Sea of Tranquility: A novel

Emily St. John Mandel
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NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • The award-winning, best-selling author of Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel returns with a novel of art, time travel, love, and plague that takes the reader from Vancouver Island in 1912 to a dark colony on the moon five hundred years later, unfurling a story of humanity across centuries and space.

“One of [Mandel’s] finest novels and one of her most satisfying forays into the arena of speculative fiction yet.” —The New York Times

Edwin St. Andrew is eighteen years old when he crosses the Atlantic by steamship, exiled from polite society following an ill-conceived diatribe at a dinner party. He enters the forest, spellbound by the beauty of the Canadian wilderness, and suddenly hears the notes of a violin echoing in an airship terminal—an experience that shocks him to his core.

Two centuries later a famous writer named Olive Llewellyn is on a book tour. She’s traveling all over Earth, but her home is the second moon colony, a place of white stone, spired towers, and artificial beauty. Within the text of Olive’s best-selling pandemic novel lies a strange passage: a man plays his violin for change in the echoing corridor of an airship terminal as the trees of a forest rise around him.

When Gaspery-Jacques Roberts, a detective in the black-skied Night City, is hired to investigate an anomaly in the North American wilderness, he uncovers a series of lives upended: The exiled son of an earl driven to madness, a writer trapped far from home as a pandemic ravages Earth, and a childhood friend from the Night City who, like Gaspery himself, has glimpsed the chance to do something extraordinary that will disrupt the timeline of the universe.

A virtuoso performance that is as human and tender as it is intellectually playful, Sea of Tranquility is a novel of time travel and metaphysics that precisely captures the reality of our current moment.

(Excerpt from amazon.com)

換了語言，就換了腦袋：從荷馬史詩到達爾文，語言如何影響我們的思想、行為與認知 (Through the Language Glass)

蓋伊．多徹 (Guy Deutscher)
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◎ BBC山謬強森獎、英國皇家學會溫頓科學獎入圍作品
◎《紐約時報》、《經濟學人》、《金融時報》年度最佳讀物

語言是種本能嗎？
文法規則早已寫在我們的ＤＮＡ裡了嗎？
語言是否會影響我們的思考方式呢？

常有人說，一個國家的語言，反映了該國的文化、心靈和思維模式。比如：
＊古希臘人覺得羊是紫色，蜂蜜是綠色，是否他們無法分辨顏色?
＊澳洲某部落不說前後左右，只講東西南北，是否他們缺乏方向感？
＊德語的秩序感讓德國人的思想如此井然有序？
＊聲調優美曼妙的法語，是讓法國人如此浪漫的原因？
＊只要比較葡萄牙溫潤的聲音與西班牙語的艱澀音調，就能理解這兩個民族的性格差異？

那麼，換個語言，我們就會擁有不一樣的世界觀嗎？

本書將會帶領你穿越時空，從古希臘的荷馬到十九世紀的達爾文，從蠻荒野人到白袍科學家，多徹在書中綜觀語言學兩世紀的發展歷程，以極其豐富的有趣實例，向我們展示不同語言的特殊性，深入探討許多有關語言、文化和大腦的勁爆問題，並藉此告訴我們：語言對我們的影響，也許比你想像中的要來得更多、更令人驚奇！

◎各界好評

本書閱讀起來猶如偵探小說尋找答案般精彩，也樹立了語言學科普書寫逸趣橫生的典範。──江文瑜／國立臺灣大學語言學研究所教授

作者以博古知今的知識背景，以及機智中帶著辛辣的筆觸，帶領讀者走進語言學研究裡迷人而深刻的歷史公案，抽絲剝繭地探討語言、思想、大腦和文化間錯綜複雜的關係。──鄭凱元／國立陽明交通大學心智研究所教授

就算你完全不懂語言學，也可以享受這本書！──《新科學人》雜誌

(摘錄自博客來網路書店)

Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology

Chris Miller
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An epic account of the decades-long battle to control what has emerged as the world's most critical resource—microchip technology—with the United States and China increasingly in conflict.

You may be surprised to learn that microchips are the new oil—the scarce resource on which the modern world depends. Today, military, economic, and geopolitical power are built on a foundation of computer chips. Virtually everything—from missiles to microwaves, smartphones to the stock market—runs on chips. Until recently, America designed and built the fastest chips and maintained its lead as the #1 superpower. Now, America's edge is slipping, undermined by competitors in Taiwan, Korea, Europe, and, above all, China. Today, as Chip War reveals, China, which spends more money each year importing chips than it spends importing oil, is pouring billions into a chip-building initiative to catch up to the US. At stake is America's military superiority and economic prosperity.

