This week's "New Book of the Week" is meeting readers again. In this column, we will not only list good books to write a recommendation, but we will also give our own opinions on books that readers are concerned about or have just published, as far as possible within the scope of our own reading efficiency. If the content of a new book is very exciting, we will spare no effort to recommend it, and if the content of a book does not match its attention, we will also express our opinions unreservedly in the reference opinion. In order to more intuitively see our attitude towards a book, we will also add a "recommendation index", similar to the Douban score.
Of course, the judgment of any reading is personal, and our opinions may not be correct, and may even be biased, but they must be sincere. We're just providing a reference and hope to provide readers with a guide to reading (after all, this may also risk offending the publisher). If you have a new book that you are more hesitant about and want to know our attitude, please leave a comment in the comment area, and we will give our opinions as soon as possible.
literature
"Modern" and "Unknown": A Study of Late Qing Science Fiction
Author: Jia Liyuan
Edition: Peking University Press
September 2021
Recommendation Index: ★★★★ ☆
Recommended by: Liu Yaguang
On December 19, the World Science Fiction Association (WSFS) announced that Chengdu will become the host city of the 2023 World Science Fiction Convention, and the first city in China to host the World Science Fiction Convention. This is a landmark event in the development of Chinese science fiction. Borrowing the view of scholar Song Mingwei, Chinese science fiction is ushering in a new wave and showing a prosperous trend. However, the same period of prosperity also existed in the late Qing Dynasty in history - although it may not be the same in terms of scale, creativity and so on. Along with the science fiction fever, science fiction research has also flourished in recent years, among which the excavation of late Qing science fiction, the "precursor" of Chinese science fiction, has also become an extremely important part of it.
This book is a newly published masterpiece in this field of research, the author Jia Liyuan is a scholar at Tsinghua University, himself a science fiction novelist, he created many excellent works such as "A Story of the End of the World" under the pseudonym "Fei Deuterium". This dual identity makes this book a professional academic study, but the text is fluent and beautiful. At the same time, it also highlights a strong reflectiveness everywhere. For example, compared with the rigorous setting of modern science fiction, can many elements with supernatural and superstitious elements that often appear in late Qing science fiction be regarded as "science fiction"? At the beginning, the author comprehensively reviewed the concept of "late Qing science fiction" and traced back to the source, proposing that "as a symbol of science fiction, it is not a fantasy of technological invention, but a 'modern' vision of the exploration of the 'unknown' world", which is the most valuable legacy of late Qing science fiction to us.
In this book, "science fiction" is not only a topic within literature, but also a prism for observing the spirit of the times. Liang Qichao, Wu Zhaoren, Lu Xun... Under the author's combing, we will find that many important figures in the history of Chinese thought have encountered "late Qing science fiction" and regarded it as an important practice method for their own ideological exploration and social improvement imagination. These early science fiction works may have been crude in their writing technique, but they represent a shift in the way of cognition: rearranging the once unrealistic "ideals/fantasies/dreams" with a modern gaze— "science/philosophy." Viewed from this point of view, even those seemingly absurd plots have the significance of a specimen of a turn in thought.
psychology
"Say Goodbye to Low Self-Esteem and Rebuild Self-Confidence"
Author: [Dutch] Manga de Neve
Translator: Dong Dai
Edition: China Machine Press
July 2021
Recommended by: Zhang Ting
Low self-esteem is the result of people having strong negative beliefs about themselves, which limits every aspect of our lives and rarely disappears on its own. This book has a strong psychological self-help color, the book dissects what healthy self-esteem is, the causes, manifestations, effects of low self-esteem, and most importantly, how to overcome low self-esteem. The approach described in this book is based on cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). The basic assumption of cognitive behavioral therapy is that problems arise once people repeatedly perceive what is happening in their daily lives from a negative perspective, and these negative views stem from people's "negative core beliefs" about themselves.
