Time is a too abstract word. A year or 365 days is a concept, minute by minute, but not a unit of measurement. When specific people and things happen, time is not involved. But in the end of the year, time suddenly becomes like steam in an open kettle, straight to the door, giving people the pain of cutting the skin. Like gravity, it is only when it lands vertically that we can find evidence of its existence in the convulsive guts.
Publishing is a particularly time-eroded industry, and it and its products inherently have the privilege of rejecting time, and if necessary, books can exist for a long time, with a shelf life approaching infinity. So at this age when everything is fast, it can be published arrogantly and slowly.
Gravity is a very slow and slow team that can't produce several books a year: 2019, 3; 2020, or 3; 2021, a little better, 9. Peers have rolled up on the road of 30+. Even our marketing seems careless, this public name was registered in 2019, and the first tweet was not sent until the end of 2021, you see, the public account will only start operating in 2022 - this seems to be something that should be done in 2012?
We've been slowing down a few beats of the times. The word epoch is more specific than time, it changes, it grows, it surges, and we are chased, spurred, or abandoned by it every day. But strangely enough, at the end of the year it disappears again, and December 31 and January 1 seem to be no different; how different can 2021 be between 2021 and 2022?
But in 2022 we want to be a little faster. We have a lot of good stories to share with readers, and the feeling of resignation in the past three years that has nowhere to say anything will not be unhappy this year. Stories that take place in all intervals of time and time, histories that have been forgotten, erased, and ignored, or the extraneous sounds behind the "well-known" will all appear in 2022.
Set up a flag, publish 22 new books in 2022, fill the pits of the old year, and dig the ditch of the new year. Except for January, when you just want to touch the fish and December, when you are scheduled to touch the fish share, the rest of the time is two or three new books per month, properly posted, and clear.
People often ask what the meaning of the brand "gravity" is, I think it is not important, it is a law, time exists, it exists. And we want to share some good stories, history exists, stories exist.
Two-two book list
·February·
The start of the year is the highlight
Masterpiece by Julian Jackson, an authority on French history
Winner of the 2004 Wolfson Prize in History
The Fall of France: The Nazi Invasion of 1940
Author: Julian Jackson
Translator: Wei Benchao
Reviewer: Zhang Huaiyuan
Publication date: 2022.2
At the beginning of World War II, Germany lightning defeated France, which claimed to have the strongest army, and profoundly affected the course of World War II. Professor Julian Jackson, an authority on French history, analyzed the root causes of the rout from multiple angles such as military, political, economic and even French social conditions, profoundly restored a real pre-war France, and truly told people how "the smooth and simple narratives in military history are different from the chaotic and complex reality of war."
A new work of overseas Sinology
A bottom-up political history of the Ming Dynasty
The Little Mandate of Heaven: Ancestral Shrines and the Politics of the Ming Dynasty
Author: [Mei] Shi Shanshan
Translator: Shao Changcai
This Ming history shifts the gaze from the court to the place. In the traditional cognition, the feudal autocracy during the Ming Dynasty was highly strengthened, and the commoners basically had no political discourse and could only maintain an attitude of "absolute submission". This book challenges this prejudice through an examination of the theory and practice of the temple—in the soil of authoritarian centralization, another political model grows: local officials are appointed by the emperor, and the plebeians determine their values, and the plebeians thus achieve political participation. The ancestral shrine is a tool for civilians to gain political discourse.
·March·
The representative work of Professor Zhang Qifan, an authority on song history
"Song Taizong"
Author: Zhang Qifan
Publication date: 2022.3
This book is the story of the life of Zhao Kuangyi, Emperor Taizong of Song. As an emperor, his life always seems to be in the shadows. When he was young, he was covered up by the light of his father and brother, and could only make up a period of flawed juvenile time for himself after taking power; the road to the throne was full of doubts, and he still carried the suspicion of killing his brother, which made historians argue for thousands of years and had no conclusion; the succession was not correct, he tried his best to prove that although he had the merits of being diligent in government and loving the people and the rule of culture, he was also eager to achieve quick success, and single-handedly concocted the weak Great Song Dynasty. Professor Zhang Qifan, an authority on song history, restored an emperor in the shadows for us with extremely delicate research.
The journey of several explorers, a history of blood and tears in Africa
Trace the historical roots of poverty and chaos in the heart of Africa
The Land of Tears: A Brutal History of Colonization, Trade, and Globalization in Africa
Author: [U.S.] Robert Harms
Translator: Feng Xiaoyuan
Starting with the early European adventurers who entered equatorial Africa, the book tells the history of the brutal plundering of the region by European and American colonists. The intervention of external forces has torn apart the original social structure and political system (rainforest separation of powers) in equatorial Africa and replaced it with a colonial chieftainate, an autonomous state, and a colonial rule, and the colonists have used trade, deception and other means to exploit the indigenous people in the name of science and humanism. Globalization has enabled the Western countries to complete the primitive accumulation of capital, but it has made equatorial Africa unrecognizable. To this day, the region remains one of the poorest and most chaotic places in the world, suffering from civil war, terrorism, extreme poverty and piracy.
