April days on earth, good time to read. The current life has pressed the pause button, but reading will not stop, and you can read and think more in "static time". Under the guidance of the Propaganda Department of the Municipal Party Committee, the Shanghai Municipal Federation of Social Societies, Century Publishing Group and Wen Wei Po Specially planned the theme activity of "The Power of Reading Has Always Been Together", inviting scholars and writers in Shanghai to make 1+N recommendations for readers, can recommend an excellent book, and can also combine and recommend a song, a movie, and even a good article, share their own reading and viewing experience, advocate reading for the whole people with practical actions, and jointly build a book society.
Since April 1, Shuxiang Shanghai, together with the Shanghai Federation of Social Societies, Century Reading and Wen Wei Po, has jointly released the experiences and experiences of experts and scholars in reading and fighting the epidemic. We hope that through our efforts, we will jointly demonstrate the confidence and hope that reading has the strength and the same heart to the spring journey.
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Referrer today
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Li Jingze is a critic and writer. Graduated from the Department of Chinese, Peking University. He is currently a member of the Party Group, Vice Chairman, Secretary of the Secretariat of the China Writers Association, and Curator of the Museum of Modern Chinese Literature. He is the author of more than 10 collections of theoretical criticism essays and essays. In 2017, he published the essays "Blue Bird Story Collection" and "Aria and Return", in 2018, he published the commentary collection "Conference Room and Hills", the long essay "Drinking Notes", and in 2021, he published the review collection "Running Collection". He has won many awards such as the Lu Xun Literature Award for Literary Theory Criticism, the Southern Metropolis Daily Chinese Literature and Media Award for Literary Critic of the Year, the Essayist of the Year Award, and the October Prose Biennial Award for Outstanding Achievement.
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Testimonials
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Recommended Books:
Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fate of Human Society
Turn boring scientific knowledge into
Exquisite details in historical drama
I read this book more than a decade ago and reread it this April.
In the 1990s, I went to Shichahai every day to swim, and then sat on the shore and discussed the trend of the world with several Beijing masters. Once, when talking about why foreigners are richer, the eldest grandfather said, "The land is good." If you look at the map of the world, the rich are all on it. ”
Uncle is indeed Uncle. In these two sentences, a historical model is brought out to explain the big problem that has been endlessly contested in modern times: why there is a gap in the degree of civilization development between the peoples of the world. In the same way, Diamond of the United States spoke nearly five hundred pages along the train of thought of the great uncle.
"Diamond of America"
(Image source: Internet)
In Diamond's view, the distribution of modern world economic and political power shows a huge imbalance, the reason can be traced back to 13,000 years ago, when some parts of the earth, certain peoples began to domesticate wildlife, thus moving from a safari life to a settled agricultural society. This transformation was decisively historical, and the first peasants, such as Europe and China, gained a lasting lead in the worldwide race of civilizations. The reason is very simple: there is enough surplus grain to feed the officials, craftsmen, writers, and poets.
But why are some ethnic groups riding the dust and some are still in the safari stage? It is often a fallacy in the face of this problem that when Europeans conquered and slaughtered Indians, Australian Aborigines and Africans with guns, germs and steel, they identified themselves as superior races, and they were naturally smarter. This racist view has been eloquently refuted here by Diamond: a child catching fish in the jungles of Papua New Guinea is likely to be smarter than a child who watches TV or mobile phones every day, and the real reason for the civilizational lead lies in geography. For example, most of the world's major domesticated wildlife happens to be in Eurasia, and the terrain of Eurasia, which extends horizontally from east to west along latitudes, is particularly conducive to the spread of technology and ideas.
This is reminiscent of "geographical determinism," an old, notorious theory of history. Diamond's profession is not history, he is a biologist, "Guns, Germs and Steel" won the Pulitzer Prize for popular science books in 1998, after the comprehensive investigation of geography, botany, zoology, epidemiology, archaeology and other fields of knowledge, the important role of geography in the process of human history is no longer an empirical judgment, at least in Diamond's case, it looks like a meticulous scientific statement with certain explanatory power.