The key to breaking through low self-esteem lies in changing these negative core beliefs. The authors argue that while there is no quick way to improve self-esteem and become more confident, half an hour of practice a day is enough. The book offers many practical exercises, such as building a positive quality list, writing a positive data log, an overview of behavior patterns, assessing the credibility of your new core beliefs, and more. For readers with low self-esteem, this would be a fairly practical book that could be of great help to life.
social science
Passion, Skill, and Method: An Interview with Comparative Politics
Editor: Heraldo L. Munch, Richard Snyder
Translator: Wang Weihua
Edition: Contemporary World Publishing House, Yali Translation Series
January 2022
Recommendation index: ★★★ ☆☆
Recommended by: Luo Dong
A scholar who chooses to enter a discipline or a field and prefers no research perspective may have no story, but simply go with the flow, or it may indeed be inspired by an academic career because of some experience, stimulus, or ideal, "after this, and for the reason" (also known as the Latin proverb "post hoc, ergo propter hoc"), inspired by an academic career. Of course, it may just be that you have finished your degree and then applied for a job to make a living, but this is not a second class, nor is it necessarily the reason for "difficult to climb the elegant hall". It depends on how he, as a party, remembers and understands the choices made at that time.
Passion, Craftsmanship, and Methods: An Interview with Comparative Politics interviews fifteen figures from the "Golden Age" of comparative politics, including Huntington, who studies the clash of civilizations and order, Scott, who studies the "moral economics of the peasants" in Southeast Asia, and Skochepo, who has reclaimed the concept of "state" in social science research. They influence not only political science, but also sociology, economics and other disciplines. Their academic research was at the forefront of the Cold War, when they coincidentally embarked on the path of studying Latin American and Southeast Asian countries, discovering concepts that could not be proposed in the homeland in "other places", or finding the explanatory boundaries of the original theoretical framework, reflecting on them, and revising them. And these processes may also be inextricably linked to life and learning. For example, Scott mentions an interesting feature of himself, when he goes to a place, he always thinks that he does not belong there, and in order to prove that he is good and qualified, he is a "good child" for the first year or two, burying all his doubts in his heart until he is sure of "rebellion". By "place" he meant the school, which he did both during his studies and early work. This brings to mind the peasant survival strategies or techniques he described when he studied Southeast Asia. Another example is that Scochepo, who retrieved the "state" in social science research, was "complained" by Schmidt, who was also an interviewee. Schmidt believes that the only American scholars need to retrieve the "state" is because there has never been a talk of retrieving it in Europe, so he picked up the concept of "corporatism" of his predecessors and re-elaborated. In addition to these, the interviews also include personal stories between them and their teachers, students, colleagues and families. The conditions for their academic success are not all beyond everyday life. Individual personality and life, as well as socio-historical circumstances, influence their enthusiasm and approach to research.
It is worth mentioning that the two interviewers are also scholars. And their questions are still a "beginner" perspective, not cumbersome, and still maintain some curiosity. The original book was first published in 2007, and the Chinese edition was published, which was more than 800 pages long, which can be said to be a tome. Fortunately, the Chinese edition still retains a twenty-page index of names and concepts at the end of the book— unfortunately, many books have removed the indexes of the original book in the translated version. For interviews, indexing is too necessary, after all, we follow the names to see that scholars actually live in social networks, encouraging each other, discussing, complaining, and even influencing each other in methods and ideas. Of course, it is futile to try to fully understand a scholar's research or thought through interviews.
thought
Rights, Justice and Responsibility
Author: Xu Xiangdong
Edition: Zhejiang University Press
November 2021
Recommended by: Li Yongbo
What is the responsibility of the developed and rich countries of the world and their peoples towards the global poor? Or is there responsibility for the causes of global poverty? Such a question of "global justice" may not have practical significance for people in the Middle Ages, and the so-called "worldview" has not yet formed a consensus among civilizations on different continents. As the process of globalization continues, distributive justice is not just an internal issue of a country. Providing a paradigm of reflection and responding to these questions became the starting point for the book.
Global justice issues span multiple disciplinary areas, and Professor Xu Xiangdong approaches from the perspective of moral and political philosophy, using Rawls' classic discourses of the 20th century as a framework, and responding to the core criticisms of Rawls' theory of justice by important contemporary theorists such as Jerry Cohen, Amadea Sen, and Martha Nusbaum.
Different from other books that discuss global justice, this book features the discussion at the "meta-level" of global problems, tracing the theoretical development of concepts such as "justice", "rights" and "responsibility", providing readers with a transcendent macro perspective for thinking about such issues. Due to the sheer size of the conceptual framework involved, it is difficult to take into account the details of the arguments in each chapter, and the book concludes with Kant's theory of world citizenship as a perspective, which is also somewhat unfinished.
Author | Editorial Board of Book Review Weekly
Edit | Li Yongbo Qingqingzi
Proofreading | Wang Xin