A battle that changed the course of World War I
Start the chaos and anti-Semitic slaughter in Eastern Europe
The Blood Fortress: The Siege of Przemehill and the Coming of the European Havoc
Author: Alexander Watson
Translator: Fan Rutian
In September 1914, russian troops surrounded the fortress of Przemyńr, which was intended to be quickly captured, marching into Central Europe and taking the Western Front, but for six months, in the face of storms and starvation, this weak Austro-Hungarian defenders put up fierce resistance. It was a miraculous defensive battle and the most crucial battle on the Eastern Front of World War I, changing the geopolitical landscape of Europe. It marked not only the beginning of an all-out war in Europe, but also the beginning of anti-Semitism for decades to come. This book is the latest work of Alexander Watson, a professor of history at Goldsmith College in the University of London, who himself won the 2014 Wolfson Prize in History and the Guggenheim-Lyrman Prize for Military History.
·April·
Break the aura that the founding emperor brought with him, and tell a complete Song Taizu
"Song Taizu"
Author: Gu Hongyi
Publication date: 2022.4
This book tells the whole life of Zhao Kuangyin, the grandfather of the Song Dynasty, in layman's terms. With detailed historical materials, the author interprets Zhao Kuangyin's family lineage, life and era, and the important events in his life, analyzes his personality, strengths, political strategies, and employment methods, and also narrates the secret affairs of the palace during his reign and the "candle shadow axe sound and the mystery of eternity" at the time of his death. While fully demonstrating the great talent of Song Taizu's founding of the country and the martial arts of Wenzhi, the author tries to make a subtle selection of his early experience, the historical doubts of the early Song Dynasty, and the relevant documentary records and legends, examine and distinguish errors, and remove the false and the true, so as to restore the original appearance of Song Taizu as much as possible and understand its historical status. The whole book has both vivid stories and real history, as well as unique insights and commentaries, which fully reflects the style of the "detailed narrative" history book and the extensive data citation.
Habsburg: Charles V and the Twilight of the Empire
Author: Zhang Qinfeng
With Charles V as the core clue, this book connects many historical figures and events in the era of the Habsburg dynasty, including his conflicts and struggles with several old enemies such as King François I of France, King Henry VIII of England, Reformation leader Martin Luther, Sultan Suleiman I of the Ottoman Empire, and depicts the history of Europe and the New World around 1500.
·May·
A Mother's Day gift
Clarify the unbearable anxiety of every mother
Breast Milk Kidnapping: Big Business and Bad Policies
Author: [Plus] Courtney Joan
Translator: Zhang Yingjie
Publication date: 2022.5
Is the role of breast milk irreplaceable? In recent years, breastfeeding advocacy movements have become increasingly radical and extreme, and breastfeeding is no longer a lifestyle choice, but has become a public health issue, a semi-coercive moral movement, and even a criterion for judging parents' "good and bad", further exacerbating the financial burden and moral guilt of mothers. Women not only have to pay high costs when breastfeeding, but also have to bear huge pressure from other mothers, the government, society and other aspects, so that mothers lose the right to choose feeding methods, becoming a kind of "kidnapping". This book provides a comprehensive and in-depth review of increasingly radical breastfeeding policies from a medical, historical, and sociological perspective.
The form of a chart shows the suffering of human displacement
The knowledge points are dense, but they are quite clear and concise
A History of Human Migration in 3000 Years
Author: Robin Cohen
Translator: Hu Xilin
This book is the latest work of Robin Cohen, a well-known European scholar in the field of human migration history and migration, from the first prehistoric migration out of the Great Rift Valley to the current large-scale syrian flight, a profound analysis of the impact of large-scale human migration on the global political and economic pattern, scientific and technological development, and human civilization. The book deals with many types of immigrants, including explorers, slaves, pilgrims, miners, laborers, exiles, refugees, and more. The manuscript is accompanied by more than 200 high-definition images, using the latest data visual visualization technology to depict the trajectory of human migration over 3,000 years, allowing readers to understand the history of human migration in an intuitive and clear way.
The birth history of a nation
A Brief History of Israel
Author: Martin Gilbert
This book is an illustrated abbreviated version of sir Martin Gilbert's classic historical work "Israel: A History" by the world-renowned historian Sir Martin Gilbert, adding more than 150 precious historical pictures, 12 historical archives, and 14 maps, which completely record the long historical years of Israel and the life of the Israeli people, peel away the fog of war that envelops us, and reshape the road to israel's peaceful statehood. The book tells the historical process of the Israelis' efforts to seek peace, construction and development under the flames of war in the Middle East. Setting aside stereotypes, this book tells the story of the origins and evolution of Israel's hopes and achievements.
