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"Never enter the city center unless necessary" | New book recommendations for the week

Reporter | Dong Ziqi

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<h3>"I've Been here on Earth"</h3>

"Never enter the city center unless necessary" | New book recommendations for the week

This is a social suspense novel written by the writer Nado based on real events. The woman named Miriam followed her husband and found that he actually liked another woman, she did not dare to cry and decided not to ask anything, but later she was involuntarily caught up in her husband's secret. Focusing on the criminal police team's crime-solving process, the lives of suspects and their wives, the novel restores a criminal incident, and while analyzing the criminal motives behind it, it also presents the turbulent "magic capital" impression that outsiders will feel when they come to Shanghai: jungle-like high-rise buildings, ant-colony traffic, men and women dressed in fashion and suburban makeup, and PM2.5 air, when the protagonist approaches the high-end community of Xuhui Riverside, he also experiences the inner conflict of desire more intensely, as stated in the book, " He is like a beast facing an unfamiliar realm, never entering the center of the city if it is not necessary. ”

Nado used to work as a civil servant and journalist, and now writes full-time. In 2001, he began to publish works, successively creating the Three Kingdoms Events Series, and then turned to the current theme, and has published a crime/social novel "19 Years of Murder". Nado said that the purpose of writing a crime novel is to examine the changes in people's hearts in extreme situations, and the protagonist of "I Have Come on Earth" is not an incomprehensible villain, but a witness to the human world, and he feels that life is like a corn valley being crushed into powder and juice by the millstone of life. Suspense crime novels may not have no good works, and Wei Shining's "Northern Hunting", published last year, is also a work that gazes at the helplessness and evil of ordinary life.

<h3>"National Treasure"</h3>

"Never enter the city center unless necessary" | New book recommendations for the week

It is a novel based on Kabuki, which is called Japan's three major national dramas, along with Noh and Bunraku, and has been passed down for 400 years and is now listed as a World Intangible Cultural Heritage. The novel "National Treasure" follows the growth process of a Kabuki actor who eventually became a national treasure of Japan, traveling through more than half a century, not only recreating the beauty of the Kabuki art world, but also writing about the flesh and blood people who perform Kabuki. The story begins in Nagasaki on New Year's Day in 1964, when a national treasure Kabuki actor emerged from the gang struggle, who was born into an underworld family but had a handsome face, and fate pushed his life in an unexpected direction. The Kabuki dramas that appear in the book include "Flower Willow Sanbanso", "River Village", "Slow and Slow", "Love Snow Knocking on the Door" and so on. In order to write this work, the author himself also accompanied the fourth generation of Kabuki actor Nakamura Yanjiro to perform at the National Kabuki Theater, and he not only saw the stage of Kabuki, but also went to the dressing room and stage.

Speaking of Shuichi Yoshida, Chinese readers are probably most familiar with the film "Seinosuke Yokomichi", adapted from his novel. Born in Nagasaki, Shuichi Yoshida worked part-time writing after graduating in Tokyo, working as a hotel waiter, porter, and so on. "National Treasure" was first serialized in Japan's Asahi Shimbun, and during the series, Shuichi Yoshida often received letters from readers, concerned about whether the protagonist was happy or not.

<h3>Gamebreakers: Five Women Writers Who Changed the World</h3>

"Never enter the city center unless necessary" | New book recommendations for the week

In this book, Lindell Gordon wrote biographies of five 19th-century British women writers: Mary Shelley, Emily Brontë, George Eliot, Olive Schreiner, and Virginia Woolf. Gordon called them "game breakers" because each of them had been pushed out of their own pockets for violating certain values or political positions.

