Xi Jinping, China’s president, is waging war against “historical nihilism”, a peril as arcane-sounding as it is, to his mind, grave
Xi Jinping, China’s president, is waging war against “historical nihilism”, a peril as arcane-sounding as it is, to his mind, grave
"Working class history, even the very best of it, largely ignores working-class landscapes. Studying shantytowns was my way of adding the evidence of the landscape to the historiography of labor, urban history, and material culture."
Li is a maverick, tattooed,
with a sharp tongue and spunky court-side manner. She is also one of
just a few Chinese sports players who have deserted the state system to
go independent — and have blossomed as a result.
Where Inmates Can Do Anything but Leave
By SIMON ROMERO
Carrying assault rifles and sipping whiskey poolside, inmates at Venezuela’s San Antonio prison do their time amid a surreal mix of hedonism and force.
Top-ranked competitive eater and three-time defending champion Joey Chestnut has been dethroned as the winner of the Best in the West Nugget World Rib Eating Championship in Sparks.
排名第一的競食大胃王兼第三度尋求衛冕的喬依．卻斯納，在（內華達州）史巴克斯的「西金塊世界最佳肋排大胃王錦標賽」中，痛失冠軍寶座。張沛元
The Treasury Department, in its boldest move yet, plans to invest up to $250 billion in banks, The New York Times reported. President Bush announced the measure on Tuesday morning after a harrowing week in which confidence in financial markets vanished.
The Lede Blog
Obama and Colbert on Persian New Year
By ROBERT MacKEY
The meaning of Nouruz, the traditional Persian spring celebration, becomes grist for statesman and satirist.
Survivors Tell of Ethnic Killing in Georgia
By SABRINA TAVERNISE Now that the fighting in Georgia has subsided, killings will be grist for competing claims of ethnic cleansing.
the best/pick of the bunch
the best person or thing from a group of similar people or things:
Send in your poems and we'll publish the pick of the bunch.
Books of the year 2007
Pick of the bunch
Dec 6th 2007
From The Economist print edition
History, politics, music, business, biography, memoir, letters and fiction. There is something for everyone in this round-up of the year's best booksFrom The Economist print edition
Illustration by Daniel Pudles
Biography
By Jonathan Carr. Grove Atlantic; 432 pages; $27.50. Faber and Faber; £20
The all-consuming story of the Wagners, their friends, their rivalries and the marvellous music they made while becoming the Sopranos of the opera world.
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By Rosemary Hill. Allen Lane; 416 pages; £30
The tragic life of the Victorian architect who built glorious cathedrals and filled Britain with buildings that look like medieval monasteries.
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By Linda Lear. St Martin's Press; 592 pages; $30. Allen Lane; £25
A spunky, humorous woman who fought conventional Victorian family expectations to lead an independent life as an artist, businesswoman and conservationist.
By Hermione Lee. Knopf; 880 pages; $35. Chatto & Windus; £25
Money, status, marriage and divorce: all became grist to the mill of the turn-of-the-century American writer whom Henry James called “the great generalissima”.
The guilty pleasure I miss most when I’m out slogging on the campaign trail is the chance to sprawl on the chaise and watch a vacuously spunky and generically sassy chick flick.
So imagine my delight, my absolute astonishment, when the hokey chick flick came out on the trail, a Cinderella story so preposterous it’s hard to believe it’s not premiering on Lifetime. Instead of going home and watching “Miss Congeniality” with Sandra Bullock, I get to stay here and watch “Miss Congeniality” with Sarah Palin.
Sheer heaven.
spunk
spʌŋk/
noun
informal
- 1.courage and determination."she's got no spunk, or she'd have left him long ago"
chaise
(shāz)n.
- Any of various light open carriages, often with a collapsible hood, especially a two-wheeled carriage drawn by one horse.
- A post chaise.
- A chaise longue.
[French, chair, variant of Old French chaiere. See chair.]
vacuous
adj.
- Devoid of matter; empty.
- Lacking intelligence; stupid.
- Devoid of substance or meaning; inane: a vacuous comment.
- Devoid of expression; vacant: “The narrow, swinelike eyes were open, no more vacuous in death than they had been in life” (Nicholas Proffitt).
- Lacking serious purpose or occupation; idle. See synonyms at empty.
