Monday, September 4, 2017

Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future

Ashlee Vance
online access from EBSCOhost Audiobook Collection (audiobook)
check holdings in CityU LibraryFind
check resources on the same subject in CityU LibraryFind

In the spirit of Steve Jobs and Moneyball, Elon Musk is both an illuminating and authorized look at the extraordinary life of one of Silicon Valley's most exciting, unpredictable, and ambitious entrepreneurs - a real-life Tony Stark - and a fascinating exploration of the renewal of American invention and its new makers.

Elon Musk spotlights the technology and vision of Elon Musk, the renowned entrepreneur and innovator behind SpaceX, Tesla, and SolarCity, who sold one of his Internet companies, PayPal, for $1.5 billion. Ashlee Vance captures the full spectacle and arc of the genius' life and work, from his tumultuous upbringing in South Africa and flight to the United States to his dramatic technical innovations and entrepreneurial pursuits.

Vance uses Musk's story to explore one of the pressing questions of our age: Can the nation of inventors and creators who led the modern world for a century still compete in an age of fierce global competition? He argues that Musk - one of the most unusual and striking figures in American business history - is a contemporary, visionary amalgam of legendary inventors and industrialists, including Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Howard Hughes, and Steve Jobs. More than any other entrepreneur today, Musk has dedicated his energies and his own vast fortune to inventing a future that is as rich and far reaching as the visionaries of the golden age of science-fiction fantasy.

(Excerpt from amazon.com)

香港好走系列

陳曉蕾
check holdings in CityU LibraryFind
check resources on the same subject in CityU LibraryFind


香港出版雙年獎 心理勵志類最佳出版獎

《香港好走》系列包括《香港好走 怎照顧?》、《香港好走 有選擇?》、《平安紙》。

《怎照顧?》檢視香港現時的醫療和護理服務,老病死沒法避免,可是得到的治療和護理,是和所處的社會有關的。香港的醫院、院舍、寧養院、社區究竟提供了怎樣的支援?香港病人可否待在家中,甚至在家離世?而社區的基層醫療、社福機構正在編織一張怎樣的安全網?是否可讓香港人放心老去,平安好走?

《有選擇?》報導人生最後一程在香港的不同選擇:預設醫療指示、預設照顧計劃、不作心肺復甦法文件、持久授權書等等,深入探討病人、家人、醫護人員在各種醫護決定背後的想法和分歧。報導亦從病人自主權,梳理「安樂死」、「醫助死亡」、「終止無效治療」、「拒絕治療」等在香港的討論和實踐。

《平安紙》是一本教人寫遺書的著作,不過,它不是硬生生的那種,而是充滿溫度,因為它會細說自己一生如何度過,葬禮想怎樣安排,想哪些人出席,給他們什麼遺言,要不要用入侵性醫療等等,都一一考慮周全,並為使用者提供人生的指引,淡淡的。

(摘錄自博客來網路書店)

Monday, August 28, 2017

The Sellout: A Novel

Paul Beatty
online access from EBSCOhost Ebooks
check holdings in CityU LibraryFind
check resources on the same subject in CityU LibraryFind

Winners of the Man Booker Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction, and the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature

A biting satire about a young man's isolated upbringing and the race trial that sends him to the Supreme Court, Paul Beatty's The Sellout showcases a comic genius at the top of his game. It challenges the sacred tenets of the United States Constitution, urban life, the civil rights movement, the father-son relationship, and the holy grail of racial equality―the black Chinese restaurant.

Born in the "agrarian ghetto" of Dickens―on the southern outskirts of Los Angeles―the narrator of The Sellout resigns himself to the fate of lower-middle-class Californians: "I'd die in the same bedroom I'd grown up in, looking up at the cracks in the stucco ceiling that've been there since '68 quake." Raised by a single father, a controversial sociologist, he spent his childhood as the subject in racially charged psychological studies. He is led to believe that his father's pioneering work will result in a memoir that will solve his family's financial woes. But when his father is killed in a police shoot-out, he realizes there never was a memoir. All that's left is the bill for a drive-thru funeral.

