The Story of Spring
The January newsletter was deleted and we are here today to reissue it.
Last time I mentioned that colleagues have begun to make annual reading plans, during the Spring Festival, a colleague finished nibbling on "Four Hundred Years of America", a colleague chose to spend Chinese New Year's Eve night with "Story Convenience Store", a colleague read no less than three philosophy books, and a colleague made a lot of flags, but did not read a single one...
What about you? What books did you read during the Spring Festival? Feel free to tell us in the comments section ~ Subscribe to the topic #Republic monthly book newsletter, we will see you in the next issue
01.
Ideal Translation Series 053
"Neighbor to the Butcher's Knife"
[French] by Jean Hartsfield; translated by Long Yun and Sun Xuan
The massacre in the Rwandan town of Neamata began at 11 a.m. on April 11, 1994, and lasted until 2 p.m. on May 14. Every day during this period, from 9.30 a.m. to 4 p.m., Hutu militias and civilians slaughtered Tutsis on the hills of Nyamatta. Of the about 60,000 Tutsis locals, nearly 50,000 died under the butcher's knife.
In this massacre, the killer and the slain were not strangers to each other. They live on the same land as neighbors, colleagues, friends, lovers and even family. Some Hutus had been drinking and chatting with Tutsi friends the day before, but overnight they had picked up butcher knives and systematically slaughtered all Tutsis. Some Tutsis burrowed into swamps, woods and mountains, escaping like prey to escape from hunters every day, eating raw food and drinking dew during the day and sleeping in mud at night, surviving until the end of the slaughter. However, when they return to town, they find that the executioners have not been punished as they deserve, and they have to continue to live with these Hutus as before...
What really happened during the Holocaust? Why did the Hutus slaughter the Tutsis in this way? How can they continue to live after the massacre? With these questions in mind, Hartsfield came to Rwanda, lived with the locals, and after fourteen years of visits and investigations, interviewed many survivors and murderers, and tried to restore the truth of the Holocaust from multiple perspectives and understand the human catastrophe that occurred in our time.
02.
Ideal Translation Series 054
"Broken Life"
By Conrad H. Yarousch; translated by Wang Chen
The "Weimar generation" of Germans born in the 1920s experienced almost every major event of the 20th century: the Third Reich, World War II, the Holocaust, post-war reconstruction, the division of the Cold War, and the unification and revival after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Private life is rarely closely intertwined with the course of history. When they look back on their life's experiences, their enthusiasm is disillusioned by seeing the truth about the dictatorship, some repent, some excuse ignorance and blindness, and others claim that Germans are also victims in order to win sympathy.
Based on a first-hand account of more than seventy autobiographies and memoirs, Broken Lives depicts 20th-century Germany from the perspective of ordinary people. Among them were soldiers who fought on the front lines, women who had suffered depression years in the rear, perpetrators of ethnic cleansing, and victims of Nazi atrocities. Through a re-examination of The German national identity, the book attempts to answer why so many people supported Hitler's war and nazi brutality, and how they eventually cut themselves off from racist and authoritarian regimes and re-embraced human rights, from military aggressors to pillars of democracy in Europe.
03.
Ancient Judaism
[de] max Weber; Kang Le, translated by Jane Emi
Ancient Judaism is an important part of the Treatise on the Sociology of Religion.
Previously, the study of ancient Judaism was from the perspective of religious studies, using literature to examine the relationship between the ancient Jewish people and modern Christianity, while Weber used sociological methods to reorganize the historical data, placing ancient Judaism at the intersection of the entire cultural development of the West and the Near East to examine the internal reasons of this religious history, thus revealing the inexplicable reasons for the intertwining of the two opposing religious civilizations of Islam and Christianity, thus writing his family's words about the historical development process of Judaism.
04.
Four Hundred Years of America
By Bu Srinivasan; translated by Hu Xilin
In Srinivassan's account, the American founders' opposition to Britain stemmed not only from political ambitions but also from considerations of personal economic interests; the outbreak of the American Civil War was not only due to the ideological confrontation between the North and the South, but also because of the economic impossibility of abolitionist slavery; the many venture capital firms in Silicon Valley and Wall Street were not the product of a flash of inspiration, but were deeply rooted in the financing process of the "Mayflower"; and the victory of the United States and its allies in World War II was not only because of combat capabilities, but also because of the production capacity of armaments and abundant goods A family, a house, a dog, and two cars have become the quintessential American dream for material and geographical reasons.