·June·
6·18 big promotion, must read before chopping!
See how our consumption behavior is shaped
Making Consumers: A Global History of Consumerism
Author: [French] Antoni Galluso
Translator: Maya
Publication date: 2022.6
Before the seventeenth century, most people in the world were farmers, who built their own houses, harvested grain, made bread, and knitted clothes. Today, most of our daily necessities are produced by a large and distant network of companies. In just three centuries, self-sufficient farming communities have disappeared, leaving room for countless interconnected urban consumers.
The book traces the main stages of this transformation. How are market forces formed? What happened to society as goods circulated in large quantities? And analyzes the history of multiple market mechanisms: brands giving goods their iconic value, stages created by department stores, symbolic engineering in public relations and advertising ... It shows the birth of a consumer world.
This book reveals in an extremely uncomfortable way why we are lonely
Self-Determined Loneliness: A Society That Struggles to Build Intimacy
Author: [de] Elisabeth von Tarden
Translator: Gu Mu
Loneliness became a disease of the times, stemming from the self-determination of everyone. Touch can increase the intimacy between people, a hug, a handshake can bring people closer. On the other hand, even accidental or involuntary touching in intimate relationships can cause discomfort. We are afraid of being lonely and afraid of the harm that intimate relationships can bring. With the development of society and technology, the way we deal with interpersonal relationships has changed dramatically, and close contact with others is no longer necessary, which to some extent brings us a sense of security and infinitely magnifies our ambivalence about intimacy.
At the intersection of humanities and history and natural sciences, this book shows a society that has gradually lost its sense of intimacy, and explains the living conditions of modern people from the perspectives of physiology, history, social culture and so on.
In the age of machines, a tribute to every craftsman
Guitar Heroes: Craftsmen in the Age of Machines
Author: [Beauty] Catherine Mary Dudley
Translator: Tan Yumofan
Based on the author's years of research and interviews, this book provides a comprehensive and complete introduction to the unique world of handmade luthiers from many aspects, such as the Association of Luthiers, Instrument Collectors, Star Luthiers, Guitar Exhibitions, international challenges, etc.
In an era when technological change is pushing craftsmen into the global economy, in a capitalist system that values faster and more efficient business models, Dudley recreates a wonderful and humanistic way of life for the reader through a panoramic record of the community of luthiers, highlighting the unique value of handicrafts in the post-industrial era.
·July·
Summer vacation, do you want to send your children to interest classes?
"One Thrill to the End: Raising Children in a Competitive Environment"
Author: [U.S.] Hillary Friedman
Translator: Dong Yingzhi
Publication date: 2022.7
Should my child attend an interest class? Based on a large number of facts and observations and solid information, this book excavates the competitive culture behind the interest class, and parents actually hope that the interest class can cultivate children's competitive awareness, competitiveness, stress resistance, performance ability and other qualities (the author calls it "competitive child capital"). The author discusses this competitive culture in the context of the whole society, pointing out that this competitive culture is deeply buried in the class dilemma and anxiety of the middle class.
This book has a unique perspective, it does not focus on the actual role that interest classes can really play, but focuses on the formation mechanism of this competitive atmosphere and competitive culture among parents, and deeply explores how ordinary parents in the middle class have built this tense educational culture and social atmosphere step by step.
When did the car become a class symbol of Chinese?
Toward Modernity: Cars and Middle-Class Life in Contemporary China
Author: Zhang Jun
Translator: Xi Xu
This is a work that shows the changes in the life of China's middle class, and the author is based on fieldwork in the Pearl River Delta region. Through the observation and examination of car users in the Pearl River Delta, the author examines in great detail how new cultural concepts were born after the car entered our lives Chinese, the extent to which our middle-class identity is influenced by car-related things, and the extent to which our middle-class concept has come back to shape China's current automobile culture. Through the consumption of automobiles, China's automobile culture and the changes that have arisen around it, the author shows us how the contemporary Chinese middle class is formed in the rapidly developing economic and cultural life, and how China's middle class has adapted to these changes.
·August·
Why do you want to jump ship?
Why do you always want to jump ship?