Economic historian Chris Miller explains how the semiconductor came to play a critical role in modern life and how the U.S. become dominant in chip design and manufacturing and applied this technology to military systems. America's victory in the Cold War and its global military dominance stems from its ability to harness computing power more effectively than any other power. But here, too, China is catching up, with its chip-building ambitions and military modernization going hand in hand. America has let key components of the chip-building process slip out of its grasp, contributing not only to a worldwide chip shortage but also a new Cold War with a superpower adversary that is desperate to bridge the gap.

Illuminating, timely, and fascinating, Chip War shows that, to make sense of the current state of politics, economics, and technology, we must first understand the vital role played by chips.

(Excerpt from amazon.com)

為什麼100隻貓無法吃掉1隻老鼠?：從個人、團體到社會，6.5個日常故事帶你建構生活中的賽局思維

鎌田雄一郎
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《日本經濟新聞》、《朝日新聞》、《週刊東洋經濟》好評報導
哈佛博士帶你發掘日常中最容易入門的賽局理論

日本經濟學家、哈佛大學博士鎌田雄一郎是「賽局理論」研究領域的佼佼者。他認為賽局理論是經濟學當中最重要的一項理論，也是「幫助社會上有各種煩惱的人，針對讓他們苦惱的各種事件做決策」的學問。他在本書拋開令人卻步的生硬詞彙，用6.5個平易近人的故事包裝，傳達賽局相關理論的核心概念，希望幫助讀者拉近與賽局理論的距離，並進一步將背後的決策思維學以致用。

賽局理論不只能應用於「團體」、「家庭」等小型社會發生的事件，也會拿來分析股票買賣、政黨競爭、納稅或國家政策等更複雜的問題。面對經濟、商業、人際關係等疑難雜症，如果不懂賽局理論，就像沒有羅盤就貿然出海航行。

這本書將幫助你從日常生活開始，輕鬆學習並建構賽局思維邏輯，讓你面臨不論是小社會還是大社會的各種問題時，都能往正確的方向思考，做出正確的決定！

(摘錄自博客來網路書店)

Introduction to Quantum Optics: From the Semi-classical Approach to Quantized Light

Gilbert Grynberg, Alain Aspect, Claude Fabre
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Prof. Alain Aspect was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 2022, jointly with John Clauser and Anton Zeilinger. Prof. Aspect is a Senior Fellow at the City University of Hong Kong (CityU). In 2018, he was conferred an Honorary Doctor of Science by CityU in recognition of his significant contributions to education and society.

Covering a number of important subjects in quantum optics, this textbook is an excellent introduction for advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate students, familiarizing readers with the basic concepts and formalism as well as the most recent advances.

The first part of the textbook covers the semi-classical approach where matter is quantized, but light is not. It describes significant phenomena in quantum optics, including the principles of lasers. The second part is devoted to the full quantum description of light and its interaction with matter, covering topics such as spontaneous emission, and classical and non-classical states of light. An overview of photon entanglement and applications to quantum information is also given. In the third part, non-linear optics and laser cooling of atoms are presented, where using both approaches allows for a comprehensive description. Each chapter describes basic concepts in detail, and more specific concepts and phenomena are presented in ‘complements'.

(Excerpt from amazon.com)

我偏愛讀詩的荒謬：現代詩的三十堂課

廖偉棠
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資深詩人的現代詩入門課，深入淺出地解讀當代詩意，以詩的荒謬戰勝日常的荒謬

資深詩人廖偉棠，出版過十多部個人詩集，斬獲數個文學大獎，活躍在中國現代詩的第一線。同時，他也是專業的詩歌研究者，既熟悉古典詩，又有大量的現代詩閱讀和寫作經驗。

在本書中，他以詩人的和研究者的雙重視角，兼具古典詩和現代詩的兩種維度，帶領讀者重新理解現代詩與當代生活、母語美學之間的關係，重塑詩意的力量。

廖偉棠兄是我非常喜愛的一位詩人跟評論家，左手寫詩，右手寫評論，是一樣的精彩。最重要的就是，他對詩的認識絕不只是限於現代詩的範圍。他能夠讓大家知道，整個中國各種詩的現況，以及世界詩壇裡的一些詩又能夠給我們什麼樣的教益。另一方面，他對於中國的古詩也有研究，所以他可以給大家一個對於詩的全面認識。——梁文道

(摘錄自博客來book.douban.com)