篇」可說是中國第一套現代化綱領。本書於二○一二年獲頒坎迪爾獎（Cundill Prize），是全世界獎金最高的歷史著作獎。

《上海史研究译丛》精选当今海外一流学者有关近现代上海史研究的经典之作，可读性和学术性兼具，并由国内专家翻译。海外学者以独特视角、独有材料和独到见解，对上海历史作出有别于以往的解读，内容涉及上海道台、警察、妓女、工业家、侨民、同乡会、救火会、苏北人等众生相。
本书以苏北人作为个案研究，探讨了原籍是如何逐渐成为汉族中界定族群身份的依据的，解释了籍贯怎样构筑社会等级和社会对立，揭示了中国城市居民面临的这一方面的问题。

No poem in German literature is so well known and studied in Germany and Europe as the 800-year-old Das Nibelungenlied. In the English-speaking world, however, the poem has remained little known, languishing without an adequate translation. This wonderful new translation by eminent translator Burton Raffel brings the epic poem to life in English for the first time, rendering it in verse that does full justice to the original High Middle German. His translation underscores the formal aspects of the poem and preserves its haunting beauty. Often called the German lliad, Das Nibelungenlied is a heroic epic both national in character and sweeping in scope. The poem moves inexorably from romance through tragedy to holocaust. It portrays the existential struggles and downfall of an entire people, the Burgundians, in a military conflict with the Huns and their king. In his foreword to the book, Michael Dirda observes that the story “could be easily updated to describe the downfall of a Mafia crime family, something like The Godfather, with swords.” The tremendous appeal of Das Nibelungenlied throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is reflected in such works as Richard Wagner’s opera tetralogy Der Ring des Nibelungen, Fritz Lang’s two-part film Die Nibelungen, and, more recently, J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.

A reasoned yet urgent call to embrace and protect the essential, practical human quality that has been drummed out of our lives: wisdom.
It's in our nature to want to succeed. It's also human nature to want to do right. But we've lost how to balance the two. How do we get it back?
Practical Wisdom can help. "Practical wisdom" is the essential human quality that combines the fruits of our individual experiences with our empathy and intellect-an aim that Aristotle identified millennia ago. It's learning "the right way to do the right thing in a particular circumstance, with a particular person, at a particular time." But we have forgotten how to do this. In Practical Wisdom, Barry Schwartz and Kenneth Sharpe illuminate how to get back in touch with our wisdom: how to identify it, cultivate it, and enact it, and how to make ourselves healthier, wealthier, and wiser.

Whether we're buying a pair of jeans, ordering a cup of coffee, selecting a long-distance carrier, applying to college, choosing a doctor, or setting up a 401(k), everyday decisions -- both big and small -- have become increasingly complex due to the overwhelming abundance of choice with which we are presented. As Americans, we assume that more choice means better options and greater satisfaction. But beware of excessive choice: choice overload can make you question the decisions you make before you even make them, it can set you up for unrealistically high expectations, and it can make you blame yourself for any and all failures. In the long run, this can lead to decision-making paralysis, anxiety, and perpetual stress. And, in a culture that tells us that there is no excuse for falling short of perfection when your options are limitless, too much choice can lead to clinical depression. In The Paradox of Choice, Barry Schwartz explains at what point choice -- the hallmark of individual freedom and self-determination that we so cherish -- becomes detrimental to our psychological and emotional well-being. In accessible, engaging, and anecdotal prose, Schwartz shows how the dramatic explosion in choice -- from the mundane to the profound challenges of balancing career, family, and individual needs -- has paradoxically become a problem instead of a solution. Schwartz also shows how our obsession with choice encourages us to seek that which makes us feel worse. By synthesizing current research in the social sciences, Schwartz makes the counter intuitive case that eliminating choices can greatly reduce the stress, anxiety, and busyness of our lives. He offers eleven practical steps on how to limit choices to a manageable number, have the discipline to focus on those that are important and ignore the rest, and ultimately derive greater satisfaction from the choices you have to make.