05.
Qian Mu's book series
Qian Mu
The first batch of Qian Mu's book series produced by the Republic of China includes eight kinds of "Biography of Confucius", "New Interpretation of the Analects", "History of Qin and Han", "Interpretation of the Four Books", "Overview of Song Ming Science", "XueHuo", "Outline of Yangming Studies", and "Zhuangzi Notes". Through the verification of materials, careful editing, and reference to many editions, it is expected to contribute to readers with a more accurate version of the text. Qian Mu's works, from the perspective of modern people, build a bridge between tradition and contemporary.
Qian Mu, Zi BinSI, a native of Wuxi, Jiangsu Province. He entered a private school at the age of seven. He studied in ChangzhouFu Middle School and Nanjing Private Zhongying Middle School, and after graduating from high school, he taught in primary and secondary schools in Wuxi, Xiamen, Suzhou and other places, and studied hard and studied hard. In 1930, the "Annals of Liu Xiangxin's Father and Son" came out, which was promoted by the academic community and transferred to the university to teach. He has taught at Yenching University, Peking University, Tsinghua University, Southwest United University, Qilu University, Wuhan University, Jiangnan University and other universities. In 1949, he moved to Hong Kong and founded New Asia College. In 1967, he moved to Taipei and taught at the Chinese Culture Academy in Taiwan. In 1992, he was buried on the shore of Taihu Lake in Suzhou. He wrote a lifetime of writings, widely involved in subsets of the history of the classics, and the later compilation was the "Complete Works of Mr. Qian Binsi", A, B, C, 3, with 17 million words.
"Mr. Qian may have been the premier master who carried on China's tradition of writing history from the past to the present."
--Huang Renyu
"Mr. Qian is a rare and accomplished historian of Chinese thought... He is one of the very few outstanding scholars who can compete with the prevailing currents of thought. ”
- Debray
06.
Manuscript of the Wooden Heart
Wood heart
On the tenth anniversary of Mu Xin's death, the first batch of Mu Xin's manuscripts were finally handed over to readers.
In addition to all of Mu Xin's currently published works, there are still a considerable number of notebooks and manuscripts, which have never been published, estimated to exceed one million words. Since Mu Xin usually does not indicate the year of completion, it is speculated from the content and handwriting that a small part was written in the 1980s and mostly in the 1990s and the new century until his death in 2011.
The content of these manuscripts is broad and varied, regardless of chapters, written as they go, and rarely complete in length. These included names, bills, book lists, catalogs, manuscripts, and occasionally sketches of simple book designs, as well as his own cemetery. The haiku, casual feelings, old-style poems, and free poems that readers are familiar with account for about half, and the rest, between miscellaneous notes, memories, narratives, and reminiscences, are like self-talk, unlike all the works he has published.
07.
Speaking of China (Illustrated Edition)
By Xu Zhuoyun
Professor Xu Chuangyun takes a systemsist approach, focusing on the question of "what is China and who we really are", from the Neolithic era to the eve of the end of the Qing Dynasty, telling how the complex community of "Huaxia/China" has evolved continuously. The structure and style of this book belong to the category of "big history", without laying out details or cumbersome arguments, but choosing the key points of each era in terms of politics, economy, society, and culture, as well as the interaction between each other, to outline the face of each era, many of which have shocking insights, and from time to time reveal the author's deep concern for Chinese culture and contemporary society.
08.
Republic of The Greats: Everyone's Art History Series
"Painting Quotations: Listening to Wang Jiqian talk about the brush and ink of Chinese painting and calligraphy"
By Xu Xiaohu
From 1971 to 1978, Xu Xiaohu officially followed Wang Jiqian, who lived in New York, to learn the mysteries of calligraphy and painting. But the little tiger who has mastered the "structural analysis" of the style of calligraphy and painting, why should he further study the way of pen and ink? Because she knows that if she can't identify the brush and ink of calligraphers and painters, she can't truly understand the essence of Chinese painting and calligraphy. Through eight years of dialogue, Xiaohu constantly asked questions, and Wang Shi, a first-class calligrapher, expert and collector, answered them one by one, and made pen and ink demonstrations and careful reading of paintings. The undeclared secret of calligraphy and painting and ink was finally gradually revealed under the collision of XiaoHu's "structural analysis" and Wang Shi's "intuitive experience". Before that, no one had made the truth of pen and ink clear.