Fueled by this deceit and the general disrepair of his hometown, the narrator sets out to right another wrong: Dickens has literally been removed from the map to save California from further embarrassment. Enlisting the help of the town's most famous resident―the last surviving Little Rascal, Hominy Jenkins―he initiates the most outrageous action conceivable: reinstating slavery and segregating the local high school, which lands him in the Supreme Court.

(Excerpt from amazon.com)

王實味 : 文藝整風與思想改造

魏時煜
check holdings in CityU LibraryFind
check resources on the same subject in CityU LibraryFind

榮獲「香港出版雙年獎」文學及小說類別的「最佳出版獎」

王實味是五四運動中成長起來的第一代人,因為一篇雜文〈野百合花〉,使他成為延安整風的重點批判對象,有人稱他為共產黨文字獄首位有姓名的犧牲者。本書作者自2008年開始,訪談了十多位與王實味同時在延安、親歷整風的老人;這些受訪者大多是近代歷史的見證者,並且對經歷過的一連串的政治運動都有反思。 本書透過口述筆錄、檔案資料、文本解讀,以及作者新發掘的材料,比較不同的聲音和視點,了解和記錄未能被成功改造思想的王實味的意義。作為珍貴的歷史材料,本書還首次全文附錄王實味1930年發表在「托派雜誌」《展開》上的中篇小說〈三代〉,以及他轉譯並加了按語的〈列寧遺囑〉,以伺讀者。

(摘錄自香港城市大學出版社網站)

Monday, August 21, 2017

The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History

Elizabeth Kolbert
check holdings in CityU LibraryFind
check resources on the same subject in CityU LibraryFind

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE

A major book about the future of the world, blending intellectual and natural history and field reporting into a powerful account of the mass extinction unfolding before our eyes

Over the last half-billion years, there have been Five mass extinctions, when the diversity of life on earth suddenly and dramatically contracted. Scientists around the world are currently monitoring the sixth extinction, predicted to be the most devastating extinction event since the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs. This time around, the cataclysm is us. In prose that is at once frank, entertaining, and deeply informed, New Yorker writer Elizabeth Kolbert tells us why and how human beings have altered life on the planet in a way no species has before. Interweaving research in half a dozen disciplines, descriptions of the fascinating species that have already been lost, and the history of extinction as a concept, Kolbert provides a moving and comprehensive account of the disappearances occurring before our very eyes. She shows that the sixth extinction is likely to be mankind's most lasting legacy, compelling us to rethink the fundamental question of what it means to be human.

(Excerpt from amazon.com)

真希望我 20 歲就懂的事 : 史丹佛大學的創新 x 創意 x 創業震撼課程 (What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20)

婷娜.希莉格 (Tina Seelig)
check holdings in CityU LibraryFind
check resources on the same subject in CityU LibraryFind

作者希莉格主持「史丹佛科技創業計畫」(STVP)多年,是非常成功的創意與創業導師,專門教導大學生(特別是以當工程師為志向)如何規畫未來及創業。幾年前當她的兒子快要上大學時,她回想起自己讀大學和初入社會的挫折與經驗,不禁希望當年20歲時有人能提點她,於是與兒子分享這些寶貴心情。後來她對一群史丹佛學生分享這些觀察和領悟,把演講題目訂為「真希望我20歲就懂的事」,引發熱烈迴響與共鳴,並應邀到全球發表演講,最後決定將她的豐富經驗和創意課程寫成這本激勵人心的精采著作。

希莉格說,每個人20歲時都會有茫然面對未來、不知何去何從的強烈焦慮感,其實你應該欣然接受這種不確定,不確定才是激發創新的火種,也是向前邁進的重要力量。最有趣的經驗往往發生在偏離既定道路、挑戰傳統假設、從失敗錯誤中看出全新契機的時候!

誰說南極不能賣比基尼?誰說餐廳不能賣蟑螂壽司?蘋果電腦的賈伯斯就會告訴你,被開除是他這輩子最棒的一件事,讓他展開人生最富創造力的一段時光!其實不管你是20歲、30歲、40歲甚至50歲,只要願意跳脫人生框架、勇敢嘗試失敗、以健康的心態挑戰所有「不可能」、把握每個大放異彩的機會,就會帶來無窮的可能性!

(摘錄自博客來網路書店)