You recognize when you know something for certain, right? You "know" the sky is blue, or that the traffic light had turned green, or where you were on the morning of September 11, 2001--you know these things, well, because you just do.In "On Being Certain," neurologist Robert Burton challenges the notions of how we think about what we know. He shows that the feeling of certainty we have when we "know" something comes from sources beyond our control and knowledge. In fact, certainty is a mental sensation, rather than evidence of fact. Because this "feeling of knowing" seems like confirmation of knowledge, we tend to think of it as a product of reason. But an increasing body of evidence suggests that feelings such as certainty stem from primitive areas of the brain, and are independent of active, conscious reflection and reasoning. The feeling of knowing happens to us; we cannot make it happen.Bringing together cutting edge neuroscience, experimental data, and fascinating anecdotes, Robert Burton explores the inconsistent and sometimes paradoxical relationship between our thoughts and what we actually know. Provocative and groundbreaking, "On Being Certain," will challenge what you know (or think you know) about the mind, knowledge, and reason.

Why are lovers quicker to forgive their partners for infidelity than for leaving dirty dishes in the sink? Why will sighted people pay more to avoid going blind than blind people will pay to regain their sight? Why do dining companions insist on ordering different meals instead of getting what they really want? Why do patients remember long medical procedures as being less painful than short ones? Why do home sellers demand prices they wouldn’t dream of paying if they were home buyers? Why are shoppers happier when they can’t get refunds? Why do pigeons seem to have such excellent aim; why can’t we remember one song while listening to another; and why does the line at the grocery store always slow down the moment we join it?
In this brilliant, witty, and accessible book, renowned Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert describes the foibles of imagination and illusions of foresight that cause each of us to misconceive our tomorrows and misestimate our satisfactions. Vividly bringing to life the latest scientific research in psychology, cognitive neuroscience, philosophy, and behavioral economics, Gilbert reveals what scientists have discovered about the uniquely human ability to imagine the future, and about our capacity to predict how much we will like it when we get there. With penetrating insight and sparkling prose, Gilbert explains why we seem to know so little about the hearts and minds of the people we are about to become.</p>

A must-read for anyone who makes business decisions that have a major financial impact.As the recent collapse on Wall Street shows, we are often ill-equipped to deal with uncertainty and risk. Yet every day we base our personal and business plans on uncertainties, whether they be next month's sales, next year's costs, or tomorrow's stock price. In "The Flaw of Averages," Sam Savage-known for his creative exposition of difficult subjects- describes common avoidable mistakes in assessing risk in the face of uncertainty. Along the way, he shows why plans based on average assumptions are wrong, on average, in areas as diverse as healthcare, accounting, the War on Terror, and climate change. In his chapter on Sex and the Central Limit Theorem, he bravely grasps the literary third rail of gender differences.Instead of statistical jargon, Savage presents complex concepts in plain English. In addition, a tightly integrated web site contains numerous animations and simulations to further connect the seat of the reader's intellect to the seat of their pants.The "Flaw of Averages" typically results when someone plugs a single number into a spreadsheet to represent an uncertain future quantity. Savage finishes the book with a discussion of the emerging field of Probability Management, which cures this problem though a new technology that can pack thousands of numbers into a single spreadsheet cell.Praise for "The Flaw of Averages""Statistical uncertainties are pervasive in decisions we make every day in business, government, and our personal lives. Sam Savage's lively and engaging book gives any interested reader the insight and the tools to deal effectively with those uncertainties. I highly recommend "The Flaw of Averages."" --William J. Perry, Former U.S. Secretary of Defense "Enterprise analysis under uncertainty has long been an academic ideal. . . . In this profound and entertaining book, Professor Savage shows how to make all this practical, practicable, and comprehensible." ---Harry Markowitz, Nobel Laureate in Economics
点击链接进入中文版：
平均值缺陷

An astonishing new science called neuroplasticity is overthrowing the centuries-old notion that the human brain is immutable. Psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, Norman Doidge, M.D., traveled the country to meet both the brilliant scientists championing neuroplasticity and the people whose lives they’ve transformed - people whose mental limitations or brain damage were seen as unalterable. We see a woman born with half a brain that rewired itself to work as a whole, blind people who learn to see, learning disorders cured, IQs raised, aging brains rejuvenated, stroke patients learning to speak, children with cerebral palsy learning to move with more grace, depression and anxiety disorders successfully treated, and lifelong character traits changed. Using these marvelous stories to probe mysteries of the body, emotion, love, sex, culture, and education, Dr. Doidge has written an immensely moving, inspiring book that will permanently alter the way we look at our brains, human nature, and human potential.

