Monday, May 31, 2010

The Artful Mind: Cognitive Science and the Riddle of Human Creativity

Edited by Mark Turner
online access from ProQuest Ebook Central

All normal human beings alive in the last fifty thousand years appear to have possessed, in Mark Turner's phrase, "irrepressibly artful minds." Cognitively modern minds produced a staggering list of behavioral singularities--science, religion, mathematics, language, advanced tool use, decorative dress, dance, culture, art--that seems to indicate a mysterious and unexplained discontinuity between us and all other living things. This brute fact gives rise to some tantalizing questions: How did the artful mind emerge? What are the basic mental operations that make art possible for us now, and how do they operate? These are the questions that occupy the distinguished contributors to this volume, which emerged from a year-long Getty-funded research project hosted by the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford. These scholars bring to bear a range of disciplinary and cross-disciplinary perspectives on the relationship between art (broadly conceived), the mind, and the brain. Together they hope to provide directions for a new field of research that can play a significant role in answering the great riddle of human singularity.
(Excerpt from the Publisher’s description)

丹青聖手:黃公望王蒙吳鎮傳

壽勤澤 著
online access from Apabi
check holdings in CityU LibraryFind

本書介紹黃公望(1269-1354)、王蒙(1308-1385)、吳鎮(1280-1354),三位元明之際浙江丹青聖手的生平事跡和藝術成就。

…… 伍爾芙(Virginia Woolf) [英國現代派文學大家]是一位以極其嚴謹的創作態度對待個人 “文字” 的作家,她把自己嘔心瀝血的創作過程名之曰“生命寫 作”,當她的寫作宣告結束之日,也是她生命之火熄滅的一天。她的“生命寫作”,成為世界文學史上最為奇麗絢爛的風景線,深受後人的敬仰。作一個時空大跨越的比較,黃公望畫《富春山居圖》,歷經7個寒暑而成;王蒙繪就《青卞隱居圖》,密線繁體,足見匠心獨運;吳鎮圖寫《漁父圖》,同一題材,情有所鍾,反覆創作,留下精品力作。他們雖然與伍爾芙生活於不同的時間和空間,但在文藝創作的本質精神上則是完全相通的。
“元四家”生活於同一個時代,又生活於江南地區,相互之間又有密切的交往,思想與藝術上互有影響。為“元四家”立傳,最理想的是將黃公望、王蒙、吳鎮、倪瓚四人的傳記合為一 書,便於從宏觀視野裡對他們作多層面、多角度的比較論評,使讀者更清晰地看到元代文人畫發展的脈絡肌理。例如,‟元四家”將山水畫推向中國山水畫史的高峰,倪瓚的“逸筆草草,不求形似”論是最需要作出深入的學理分析的,然而,限於叢書[《浙江文化名人傳記叢書》]早就確定的選收體例,倪瓚籍貫江蘇,就無法收進這部書稿 ……
(摘錄自本書作者後記)

Monday, May 24, 2010

Shanghai and the Edges of Empires

By Meng Yue
online access from ProQuest Ebook Central
check holdings in CityU LibraryFi

Even before the romanticized golden era of Shanghai in the 1930s, the famed Asian city was remarkable for its uniqueness and East-meets-West cosmopolitanism. Meng Yue analyzes a century-long shift of urbanity from China’s heartland to its shore. During the period between the decline of Jiangnan cities such as Suzhou and Yangzhou and Shanghai’s early twentieth-century rise, the overlapping cultural edges of a failing Chinese royal order and the encroachment of Western imperialists converged. Simultaneously appropriating and resisting imposing forces, Shanghai opened itself to unruly, subversive practices, becoming a crucible of creativity and modernism.
Calling into question conventional ways of conceptualizing modernity, colonialism, and intercultural relations, Meng Yue examines such cultural practices as the work of the commercial press, street theater, and literary arts, and shows that what appear to be minor cultural changes often signal the presence of larger political and economic developments. Engaging theories of modernity and postcolonial and global cultural studies, Meng Yue reveals the paradoxical interdependence between imperial and imperialist histories and the retranslation of culture that characterized the most notable result of China’s urban relocation—the emergence of the international city of Shanghai.
(Excerpt from amazon.com)

說服力 : 令人心悦誠服的說話技巧 = Conviction

趙彥鋒 著
online access from iRead eBook

說服已成為我們建立和諧人際關係的重要關鍵。說服是一門藝術,更是一個人綜合素質的具體體現。在日常生活中要想因某事而說服某人,就必須掌握一些說服的技巧和法則。
說話要注意場合。不看場合,隨心所欲,信口開河,想到什麼說什麼,這是「不會說話」的一種拙劣表現。
會說話的人一般都是成熟穩重的,特別是身處窘境時,能夠巧妙地以言語化解自己的尷尬境地。
(摘錄自博客來網路書店)

Monday, May 17, 2010

After You Graduate: Finding and Getting Work You Will Enjoy

By Leila Roberts
online access from ProQuest Ebook Central
check holdings in CityU LibraryFind

Taking the fear out of ‘career’
• Does the thought of graduation worry you?
• Does the word ‘career’ depress you?
• Do you feel you’re getting nowhere and wasting your degree?
• Do you want something different but don’t know how to get it?
After You Graduate is for students who are about to enter the world of work or those looking of a change in career direction. It takes the anxiety out of career choice and job-hunting and answers frequently-asked questions such as:
• What is a graduate job?
• What do graduates in my subject do?
• How do I identify what sort of work I will enjoy?
• What’s the use of a work placement?
• How do I write a good application form, CV and covering letter?
• How do I make the best impression at an interview?
After You Graduate can be used as a reference guide to the whold career-choice and job-finding process, including further study and self-employment.
(Excerpt from the back cover)