[From Latin vacuus, empty. See vacuum.]
vacuously vac'u·ous·ly adv.vacuousness vac'u·ous·ness n.
spunky
(spŭng'kē)adj. Informal., -i·er, -i·est.
Spirited; plucky.
spunkily spunk'i·ly adv.
spunkiness spunk'i·ness n.
sassy1
(săs'ē)adj., -si·er, -si·est.
- Rude and disrespectful; impudent.
- Lively and spirited; jaunty.
- Stylish; chic: a sassy little hat.
[Alteration of SAUCY.]
sassily sas'si·ly adv.sassiness sas'si·ness n.
flick1
(flĭk)n.
- A light quick blow, jerk, or touch: a flick of the wrist; gave my horse a flick with the reins.
- The sound accompanying this motion.
- A light splash, dash, or daub.
v., flicked, flick·ing, flicks. v.tr.
- To touch or hit with a light quick blow: flicked him with his hand. See synonyms at brush1.
- To cause to move with a light blow; snap: flicked the light switch on.
- To remove with a light quick blow: flicked the lint off the coat.
To twitch or flutter.
[Imitative.]
flickable flick'a·ble adj.flick2 (flĭk)
n. Slang.
A movie.
[Short for FLICKER1.]
flick Show phonetics
verb [I + adverb or preposition; T]
to move or hit something with a short sudden movement:
He carefully flicked the loose hairs from the shoulders of his jacket.
She quickly flicked the crumbs off the table.
Horses flick their tails to make flies go away.
Windscreen wipers flick from side to side.
The boys ran round the swimming pool, flicking each other with their towels.
The lizard flicked out its tongue at a fly.
His eyes flicked between her and the door.
flick Show phonetics
noun [C]
a sudden, quick movement:
With a flick of its tail, the cat was gone.
go-go1
(gō'gō')Of or relating to discotheques or to the energetic music and dancing performed at discotheques.
[From à GOGO.]
go-go2 (gō'gō')
adj. Informal.
- Marked by assertive action: a go-go sales executive.
- Of, relating to, or engaging in a type of speculative, short-term stock-market operation: a go-go fund.
- Characterized by the fast growth and development that invites speculative investment: go-go industries such as microprocessing and laser technology.
noun
UK AND AUSTRALIAN ENGLISH grist to the mill/US grist for someone's mill anything that can be used to your advantage:
I might as well learn another language, it's all grist to the mill when it comes to getting a job.
-->
━━ n. 製粉用穀物; 穀粉.
All is grist that comes to his mill. 〔ことわざ〕 利用できるものは何でも利用する. bring grist to one's [the] mill もうけになる.
grist・mill 製粉所.n.
- A small, solid lump, especially of gold.
- A small compact portion or unit: nuggets of information.
[Perhaps diminutive of English dialectal nug, lump.]
__
rib：名詞，肋骨，排骨。相關片語，stick to one’s ribs，能夠撐得夠久又能強化身心的食物。例句：I don’t want just a salad! I want something that will stick to my ribs.（我不要只吃沙拉！我要吃能凍卡久的東西。）dethrone：動詞，罷黜，罷免。de-，字頭，去掉；throne，名詞，王位。相關片語，power behind the throne，垂簾聽政、控制表面上的主導者的藏鏡人。例句：President Chandler appeared to run the country, but his wife was the power behind the throne.（錢德勒總統看似是一國之君，但總統夫人其實才是真正發號施令的人。）
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Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice
By Janet Malcolm. Yale University Press; 240 pages; $25 and £16.99
How two elderly Jewish lesbians—Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas—survived the Nazis, by the author of “The Journalist and the Murderer”, “Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession”, and “Inside the Freud Archives”.
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By Tim Jeal. Yale University Press; 608 pages; $38. Faber and Faber; £25
The best and most readable biography of Henry Morton Stanley draws on a wealth of new material. Tim Jeal is also the biographer of Lord Baden Powell, who started the Boy Scouts, and David Livingstone, the most famous Victorian explorer.
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History
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As recently as the late 1990s cigarettes killed more Americans than AIDS, car accidents, alcohol, murder, suicide, illegal drugs and fire. Nevertheless, the industry survived. This is the first full and convincing account of how it did so.