What happens in our brains to make us feel fear, love, hate, anger, joy? do we control our emotions, or do they control us? Do animals have emotions? How can traumatic experiences in early childhood influence adult behavior, even though we have no conscious memory of them? In The Emotional Brain, Joseph LeDoux investigates the origins of human emotions and explains that many exist as part of complex neural systems that evolved to enable us to survive. Unlike conscious feelings, emotions originate in the brain at a much deeper level, says LeDoux, a leading authority in the field of neural science and one of the principal researchers profiled in Daniel Goleman's Emotional Intelligence. In this provocative book, LeDoux explores the underlying brain mechanisms responsible for our emotions, mechanisms that are only now being revealed. The Emotional Brain presents some fascinating findings about our familiar yet little understood emotions. For example, our brains can detect danger before we even experience the feeling of being afraid. The brain also begins to initiate physical responses (heart palpitations, sweaty palms, muscle tension) before we become aware of an associated feeling of fear. Conscious feelings, says LeDoux, are somewhat irrelevant to the way the emotional brain works. He points out that emotional responses are hard-wired into the brain's circuitry, but the things that make us emotional are learned through experience. And this may be the key to understanding, even changing, our emotional makeup. Many common psychiatric problems - such as phobias or posttraumatic stress disorder - involve malfunctions in the way emotion systems learn and remember. Understanding how these mechanisms normally work will have important consequences for how we view ourselves and how we treat emotional disorders.

本书是美国著名人类学家武雅士等有关中国社会宗教与仪式主题的论文集。作者在实地调查基础上，对华南民间信仰做了具体而细致的研究，构建了汉族民间“神灵”的人类学解释模式，总结了汉民族的民间信仰的三种模式：官僚模式、个人模式、异端模式。所收论文16篇，如“一个台湾城镇历史中的宗教组织”、“香港的乡庙”、“台湾的建筑与超自然”、“广东的萨满信仰”、“道教仪式中的正统与异端”、“祖先崇拜和丧葬实践”、“神、鬼和祖先”等等。所论主题包括台湾、香港等地区的民间宗教信仰以及各种仪式，如道教、萨满教、祖先崇拜、鬼神信仰、丧葬仪式等等，分析潜藏在这些信仰和仪式背后的深层的社会、文化因素，揭示中国传统文化与当代社会的碰撞与交融。

The mechanism approach calls attention to an intermediary level of analysis, in between pure description and story-telling, on the one hand, and grand theorizing and universal social laws, on the other. These essays, written by prominent social scientists, advance criticisms of current trends in social theory and suggest alternative approaches. For social theory to be of use for the working social scientist, it must attain a high level of precision and provide a toolbox from which middle range theories can be constructed.

本书由正文4篇、附录3篇构成，其中2014年新作3篇。全书从古代中国文化、哲学的源头出发，揭示所谓巫史传统，进而讨论巫对中国“大传统”的影响，形成了礼，礼的发展则生发出仁，巫与“小传统”的结合，则形成时至今日尚存的巫术，对中国哲学思想的内在里路进行了系统化地阐释。

本书选译了著名美术史家巫鸿教授自1985年以来发表的31篇论文。这些论文；围绕着”礼仪美术”(ritual art)这一基本概念讨论了中国上古和中古美术中的多项艺术传统和形式，包括史前至三代的陶、玉和青铜礼器，东周以降的墓葬艺术，佛教。道教美术的产生和初期发展等。这些论文大量使用考古和文献证据，以扩大美术史研究的广度和深度。作者结合人类学和社会学 的理论和方法论，探讨建筑、雕塑、画像和器物等各种视觉形象的组合以及与人类行为及思维的有机联系。其分析对象不再是孤立的物品和图像．而包括了对视觉环境的复原以及对艺术品的创作动因、社会环境，礼仪功能以及观者反应的考察。文章中的讨论往往在两个层面上进行，除了对具体历史问题的考察，还反思有关的学术史和研究方法。相当一批论文从比较文化史的角度探讨了中国古代美术的特殊物质性和视觉传统对重新思考中国美术史的叙事结构具有重要意义。
在西方学界中，这些文章对近年中国古代美术的研究已产生重要影响。本书是国内首次对巫鸿教授学术成果的系统介绍。全书分为四部分，包括史前至先秦美术、汉代美术、中古佛教与道教美术，及古代美术沿革。书后附有访谈录、论文出处。书中插配古代美术品照片、拓片、线图，地图等图像600余帧。