No One to Rely on: The Collapse of Stable Work
Author: [U.S.] Carrie Lane
Translator: Lei Li
Publication date: 2022.8
Americans in the 20th century lived a stable life of "one job for a lifetime", and the subprime mortgage crisis in 2008 knocked out the previous "iron rice bowl" employment model in the United States. Through solid fieldwork and interviews with unemployed white-collar workers in the high-tech industry, the author finds that the mutual loyalty between employers and employees in the past has disappeared, and a new concept of employment has been born: people no longer expect to maintain stable employment with enterprises, but plan their careers for the purpose of maximizing personal interests. This transformation of labor-management relations is fundamentally due to the rise of individualism, the disappearance of the previous stable mutual loyalty between labor and management, and the frequent betrayal of each other. Neoliberalism can be successfully promoted in large part on the basis of this unfaithful individualism.
This book explores the current employment dilemma from the perspective of individualism, breaks through the essence of the contradiction between labor and capital, is the criticism of "neoliberalism", and to a certain extent breaks the fog of the worship of laissez-faire market economy.
·September·
An unsuccessful educational experiment opened up a huge revolution in the field of education
The Child Republic: A Social Experiment with Orphans left behind in World War II
Authors: [French] Sammiere Buchon, Matthias Gardai, Martina Lusha
Translator: Chen Qiuhan
Publication date: 2022.9
In 1948, UNESCO held an important conference, bringing together the elites of the educational and philanthropic circles in Europe and the United States at that time, calling on them to hold a social experiment to organize millions of orphans in World War II, so that these children could form their own small autonomous kingdoms, let them serve as their own mayors, their own police, their own bank clerks... Behind this small kingdom, educators try to put their own educational ideas into practice in children, to see what can bear fruit in these small bodies and minds. Although this experiment ended hastily in the 1950s, it left a rich legacy for the development of educational reform, philanthropic management, and child psychology in later generations. From this book, the reader can see the direction in which these fields evolved in the second half of the twentieth century.
History of Asia on the River
Our civilization is shaped by water
Unruly Waters: A History of Asia Shaped by the Rainy Season, Rivers, Coastlines and Oceans
Author: [Ind] Sunil Amris
Translator: Wang Qing award
The latest work of Sunil Amris, a professor in yale's History Department, this book is a seminal work that rewrites asian history from the perspective of the natural environment, and the author presents an Asian civilization built on waters by depicting the impact of the rainy season, rivers, coasts, and oceans on the economies and societies of various Asian countries, as well as the stories of meteorological observers, engineers, cartographers, and farmers who tried to control these waters.
·October·
Spies Without a State: Secret Agents at the Time of the Establishment of the State of Israel
Author: [in] Marty Friedman
Translator: Zeng Ji
Publication date: 2022.10
The author's latest work, Pumpkin Flower, won the Israel Natan Nonfiction Book Award. It tells the story of four Arabic-speaking Jews running the "Arab Branch" of Israel's pre-independence Zionist intelligence service in the Lebanese capital.
The Forsaken Villain: The Collapse of the U.S. Air Force and grand alliance on the battlefields of the Soviet Union
Author: [Beauty] Shahili Purokki
Translator: Song Hong
The latest work of Shahili Plokki, author of Chernobyl and Chair Professor of Ukrainian History at Harvard University. This book describes one of the closest cooperation between The United States and the Soviet Union in World War II: in 1943, in order to cooperate with the Normandy landings on the Western Front, the United States proposed to the Soviet Union to open a second air front in the eastern theater in order to attack from east to west and defeat Germany. To do this, the U.S. Air Force needed to establish bases on Soviet territory. The Soviets hesitated at the proposal, fearing that the base would be the beginning of U.S. control of the Soviet Union. But finally in early 1944, Moscow was persuaded that the Poltava region of Ukraine had established the foundations of the U.S. Air Force. While the two sides fought together, a series of insurmountable conflicts also occurred. Using newly declassified archives, the author reveals this unknown past of the Eastern Front.
·November·
Sudden Courage: The French Youth Resistance movement in World War II, 1940-1945
Author: [American] Ronald M. C. Rose barton
Translator: Jiao Jingshu
Publication date: 2022.11
With a wealth of original archives and interviews, this book provides an in-depth study of the groups of young members of the resistance movement against the Nazis in France from 1940 to 1945, tells the story of the various forms of anti-Nazi struggle of patriotic youth in the French resistance movement, and reveals the key role they played in the movement against the Nazis during World War II and the positive significance they produced.
The Eunuchs of the Ottomans: From Slaves of the Empire to Subversives
Author: [American] Jane Hathaway
This book is an in-depth study of the African eunuch chiefs who guarded the ottoman harem. The author uses a large amount of primary sources to analyze the origins of eunuch chiefs in East Africa, as well as their role in the harem of the royal palace from the late 16th to the beginning of the 20th century and their role in the political, economic, and religious spheres of the Ottoman Empire.
Gravity publishes a bibliography in 2021
Text: Chen Ye
Typesetting: Gong Wenhao
Preliminary: Chen Ye
Review: Shi Yong