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The birth, rise, triumph, defence and continuing growth of Anglo-American power—or how the much-loathed Anglo-Saxons have (mostly) kept on winning.
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A survey of the agency's failures since its founding in 1947, which concludes that the world's most powerful country has yet to develop a first-rate spy service.
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A riveting narrative, based on letters, diaries and interviews, as well as Israel's rich official archives, that analyses the diplomatic and military background to the six-day war and offers a shrewd insight into the nation's psyche.
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By Judith Herrin. Allen Lane; 416 pages; £20. To be published in America by Princeton University Press in January
A new study which argues that the Byzantines were not just makers of bewitching golden art, but also ran a vibrant, dynamic, cosmopolitan empire whose legacy is still discernible all over south-east Europe and the Levant.
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Charles Esdaile focuses on what made European nations fight each other—for so long and with such devastating results. A grand and panoramic study that reassesses a tumultuous era, looking far beyond the battles and Napoleon's insatiable greed for military glory.
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The Noble Revolt: The Overthrow of Charles I
By John Adamson. Weidenfeld & Nicolson; 576 pages; £25
A radical new look at the coming of the English civil war, itself one of the most fought-over episodes in English history and historiography.______________________________________________
By Ben Wilson. Penguin; 464 pages; $27.95. Published in Britain as “Decency and Disorder”; Faber and Faber; £20
One of Britain's most promising young historians examines how the liberality of the 18th century was transformed into the moralism of the Victorian age.
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Meet the family that was involved in cheesemaking, sword-buying and scandal-mongering—as well as the English civil war, the Great Fire of London and the coronation of William and Mary.
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Scotland: The Autobiography—2,000 Years of Scottish History by Those Who Saw it Happen
By Rosemary Goring. Viking; 512 pages; £25. To be published in America by Overlook in July
From the battlefield to the sports field: the tumultuous story of Scotland as told by those who witnessed it first hand. A surprising collection.
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Politics and current affairs
______________________________________________
Arsenals of Folly: The Making of the Nuclear Arms Race
By Richard Rhodes. Knopf; 400 pages; $28.95. To be published in Britain by Simon & Schuster in February
Despite the uncertainty of whether Iran is developing atomic weapons, the nuclear club has expanded by at least half since the collapse of the Soviet Union. By carefully assembling all the available evidence on the current state of the arms race, Richard Rhodes presents a terrifying overview of the global potential for killing.
______________________________________________
A former professional pilot, turned investigative reporter, William Langewiesche takes the low road from Washington, DC, to Pakistan, Russia, Georgia and Turkey to try to discover just how hard or easy it is to get hold of atomic weapons. A detailed companion to Richard Rhodes's big-picture approach.
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The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court
By Jeffrey Toobin. Doubleday; 384 pages; $27.95
Only an outsider such as Jeffrey Toobin, a staff writer at the New Yorker, could have written such an engaging, erudite, candid and insightful analysis of the work done by the usually highly secretive justices of America's Supreme Court.
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How Capitalism Was Built: The Transformation of Central and Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia
By Anders Aslund. Cambridge University Press; 384 pages; $25.99 and £15.99
A rich and detailed chronicle of the unsteady transition from central planning to market economies, with a particularly good chapter on the rise of the Russian oligarchs and how they differ from the 19th-century American robber barons.
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Using a patient approach, gentle criticism and eclectic examples to draw evidence that supports his argument, Ramachandra Guha, a historian and biographer, offers a clear and detailed narrative explaining how the miracle that is modern India emerged from the colonial chrysalis.
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By Clive Stafford Smith. Nation Books; 336 pages; $25.95. Published in Britain as “Bad Men: Guantánamo Bay and the Secret Prisons”; Orion; £16.99
The best analysis so far of the erosion of civil liberties in America and Britain and the consequences for individuals and society, by the lawyer who has represented more prisoners in Guantánamo than anyone else.
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The Art of Political Murder: Who Killed the Bishop?
By Francisco Goldman. Grove Atlantic; 416 pages; $25. To be published in Britain by Atlantic Books in February
In his first book of non-fiction, Francisco Goldman, a novelist whose mother is Guatemalan, examines a war crime and offers a long-overdue indictment of the criminals who, sanctioned by the regime, contributed to a generation of atrocities.
