You Are What You Hear: How Music and Territory Make Us Who We Are

Harry Witchel
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Have you ever wondered why music makes you feel so good? Why did we evolve to have music, and what does music do to us? You Are What You Hear is a bit of a romp compared to the usual science book. Dr. Witchel, a specialist in music, pleasure and the brain, explains how the body and the brain are influenced by different kinds of music, why some music makes us joyous, while other music makes us sad, or angry, or anxious, and how the brain interprets this music. He also shows how music plays with your mind what you think, how you decide what to buy, and even how smart you are.

Pondering the musicality of everything from bird songs to the language he calls "motherese," Dr. Witchel illustrates the power of music and addresses the questions:
- Why do we listen to music?
- Why does music make sex better?
- Why do some people love Beethoven and others rap music?
- Is musical taste 100% nurture, or is there a role for nature?
- Why do aggressive young men blare out booming music from their cars?
- Why do we listen to sad music?
- Does violent music lead to violent behavior?
- Does listening to Mozart make you smarter or just happier?
- Does music make the brain grow larger?
- Can music surreptitiously influence what we decide to buy in shops?
- Can music cure?

Dr. Witchel's interests run the gamut from music, dating and laughter to the body language of the British Prime Minister, which he has analyzed on the BBC. he shows that, like birds, we use music to establish and reinforce territory, for ourselves and for our social groups. In this way, music defines who we are.

You Are What You Hear is an erudite and entertaining study that is unique in many ways. No other book has thoroughly elaborated the connection between music and social territory in humans, although in other music-making species scientists have shown this connection to be clear-cut. Given the wealth of scientific evidence and historical narratives presented in You Are What You Hear, an intellectual investigation of this avenue is long overdue. Written by a psychobiologist, the work straddles hard science and psychology, approaching music from a unique interdisciplinary perspective. Successfully bridging these strands of evidence, You Are What You Hear elucidates the significance of territory not only in music but in daily life. This lively and engaging book will have a broad appeal not only to the general public, but to students interested in the relationship between music and culture. Anyone from seventeen to seventy will have the potential to gain something from this book.

(Excerpt from amazon.com)

人類的音樂 (Music of Man)

耶胡迪・梅紐因 (Yehudi Menuhin) , 柯蒂斯・W・戴維斯 (Curtis W. Davis) 著
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在這本十分優美的書中，表達了作者許多精心選擇的個人觀點。本書將帶給讀者廣泛的閱讀樂趣，引領他們踏上一次激動人心的漫游音樂世界之旅，到世界的許多地方去對人聲、歌曲、和聲及器樂的發展探幽覽勝，把它們的種種動人形態盡收眼底。

《人類的音樂》是一本知識豐富、闡述詳盡、充滿深刻感悟和獨到見解的佳作。它探討了音樂在其漫長歷史中形成的各種形態，描述了各個時期創作及演奏音樂的歷史名人，闡釋了音樂在世界不同地區所扮演的社會角色。它追溯了因人類不斷變化的需要而應運而生的各種音樂流派、風格的演化過程，而那些促使音樂演化的因素，既有宗教和歷史的，也有社會和個人的。

(摘錄自dangdang.com)

Contemporary Instrumental
Chinese Music
Relaxation Music

Moral Ground: Ethical Action for a Planet in Peril

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Moral Ground brings together the testimony of over 80 visionaries — theologians and religious leaders, scientists, elected officials, business leaders, naturists, activists, and writers — to present a diverse and compelling call to honor our individual and collective moral responsibilities to our planet. In the face of environmental degradation and global climate change, scientific knowledge alone does not tell us what we ought to do. The missing premise of the argument and much-needed centerpiece in the debate to date has been the need for ethical values, moral guidance, and principled reasons for doing the right thing for our planet, its animals, its plants, and its people. This book encourages a newly discovered, or rediscovered, commitment to consensus about our ethical obligation to the future and why it’s wrong to wreck the world.