The five writers that Gordon selected still belong to a relatively traditional group, but with the special genre of life narrative, we can also glimpse the ups and downs of the ideological trend of that era: at that time, women faced the constraints of economic, legal, and social life on the one hand; on the other hand, from the afterglow of the Enlightenment to the liberal humanism of John Stewart Mill to Herbert Spencer's theory of social evolution, many brave voices provided a breeding ground for their "deviance". Of course, what constitutes the most dazzling talent and talent of the five female writers is a period of ordinary life and social network, they also have family, friends, lovers and mentors, as Woolf said, "Only by measuring the lifestyle and life experience that ordinary women may have can we understand the success or failure of extraordinary women as writers." The biography of these five women writers is not so much aimed at establishing new group idols as it is to shake the standards of greatness and smallness.

<h3>"Two Generations of Bankruptcy"</h3>

"Never enter the city center unless necessary" | New book recommendations for the week

"The Bankruptcy of the Old Generations" is the sequel to "The Bankruptcy of the Old Queen". In September 2014, NHK's program "The Reality of the Drifting Society of the Elderly and the Bankruptcy of the Elderly" invented the concept of "Bankruptcy of the Elderly", which refers to the fact that the elderly living alone on pensions often face the problem of life embarrassment, and once the inevitable medical or nursing expenses occur, they are unable to afford or even desperate. So will the elderly who live with their children be more secure? A year later, NHK launched a sequel "The Elderly Drifting Society to Avoid Two Generations of Both Lose", showing that even with their families, the elderly can not avoid the problem of "bankruptcy after the elderly", the program introduced such a case: the middle-aged and elderly people who quit their jobs to care for their parents and live with their parents, rely on their parents' pensions to maintain daily life and care expenses, but in the process fell into the situation of "bankruptcy after the elderly". What's more, the children have no formal job, can not be independent, after middle age still rely on their parents, live together, elderly parents have no choice but to continue to work, as the family living with them grows older, the burden on the parents gradually increases, so they fall into the state of "bankruptcy after old age". The book is based on a documentary.

It is worth mentioning that the group of bankruptcies is closely related to the group of people who return from the city, they are the children of the elderly, the program team has gone to Akita Prefecture to investigate and found that the number of "cocoon residents" is slowly growing, the so-called "cocoon people" refers to the people who had longed for urban employment when they were young, and then returned to their hometowns due to unemployment, they were closed in their hometowns, living in the same room with their parents. NHK has previously launched a large number of books that reflect the real problems of Japanese society, such as "Society Without a Chance", "Women's Poverty", and "Bankruptcy after Old Age".

<h3>The Western Political Tradition: The Development of Modern Liberalism</h3>

"Never enter the city center unless necessary" | New book recommendations for the week

What is freedom? What is liberalism? Written during World War II, when liberalism was facing many crises, the author Frederick Watkins did not agree that liberalism was a side branch of laissez-faire capitalism, arguing that liberalism was not the property of a social group, and its supporters were not limited to any one economic system. He stressed that modern liberalism is a secular form of Western civilization, and modern liberalism believes that freedom under the law is the living environment that human beings should enjoy, and the maintenance of this freedom depends on the obedience of government officials to public opinion institutions; totalitarianism firmly believes in its own way and uncontrolled political authority, which is contrary to liberal views on government.

By rooting the development of liberalism in a Western cultural tradition, where the core of politics is jurisprudence, not ethics, the author establishes liberalism as "the modern embodiment of all representative Western political traditions." The book combs through the course of the emergence and development of liberalism in the two thousand years from ancient Greece to modern times, focusing on the ancient Greco-Roman period, before and after the Enlightenment, and the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and tells how freedom under the law was established in the ancient Greco-Roman period, and how it was developed through the power of the church in the Middle Ages and was continuously abandoned, and maintained its vitality in the continuous encounters with the middle class, the proletariat, nationalism, etc.