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Gomorrah: A Personal Journey into the Violent International Empire of Naples' Organized Crime System
By Roberto Saviano. Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 301 pages; $25. To be published in Britain by Macmillan in January
A national bestseller in Italy that traces the decline of Naples as construction, fashion, drugs and the disposal of toxic waste all fell under the systematic control of organised crime.
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Through the Darkness: A Life in Zimbabwe. By Judith Garfield Todd. Struik; 472 pages; $28 and £14.99
A harrowing tale of courage and betrayal by a white heroine of the liberation struggle against Ian Smith who has been punished (and stripped of her citizenship) with extraordinary vengefulness by Robert Mugabe for speaking out about the regime's abuses of power.
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Economics and business
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By William D. Cohan. Doubleday; 742 pages; $29.95
How an investment bank concentrated on providing corporate advice to the rich and powerful—a business model that relied not on its balance sheet but on the brains and wiles of the men toiling away in its famously ratty offices. William Cohan used to work at Lazard's himself.
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By Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Random House; 400 pages; $26.95. Allen Lane; £20
A Wall Street trader turned philosopher on the power of the unexpected.
Illustration by Daniel Pudles
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By Paul Collier. Oxford University Press; 224 pages; $28 and £16.99
Crammed with statistical nuggets and common sense, this book, by an economics professor at Oxford University, should be compulsory reading for anyone embroiled in the thankless business of trying to pull people out of the pit of poverty.
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By Alan Greenspan. Penguin Press; 531 pages; $35 and £25
A memoir-cum-essay by the famously opaque former chairman of the Federal Reserve that provides few surprises, but is an unexpectedly enjoyable read.
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Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything
By Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams. Portfolio; 320 pages; $25.95. Atlantic Books; £16.99
A believers' guide to how the emergence of community on the internet is fundamentally changing business.
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By Rakesh Khurana. Princeton University Press; 542 pages; $35 and £19
A Harvard Business School professor tells the fascinating tale of how management has lost its way.
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By Conor O'Clery. PublicAffairs; 352 pages; $26.95 and £15.99
A rollicking story of how, by stealth, an Irish-American obsessed by secrecy built a business empire and revolutionised philanthropy.
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By Leslie R. Crutchfield and Heather McLeod Grant. Jossey-Bass; 336 pages; $29.95 and £15.99
As the importance of non-profit organisations grows, so does the need for them to be well managed and effective. Cleverly chosen examples show how the best achieve their impact.
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By Ian Ayres. Bantam; 272 pages; $25. John Murray; £16.99
A lively and clear analysis of how the accumulation of large bodies of data is changing the way that businesses (and people) make decisions.
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Fiction and memoirs
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By Michael Chabon. HarperCollins; 432 pages; $26.95. Fourth Estate; £17.99
The state of Israel never existed in Michael Chabon's sixth novel. Instead the Jewish homeland is a 60-year lease on a dodgy bit of Alaska. Life among the frozen Chosen is the setting for a gripping and thought-provoking whodunnit featuring the world's last Jewish settlement. Full of dark humour and Yiddish jokes, it tips its cap to Raymond Chandler and 1940s film noir. The year's funniest novel.
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By Alexis Wright. Giramondo Press; 519 pages; A$29.95. To be published in Britain by Constable & Robinson in March
A sweeping novel that will be published in Britain next year (though not in America) about the unhappy relations between the white majority and indigenous aboriginals, by a notable Australian narrator. A voice to remember.
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By Ian McEwan. Nan A. Talese; 208 pages; $22. Jonathan Cape; £12.99
This coolly written, bestselling account of the lasting effects of a marriage night in the 1950s that turned disastrously wrong has struck a chord, reminding perhaps too many readers of their first sexual experience. The author of “Atonement” has done it again.
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By Sophie Gee. Scribner; 352 pages; $25. Chatto & Windus; £12.99
A young Australian professor of English at Princeton University imagines Alexander Pope, a country poet and a hunchback, coming to London in 1711 to observe the illicit love affair between Arabella Fermor and Robert, Lord Petre. Sophie Gee's handsome and wilful heroes plunge headlong into a whirl of hedonism and heady politics in a rollicking imagined prequel to Pope's most famous poem, “The Rape of the Lock”. A novel of lust and luck.
