When We Cease to Understand the World

Benjamin Labatut
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SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2021 INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE
A GUARDIAN FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR

When We Cease to Understand the World shows us great minds striking out into dangerous, uncharted terrain.

Fritz Haber, Alexander Grothendieck, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger: these are among the luminaries into whose troubled minds we are thrust as they grapple with the most profound questions of existence. They have strokes of unparalleled genius, they alienate friends and lovers, they descend into isolated states of madness. Some of their discoveries revolutionise our world for the better; others pave the way to chaos and unimaginable suffering. The lines are never clear.

With breakneck pace and wondrous detail, Benjamín Labatut uses the imaginative resources of fiction to break open the stories of scientists and mathematicians who expanded our notions of the possible.

(Excerpt from amazon.com)

親愛的圖書館 (The Library Book)

蘇珊‧歐琳 (Susan Orlean)
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1986年洛杉磯中央圖書館，疑似遭到縱火，100萬本藏書付之一炬，是史上最嚴重的圖書館火災之一，且懸案至今未破。三十多年後，《紐約客》知名記者和《紐約時報》暢銷書作家蘇珊‧歐琳，費時四年，鎖定一名嫌疑者。然而在採訪過一個又一個圖書館員後，她意外收穫更大的發現……我們知道的太少了，真正的靈魂與奧祕就藏在這裡，這是一本前所未見以「圖書館」為主題的圖書館之書。

★《紐約時報》《華盛頓郵報》年度選書
★好萊塢巨星瑞絲‧薇絲朋選書
★國際知名作家伊莉莎白‧吉兒伯特、何偉、戴夫‧艾格斯、艾瑞克‧拉森、大衛‧格雷恩──鄭重推薦

圖書館收藏了無盡的圖書，也收藏了許多不可思議的人和故事。
收藏的舉動等於是向世界宣示，每一則故事統統都重要。

「『大火吞噬不了愛書人的熱情』──這是本書的精髓所在。蘇珊‧歐琳以報導文學的手法，從一場文明浩劫為起點，刻劃愛書人與圖書館交織的情感，新穎而動人，從書中一起讀過去、看現在、想未來，發掘圖書館的祕辛，看愛書人的精神，如何撑起圖書館從立根到茁壯的靭性，令人動容。」──劉仲成，國立公共資訊圖書館館長

「蘇珊‧歐琳寫的東西，我當然是有出必讀──我也鼓勵大家照我的方式讀她，不計主題都讀讀看，因為她每一部作品都文筆精湛出色。話說回來，甚至以蘇珊‧歐琳作品的標準來看，《親愛的圖書館》意境特別優美，更能擴展心靈。本書將聚光燈打在圖書館上，照亮主事者的豪情壯志，各位將不斷聽見書裡的故事多麽重要。這些話全是肺腑之言，但是，讀這本書有更大的一個理由：因為它能讓你從第一頁沉迷到最後一頁。大家千萬不能錯過這一本喔！」──伊莉莎白‧吉兒伯特，《享受吧！一個人的旅行》

(摘錄自博客來網路書店)

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)