世界地圖上的印記 : 環遊世界70國印象之旅 = Journey Impressions on the Map

柯亭凡 著
online access from iRead eBook

一部最優質的紙上旅遊書,情繫著我們心靈中的夢想。
歐洲幾度造訪 / 亞太紐澳繞遊 / 拉丁南美巡禮 / 非洲狩獵探險 / 加勒比海軌跡 / 飛越海洋國界 / 世界七大奇蹟。
本書描述筆者生命精華歲月中,一些出國求學之後旅行的軌跡,而書中所提之人事地物,還有書中所附之地圖,對沒去過的人而言,或可比較有依循路線以增加實在感。
誰說環遊世界何嘗不是鍛鍊心性,以及對生命歷程中的一項重大投資呢?期望本書平實樂觀的內容,能夠對留學有興趣,或對旅行愛好者有所參考與啟發。
(摘錄自博客來網路書店)

Monday, May 10, 2010

Successful Time Management

By Patrick Forsyth
online access from ProQuest
online access from Books24x7
check holdings in CityU LibraryFind

If you are busy then you are normal. The modern workplace is unrelenting and deadlines, pressure (and, if you let it get to you, stress too) and a daily avalanche of e-mails are the order of the day. Dealing with this must be part of everyone’s stock in trade …

You are doubtless judged by what you do, by the results you achieve. To survive and prosper you have to be productive, efficient and effective. Time management is about working actively to create efficiency and effectiveness in a way that makes achieving your targeted results more likely. Success does not just happen. You make it happen. So too with your work pattern, you create it and do so for good or ill. Here we examine an essential foundation to success.

Good, effective time management is a core skill, a career skill that we all need both to make us able to perform in a current job and to enhance our career prospects. It is a real differentiating factor, one where getting to grips with it can see you consistently achieving what you want in both job and career in a way that gives you an edge on other people, perhaps of equal ability, but who lack this aspect of self-organisation and discipline …

(Excerpt from the Preface)

感動人生的100個心靈故事 = 100 Stories Affected for My Life

陳凱文 編著
online access from iRead eBook

“一個小女孩趴在窗台上,看著窗外的人正埋葬她心愛的小狗,不禁淚流滿面,悲慟不已。她的外祖父見狀,連忙引她到另一個視窗,讓她欣賞他精心栽培的玫瑰花園。果然小女孩的心情頓時明朗。老人托起外孫女的下巴說:「孩子,你開錯了窗戶。」”
雖然僅是一小篇小故事,它影響著人類情感的發舒,更敬畏於書內故事真情流露的內涵,因為人性中最美好的東西不在於外表,而是在我們人與人的內心中。當你用你的愛心去打動別人,幫助別人的時候。同時,你也在享受著奉獻的快樂。
本書是用最可貴的愛、真情與感悟作拋磚引玉,用作者的筆記錄生命中不能錯過的感動情事,讓最感動、最內咎、最難以忘懷的點滴情結編輯出版,一本給真正屬於自己和廣大讀者心神領會的書。
書中所寫的文字,都是歷年來筆者所接觸最感人的故事點滴,遂而產生俯首執筆的念頭,它是對自然、對人生、對社會、對世界、回報內心的真知與感悟,冀望能感動你內心的思維,觸動你深邃的一顆心,並將它傳播給有智慧的讀者,那即是出版本書的最大初衷。
(摘錄自博客來網路書店)

Monday, May 3, 2010

Getting Things Done : The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

By David Allen
online access from EBSCOhost Audiobook Collection
 holdings in CityU LibraryFind

WELCOME TO A gold mine of insights into strategies for how to have more energy, be more relaxed, and get a lot more accomplished with much less effort. If you’re like me, you like getting things done and doing them well, and yet you also want to savor life in ways that seem increasingly elusive if not downright impossible if you’re working too hard. This doesn’t have to be an either-or proposition. It is possible to be effectively doing, while you are delightfully being, in your ordinary workaday world.

I think efficiency is a good thing. Maybe what you’re doing is important, interesting, or useful; or maybe it isn’t but it has to be done anyway. In the first case you want to get as much return as you can on your investment of time and energy. In the second, you want to get on to other things as fast as you can, without any nagging loose ends.

And whatever you’re doing, you’d probably like to be more relaxed, confident …

Teaching you how to be maximally efficient and relaxed, whenever you need or want to be, was my main purpose in writing this book.

(Excerpt from “Welcome to Getting Things Done” of the book)

實用彈性思考法

謝水南 著
online access from iRead eBook
online access from HyRead ebook
check holdings in CityU LibraryFind

作者以其豐富的學識,廣泛而獨特的服務經歷,加上多年來在中小學主任校長儲訓班、大學、文官培訓所和各種訓練機構講授「創意思考與問題解決」課程累積的實務經驗,寫成本書「實用彈性思考法」,也就是通稱的「創意思考法」。
本書涵蓋「彈性思考法」的理論與實務,而且實務部分多於理論部分。蒐羅內容廣泛:從文字到圖形;從語文到數理;從本國語文到外國語文;從人文到科技;從日常生活到學術研究等等。
本書是難得一見的整合性創意思考讀物,通俗平易卻又趣味盎然。閱讀本書有如閱讀數本創意思考的書籍。
(摘錄自博客來網路書店)