 

(Excerpt from amazon.com)

 

失控的世界 : 全球化如何重塑我們的生活 (Runaway World)

安東尼‧吉登斯 (Antony Giddens) 著
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本書從政治、文化和生活的角度對全球化問題作了深刻的分析，生動地論述了不斷增長的全球依賴性是如何影響我們的日常生活，如何影響我們當中的每一個人的。全書共五章。

安東尼‧吉登斯，英國著名學者，現任倫敦政治經濟學院院長，曾任英國布萊爾首相和美國前總統克林頓顧問，至今出版著作30餘部。吉登斯近年來發表的《現代性的後果》、《現代性與自我認同》、《親密關係的轉型》、《超越左與右》、《為社會學辯護》和《第三條道路︰社會民主主義的復興》等著作引起國際學術界和政治界的廣泛關注，他的著作已被譯成22種語言，其主要著作大都已譯成中文在我國出版。此外，專門對吉登斯的著作進行研究的書籍就達十種之多，其中還有一部四卷本的研究專著。1996年，他成為BBC萊思講座主講人。

(摘錄自博客來網路書店)

Orientalist Aesthetics: Art, Colonialism, and French North Africa, 1880-1930

Roger Benjamin
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online access from EBSCOhost
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Lavishly illustrated with exotic images ranging from Renoir's forgotten Algerian oeuvre to the abstract vision of Matisse's Morocco and beyond, this book is the first history of Orientalist art during the period of high modernism. Roger Benjamin, drawing on a decade of research in untapped archives, introduces many unfamiliar paintings, posters, miniatures, and panoramas and discovers an art movement closely bound to French colonial expansion. Orientalist Aesthetics approaches the visual culture of exoticism by ranging across the decorative arts, colonial museums, traveling scholarships, and art criticism in the Salons of Paris and Algiers.

Benjamin's rediscovery of the important Society of French Orientalist Painters provides a critical context for understanding a lush body of work, including that of indigenous Algerian artists never before discussed in English.

The painter-critic Eugène Fromentin tackled the unfamiliar atmospheric conditions of the desert, Etienne Dinet sought a more truthful mode of ethnographic painting by converting to Islam, and Mohammed Racim melded the Persian miniature with Western perspective. Benjamin considers armchair Orientalists concocting dreams from studio bric-à-brac, naturalists who spent years living in the oases of the Sahara, and Fauve and Cubist travelers who transposed the discoveries of the Parisian Salons to create decors of indigenous figures and tropical plants. The network that linked these artists with writers and museum curators was influenced by a complex web of tourism, rapid travel across the Mediterranean, and the march of modernity into a colonized culture. Orientalist Aesthetics shows how colonial policy affected aesthetics, how Europeans visualized cultural difference, and how indigenous artists in turn manipulated Western visual languages.

(Excerpt from amazon.com)

Creator

Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Henri Matisse
[Accessible on Campus Only]

趙無極中國講學筆錄 = The Lecture Notes of Zao Wou-ki in China

孫建平  編集
online access from Apabi
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本書是作者一九八五年五月在其母校浙江美術學院講學時的筆錄，其中包括作者與美術學院師生的交流以及作者對美院師生作品的美術批評。

(摘錄自讀書網)


中國藝術研究院研究員、著名藝術評論家劉曉純認為，趙無極留下的東西不僅是他價值連城的藝術作品，更是他創造性的精神遺產：國際化視野，現代性的藝術觀念，以及兼具東西方的文化情懷。

在西方藝術家的眼中，趙無極的畫既有西方神秘學說的啟示，又有中國人對自然的思考，這無疑是趙無極藝術的最高境界。藝評人達尼埃爾.馬歇索認為，趙無極的畫面上透明而抽象的淡彩，精到地綜合了中國意味和西方抒情主義。

(摘錄自中國評論新聞網)