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Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
By J.K. Rowling. Scholastic; 784 pages; $34.99. Bloomsbury; £17.99
Books written as part of a series that start well almost invariably fall off in quality. Not so the seventh and last HP, the end of the decade's most successful morality tale, which shows J.K. Rowling at the height of her magical imaginative powers.
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The Septembers of Shiraz
By Dalia Sofer. HarperCollins; 352 pages; $24.95. Picador; £14.99
A successful jeweller and gem merchant, patronised by the Tehran aristocracy and the wife of the shah, is arrested by two armed Revolutionary Guards. His wife searches frantically for him, while in prison he asks himself how he can survive. A powerful depiction of a prosperous Jewish family in Iran shortly after the revolution.
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Mr Pip
By Lloyd Jones. Dial Press; 272 pages; $20. John Murray; £12.99
A young girl finds escape through the pages of Charles Dickens's “Great Expectations”, thanks to the efforts of a new teacher who is drafted into the local village school during the 1990 blockade of the Melanesian island of Bougainville. The cadences of Pacific vernacular make spare, moving prose.
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Other Country
By Stephen Scourfield. Allen & Unwin; 228 pages; A$29.95
Set in the Australian Outback and written in a taut poetic style perfectly suited to the hardened characters who inhabit it, “Other Country” is unusual for the language of its landscape. Perfect for those who liked Cormac McCarthy's “All the Pretty Horses”, this novel richly deserves to be published in Britain and America.
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The Ghost
By Robert Harris. Simon & Schuster; 352 pages; $26. Hutchinson; £18.99
A racy political thriller that has earned its high sales in Britain, “The Ghost” is the tangled story of a former British prime minister, a strong supporter of the war in Iraq, and his wife and political adviser. Brilliantly persuasive, right up to the last page of its astonishing and unpredictable conclusion.
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The Uncommon Reader
By Alan Bennett. Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 128 pages; $15. Faber & Faber/Profile Books; £10.99
Witty and urbane, physically tiny and charming, this account of Queen Elizabeth II discovering the work of J.R. Ackerley, Jean Genet, Ivy Compton-Burnett and other writers is a Swiftian tirade against stupidity and philistinism, and a passionate argument for the civilising power of art. A perfect stocking filler.
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Culture and digressions
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By James Attlee. University of Chicago Press; 256 pages; $22.50 and £12
James Attlee's scholarly, reflective and sympathetic journey up Oxford's unloved and unlovable Cowley Road is one of the best travel books written about Britain's oldest university city.
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By Michael Blastland & Andrew Dilnot. Profile Books; 185 pages; £12.99
A reliable guide to a treacherous subject; a book that gives its readers the mental ammunition to make sense of official statistical claims. That this book manages to make them laugh at the same time is a rare and welcome feat.
historiography
ランダムハウス英和大辞典
音節
his • to • ri • og • ra • phy 発音
histɔ`ːriɑ'grəfi|-ɔ'g-
[名詞] (pl. -phies)
1歴史文献，史書；((集合的)) (記録された)史実(histories).
2歴史学方法論，修史論：歴史記述および研究の原則・理論・方法の総体.
3(厳正な吟味による確かな資料を基礎とした)歴史記述，修史，史料編修.
4公の歴史，正史(official history)
medieval historiographies
中世正史. 語源
1569.＜中期フランス語 historiographie＜ギリシャ語 historiographía.→HISTORY，-O-，-GRAPHY
adjective
extremely upsetting because connected with suffering:
a harrowing story
For many women, the harrowing prospect of giving evidence in a rape case can be too much to bear.
harrowed Show phonetics
adjective
looking as if you have suffered:
His face was harrowed.
(hēd'n-ĭz'əm)
n.
- Pursuit of or devotion to pleasure, especially to the pleasures of the senses.
- Philosophy. The ethical doctrine holding that only what is pleasant or has pleasant consequences is intrinsically good.
- Psychology. The doctrine holding that behavior is motivated by the desire for pleasure and the avoidance of pain.
[Greek hēdonē, pleasure + -ISM.]
hedonist he'don·ist n.hedonistic he'don·is'tic adj.
hedonistically he'don·is'ti·cal·ly adv.
- [híːdənìzm]
spunky
Syllabification: (spunk·y)
Pronunciation: /ˈspəNGkē/
Definition of spunky
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