More than 40 years later, the elderly Xiaohu re-examined Wang Shi's interpretation of pen and ink. On the basis of the original dialogue materials, with the accumulation of her lifelong search for Chinese painting and calligraphy, 56 new notes of nearly 10,000 words were added; and with the cooperation of 203 works and 410 whole and local details of high-definition pictures, the visual display of the content described by Wang Shi and Xiao Hu on the quality of pen and ink intuitively elucidated the visual experience of the two.
One day, as more and more younger generations become familiar with the scrutiny of the pen and ink details provided in this book, a new history of Chinese painting and calligraphy will emerge, proud to join the other beautiful cultural histories of the world.
09.
The Emperor of the Northern Wei Dynasty on Black Felt (Revised Edition)
Luo Xin
The Emperors of the Northern Wei Dynasty were not only emperors of the Imperial States of China, but also khans of the Nomadic Conquest Group in Inner Asia, and their historical activities were the collision, integration and rebirth of various cultural traditions. The so-called "old system of dynastic capitals" in the Northern Wei Dynasty is clearly part of the Inner Asian tradition.
Starting from the northern factors of the Northern Wei Emperor's ascension ceremony, this book pushes the northern Wei ritual of sacrifice to heaven, the power succession crisis of the early Liao Dynasty, and the Tangzi sacrifice of the Qing Dynasty, on the one hand, it observes the encounters, collisions and variations between the Tuoba Xianbei political tradition and the Chinese tradition, and on the other hand, it examines the connection between the Xianbei old customs (the old system of the old capital) and the political traditions of Inner Asia.
This reprint, in addition to revising the original chapters, also included the article "The Wooden Pole on the Altar of the Tuoba Sacrifice Heaven".
10.
Perception, Knowledge, And Self-Awareness
Chen Jiaying
"Perception", "Rational Knowledge" and "Self-Knowledge" are the themes of long-term thinking and research of the famous philosopher Mr. Chen Jiaying. Adhering to the characteristics of consistent discourse, in this book, he starts from the subtle conceptual analysis to analyze the rational path behind such theoretical words in philosophy, and then tears down the walls of concepts, runs through and opens them up, so that we can see the connection between them and our lives. Whether he talks about perception, knowledge or self-knowledge, he is always talking about the life of each of us, the whole era, the era that human beings have experienced.
In today's era of the end of rationality, in the face of the technological and digital situation, how to recognize our position in the world, how to recognize our own position among people, this book provides a deep and innovative perspective, so that we can re-feel the world, more powerful to deal with the current problems.
This is not a difficult philosophical treatise, nor a research work, but a philosopher who has always been concerned with how man lives in the world tells us in an easy-to-understand way about his years of thinking.
11.
The Foundations of Legitimacy in Modern Politics
Zhou Lian sighed
"What makes power or power morally right" is a question that political philosophy has been asking for more than 2,000 years.
Focusing on the discussion field of modern politics, combined with the views of Hannah Arendt, John Simmons, Habermas and Rawls, the author first distinguishes between legitimacy and justification from the perspective of conceptual analysis: legitimacy is a concept of "retrospectiveness", which focuses on the source and genealogy of power, that is, from the "approach of occurrence" to evaluate power; and as the proof of the concept of "foresight", it is concerned with the utility of power and the purpose of achievement, that is, from the "approach of purpose" to evaluate power. Two approaches to moral evaluation of the state have been established.
Starting from the distinction between political legitimacy and justification, the author further outlines a clear conceptual map between political obligation and political responsibility: the legitimacy of the state and the political obligations of citizens have a conceptual correlation, while the legitimacy of the state is related to the political responsibility of citizens.
In this way, through the combing of conceptual relations, the position of legitimacy on the conceptual map of contemporary political philosophy is demarcated, which is conducive to clarifying the reality obscured by the fog of language and helping us gain theoretical courage to face the complex state of reality.