<h3>The Sui and Tang Women's World in The Last Words</h3>

"Never enter the city center unless necessary" | New book recommendations for the week

The last words are the entrustment, admonition and arrangement of the deceased to his relatives and friends on his deathbed, a kind of agreement on the affairs of the deceased, and also the sustenance for the future affairs of the deceased. In most cases, last words are the expression of the true meaning of relatives and friends and the expression of true emotions. This book is a work on the last words of Sui and Tang women, the book analyzes the content of sui and Tang women's last words, as well as the identity of the deceased, family background, religion, marriage situation on the last words of the impact, in addition to examining whether the descendants act in accordance with the last words, but also explore the last words embodied in the dying mentality, such as acceptance, regret, helplessness, regret and even openness and other emotions. Sui and Tang women had a higher status in ancient Chinese society, and from their last words, we can find that women of different identities have different views of life and death at the end of their lives.

According to the analysis in the book, the regrets and worries revealed in women's last words mainly include concern for children, husbands and parents, failure to say goodbye to relatives, inability to grow old with their husbands, etc. There are also some women who die because they follow their husbands, and the last words at this time show the determination not to survive. In addition to expressing emotions, dying women are also concerned with the distribution of property after death, the cost of funerals, and whether to be buried with their husbands. Shanghai Ancient Books Publishing House has recently published a work on the theme of epitaphs "Chasing Life", among these epitaphs, it is particularly necessary to pay attention to the epitaphs of different dynasties for women, the female epitaphs of the Sui and Tang Dynasties are very different from the Ming Dynasty, in addition to an epitaph written by women in the Tang Dynasty to their husbands, their broad view of life and death can also be read and understood with this "last words of women" to understand the emotional world of ancient women.

<h3>1941: The Year Germany Was On The Road to Failure</h3>

"Never enter the city center unless necessary" | New book recommendations for the week

In late 1940, Hitler's army dismembered Czechoslovakia, annexed Austria, conquered Poland, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and humiliated France. At the same time, Britain under Churchill was isolated and helpless against the Nazi invasion. In 1941, everything was different. Hitler invaded the Soviet Union and made devastating military mistakes; he carried out mass murder and adopted a policy of terror; after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, he declared war on the United States, and Britain gained two powerful allies, the United States and the Soviet Union, and Germany's defeat was doomed. Nagorsky focuses on key events in 1941, revealing that it was the year of Nazi Germany's failure and the year the Holocaust began. Moreover, as the author argues, Hitler's actions divided Europe into two rival camps, and this Cold War pattern lasted almost half a century thereafter, a legacy from 1941.

The author, Andrew Nagorski, worked as a foreign correspondent in the final years of the Cold War and visited cities such as Bonn, Berlin, Moscow and Warsaw. In his view, World War II was never a distant concept, and its fear has always remained in people's hearts. This experience abroad also prompted him to think about the role of the individual in history. He said that when looking back at history, it is often felt that historical events are inevitable; but in fact, history is shaped by the choices of the ruler and the ruled, the ruler and the dissident, and sometimes it may be only a purely accidental factor that determines its direction, so it is very important to examine the motives of the actions of key figures.

<h3>The Flower of the Forest: Botanical Notes of Margaret Rice</h3>

"Never enter the city center unless necessary" | New book recommendations for the week

Margaret Rice is a British plant artist and explorer who focuses on the study of forest flora in the Amazon. In 1956, at the age of 47, she entered the Brazilian rainforest and embarked on a 32-year forest expedition. She has explored the Amazon Basin 15 times, documenting and mapping the exotic plants there.

In Flowers of the Forest, Margaret Mi chronicles her work as a botanical painter, describing the flowers, trees, birds, animals, and indigenous peoples she encounters along the way, recreating the magnificent appearance and primitive customs of the tropical rainforest. The book is divided into 13 chapters, using the geographical location as a clue to show the tropical plant landscape, and the reader can see the lotus jade plant in the Gulupi River Basin, the scorpiontail banana plant near Vopez, and the moonlight flower in the Negro River Basin. As an environmentalist, Margaret Mi has repeatedly expressed her concerns after witnessing the rapid disappearance of the rainforest. The book also contains 160 exquisite hand-drawn drawings, drawings, and related photographs of Margaret M.

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