Science is beautiful, and history is beautiful. While re-reading Guns, Germs and Steel, I was reading several novels that I thought were better than novels. Its subtitle is "The Fate of Human Society", which is the most magnificent drama, with suspense and excitement. In Diamond's ornate, unsaltered narrative, the dryness of scientific knowledge becomes the exquisite details of the historical drama, and you will be amazed to find that the things that are taken for granted—our climate and land, the basic elements of our material life, our language, our diseases—have such importance and rich significance.
Image source: Network
Of course, as a Chinese reader, I am concerned with the fate of Chinese civilization. More than twenty years ago, on the Shicha Seashore, the questions discussed by us ordinary citizens reflected the deepest anxiety of the entire nation since 1840: We were "backward", why? Diamond's answer to this is that our luck or our "land boundary" is not bad, we are at the eastern end of Eurasia, is one of the birthplaces of agricultural civilization, The leading edge of Chinese civilization in the world has lasted for nearly ten thousand years, and the loss of advantage is the last five or six hundred years.
- Everyone knows what happened later. Therefore, the Modao Kunming pond is shallow, the wind and material should be looked at for a long time, and the concept of great history is important to a nation and also to a place.
Recommended Songs:
The Babylon River
Image source: Network
The Divine Comedy that reverberated in disco in the 1980s and 1990s, bouncing along with it. It was only recently learned that the song was the work of the West German band Boney M.
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Introduction to related works
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Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fate of Human Society
By Jared Diamond
Translated by Wang Dao and Liao Yuejuan
CITIC Publishing Group
The problems of the precursor and backwardness of civilization and the development and regression of society have always been major issues of concern to mankind. In this regard, Western society generally believes that the advanced technology of Western countries, the perfect social class, and the cultural achievements of a hundred flowers have jointly created the superiority of Western civilization over others, and determined the status of the West to rule the world, and even believe that the fundamental is determined by the superiority of the Western race. Guns, Germs and Steel tells us that the answer is no. The progress of civilization has indeed boosted the first move of culture, technology and organization, but it has also led to the invasion of bacteria and the fatal destruction of civilization by ship guns, that is, racial determinism and the theory of the superiority of Western civilization cannot explain why Western countries can rule the world for a hundred years. It is the abundance of environment and resources that nourishes the development of Western civilization.
In addition, Diamond subverts many people's habitual social development questions from the interdisciplinary perspectives of biology, geography, history, sociology, anthropology, etc., providing us with a new perspective on human history. From a scientist deeply rooted in the professional field to a thinker who pays attention to the fate of human society and destiny, Diamond explores geography, humanity and the future from the intersection of science, history and society, and to some extent represents the traditional shift of Western public intellectuals - from professionalism to thought, he relies on multidisciplinary perspectives and rich travel experience, reflects on the development path of human history, looks for experience and lessons from it, and tries to provide suggestions for the future development of human society.
About the Author
Jared Diamond, Professor of Physiology at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Medicine, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences, is one of the few contemporary thinkers to explore human society and civilization. Diamond's research has led him to numerous awards, including the National Science Prize, the American Geographical Society Burr Award, the Taylor Environmental Contribution Award, the Japan International Environmental Harmony Award, and the MacArthur Foundation Research Grant. Diamond's masterpiece Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fate of Human Society explores the origins and geographical causes of inequality in human society, winning the 1998 Pulitzer Prize in the United States and the British Popular Science Book Award.
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The Babylon River
Sung by: Boney M
Boney M was one of the most successful disco bands of all time and one of the best-selling pop music groups of the 1970s and 1980s. "Boney M" was founded in 1976 by German record producer and songwriter Frank Farian, with members from the West Indies and Jamaica. The original Babylonian River was published in 1970 by a Jamaican reggae band with lyrics adapted from a poem in the Hebrew Bible. In 1977 , Boney M " recorded "The Babylon River" and made the song a global hit.