12.
"Quantum Mechanics, Strange and Not Strange"
By Philip Bauer; translated by Ding Jiaqi
Do quantum objects have wave-particle duality? Can states be superimposed, remotely entangled, present uncertainty, and even open up multiple worlds? Can Schrödinger's cat really be both dead and alive? Or even, the quantum world exists only in human observation? ......
Bohr, Feynman, Heisenberg, Schrödinger, Einstein... Are these great physicists making mistakes too? - Then why are they still great?
Various quantum "theories" are still strange, lacking in explanatory power and self-consistency, but this is not a problem of the quantum world "itself". Human understanding of the quantum world has indeed been improving over the past century: we can optimistically say that although there is still a long way to go, we are approaching the "truth" little by little.
Through this book, you will get a glimpse of the centenary development of quantum mechanics theory, stand on the shoulders of scientific giants and exquisite theories, learn more about the quantum world, and have more realistic, reasonable and hopeful expectations for the prospects of quantum theory applications such as "quantum computers".
13.
The Power of Algorithms: How Do Humans Survive Together? 》
By Jamie Saskander; translated by Lee Dabai
Jamie Saskander believes that technologies such as artificial intelligence and virtual reality will transform our public and private lives. He describes to us a world of digital living in which certain technologies and platforms and the people who control them have great power: some collect all of our data and avoid doing what we see as shameful, sinful, or wrong; others filter our perceptions of the world, choose what we can know, shape our thoughts, influence our feelings, and guide our actions; and others force us to do things we wouldn't otherwise do or wouldn't want to do. Over time, the difference between humans and machines, online and offline, virtual and real, etc., will gradually disappear.
The people who control these technologies will increasingly influence and even determine our lives. They will set the boundaries of freedom and determine the rise and fall of democracy and its future. Their algorithms will also determine all aspects of social justice, the distribution of social goods, and our identity and status. What are we going to do? Is it to refuse to use all digital technologies and go back in time, or to embrace digital systems desperately?
14.
Tengo Handbook
Shuang Xuetao
"Tianwu Handbook" is a long masterpiece by novelist Shuang Xuetao. Tengo, an awakened man who has only 100 hours of life, meets Xiaojiu, a girl who is fading on the streets of Taipei, looking for a church taller than the 101 building, where the secret of the disappearance of his young friend Ange is hidden...
Taipei and the northeast, the story of the two cities where time and space are intertwined, eleven "notes" born on the border of life and death, fantasy and reality on the other side, a search that runs between the future and memory slowly unfolds: the whereabouts of the young girl An Ge, the policeman Jiang Bufan, whose life and death are uncertain, Mu Tianning, a woman in S City, and Li Tianwu, who is on the banks of the Tamsui River, can solve the mystery and complete the mission?
15.
《Shanghai Capsule》
by btr
An exhibition can become a novel, creating a fictional situation in real space; a novel can also become an exhibition on paper, weaving fictional components into real life.
Like collecting objects for a vast and complicated museum, Btr watches, imagines, wanders, and always slides lightly and slyly into another space in those moments of epiphany. Art intervenes between man and the world, and the 19 stories are like 19 mirror halls reflected in the virtual reality, and 19 journeys involving the virtual and the real, preserving the wonderful capsules full of myths for the urban life of our time.
16.
"All This"
By James Sauter; translated by Liu Wei
The story begins with a ship bound for Okinawa at the end of World War II, and the protagonist, Philip Bowman, is a young naval officer. In the decades that followed, he returned to New York to become an editor at a publishing house, settling into book deals, literary careers, and dinner parties after dinner parties. He married and divorced, new loves followed, flesh passions began and he experienced cruel betrayal. Old friends drift apart, houses are bought and sold, parents die, and the bonds of love fade. When we last met Bauman, he was old enough to think seriously about death: he wanted to return to the Pacific, where "there was the only brave part of his life."
"All This" is the trajectory of an ordinary person's life, but also a rich social chronicle, the narrative perspective switches freely between the protagonist and dozens of characters. A large number of insightful details give it an epic quality, the scenes, interludes and characters are as precise and neat as diamond cuts, and the story and the emotions it contains continue to expand and spread, reflecting the contours of the lives of all the characters who appear in time.
Known as "the hero of contemporary American literature" and "the well-known master of secrecy among writers," James Salter knows exactly what makes even the tiniest events worth telling, and through the magic of words, makes them shine in the bleak everyday. The perfect work he completed at the age of 87 is like a dense spring of events at the last moment, and the final effect is as if all the life has been experienced: these lives together complete a person's life. The author uses memory as a fortress against oblivion, profoundly evoking an immeasurable world, "a life that was once open to him and possessed by him."
17.
Sutri
By Cormac McCarthy; translated by Yang Yi
"I know that all souls are the same, all souls are alone"
Sutri gave up his prosperous life, left his wealthy family and his intellectual past, and chose to make a living fishing in a dilapidated houseboat on the Tennessee River in Knoxville and selling it to restaurants. The houseboat is close to a shantytown and is surrounded by eccentrics and criminals: hermits, drunkards, thieves, scavengers, gravediggers, mussel collectors and witches. He became friends with Jones, a black tavern owner, and Harrogate, who was imprisoned for his special fetish for watermelons. On the fringes of this abandoned society, live through desolation and poverty with dignity with a detached attitude and sense of humor. At the end of the novel, Jones dies in a fight with the police, Harrogate is arrested for attempted robbery, and Sutri falls ill with typhoid fever and goes into an endless dream, eventually leaving Knoxville for a new life.
Cormac McCarthy (1933– ) is a contemporary American novelist and playwright. He has authored 10 novels and other short stories and plays. He has won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Association Award and other mainstream awards in the American literary circle, and many works have been adapted into film and television dramas. The Coen brothers' film of the same name, based on McCarthy's novel, Won Four Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay.
Sutri is the fourth novel published in 1979 by the famous American contemporary writer Cormac McCarthy, and his last novel with Southern themes, with some autobiographical overtones. This book is McCarthy's masterpiece, the work he entered the peak of his creative state. With his unique language and encyclopedic vocabulary, McCarthy created a human wasteland by the Great River.
18.
《Technology Encyclopedia》
[Poland] by Stanisław Lem;
Yun will Hongmeng Yun will Hongmeng No. 2 Machine Mao Rui translation
What exactly is Tech Encyclopedia? Is it a collection of essays on the rise and fall of civilization with the theme of "whole engineering"? Is it a cybernetic interpretation of humanity's past and future? Is it a picture of the universe seen through the eyes of the builders? Is it the power of nature and the creation of human hands related to engineering? Is it a prediction of the development of science and technology in the future millennium? Is it a set of assumptions that are too bold to claim any solid scientific basis? Indeed, there are some of each. ”
A parody and response to Aquinas's Theological Encyclopedia, published in 1964, the Encyclopedia of Technology deals with evolutionary biology, physics, informatics, thermodynamics, cybernetics, and more, presenting the far-reaching effects of various breakthroughs, such as Claude Shannon's development of information theory, Alan Turing's achievements in computing, and John von Neumann's exploration of game theory, discussing the profound issues of evolution, the universe, society, reality, artificial intelligence, and creating the world. After publication, it stirred up thousands of waves like a stone, which aroused extensive discussion in the scientific community.
Stanis aw Lem, a Polish national treasure writer, touches on the grand themes of scientific and technological development, human nature, human ability to understand the world and man's position in the universe, and puts forward many profound insights and ironic reflections on the finiteness of technology and human beings themselves, constantly exploring the boundaries of human cognition and completely changing the dimension of science fiction writing.
Currently, Lem's work has been translated into 52 languages, sold 40 million copies, is "the world's most read science fiction writer" (Theodore Sturgeon), and is a science fiction master worshipped by countless science fiction fans. The science fiction circle recognizes that "if one day science fiction writers can also win the Nobel Prize, then this person is none other than Lem."
In addition to his status as a science fiction writer, Lem is the founder of the Polish Society of Astronautics, a member of the Polish Cybernetics Association, and the recipient of the Order of the White Eagle, the supreme award of the Polish State, and on the centenary of Lem's birth, the Polish parliament declared 2021 the Year of Lem.
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