Армения и сасанидский Иран. Эдуард Хуршудян

Постоянные почти непрерывающиеся отношения с Ираном - присутствие персидской жизни и персидской цивилизации в Армении - все это дало армянам возможность узнать персов в политическом и нравственном отношениях гораздо лучше, чем это могли сделать другие народы.

«Армения и Сасанидский Иран» представляет собой фундаментальное исследование в области источниковедения. По своей структуре, характеру и объему привлеченных материалов данная работа является чрезвычайно сложным и насыщенным исследованием, вторгающимся одновременно в несколько областей исторического знания – ориенталистику, сравнительное языкознание, нумизматику, хронографию и политическую историю.
Хуршудян предлагает научному сообществу своего рода новую концепцию для интерпретации исторического контекста армяно-иранского культурного и языкового взаимодействия. Она состоит в том, что сасанидский период был одновременно и вершиной, апогеем этого взаимодействия, и в то же время на нем обрывается традиция армяно-иранского культурного синтеза. Свою концепцию автор доказывает на колоссальном историческом материале, который он использует в своей книге. Этот материал включает в себя административные документы Аршакидов, парфянские, греческие и арамейские настенные надписи, стелы, геммы и буллы, памятники сасанидской эпиграфики. Автором проделан широчайший историко-этимологический анализ терминов, должностей и титулов парфянских, сасанидских и аршакидских административных, государственных, правовых и религиозных институтов.
В целом д-р Хуршудян привлек в свой источниковый комплекс древнеармянские, парфянские, среднеперсидские, сирийские, греческие, латинские и арабские источники, что выводит его исследование далеко за рамки первоначальной задачи – показать культурно-языковое армяно-иранское взаимодействие, но позволяет нарисовать широкое историческое полотно языкового и культурного синтеза большего количества культур. - Журнал "Континент"

Print-S Алматы, 2003 г. ISBN 9965-00-743-8

Schumann: Piano works. Piotr Anderszewski (piano)

Gramophone Magazine “Never one to follow a conventional path, Anderszewski makes Schumann entirely his own while at the same time highlighting the composer's essentially schizophrenic nature. Everything is seen through a novel perspective or prism with a rare ability to read between the lines...Virgin's sound captures all of Anderszewski's drama and crystalline brilliance.”

BBC Music Magazine “he combines a superlative pianistic tonal palette with an immensely sophisticated rhythmic vocabulary, a rare capacity to illuminate Schumann's polyphonic textures, and a gift for thematic conversation fit to make most performers, not excepting conductors, look to their laurels...None excels Anderszewski...Bewitchingly compelling.”

International Record Review “the fierce integrity of Anderszewski's musicality combines with his exquisitely refined pianism to make a listening experience that is never less than pleasurable and occasionally revelatory...Anderszewski's transcriptions are skilfully wrought...he approaches [Gesänge der Frühe] with
enormous sincerity and discernment, resulting in performances that are beautifully atmospheric”

BBC Radio 3 Disc of the Week
BBC Music Magazine Recommended
Gramophone Editors Choice

ROSSINI Stabat Mater

Anna Netrebko, Joyce DiDonato, Lawrence Brownlee, Ildebrando D`Arcangelo, Orchestra e Coro dell`Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia

The Times: “The Accademia Chorus is one of the world’s best, and the full, honeyed tone is a constant pleasure. Another of the recording’s rocks is the bass soloist, Ildebrando d’Arcangelo, who never confuses eloquence with shouting and hits his notes dead centre...Brownlee avoids vocal preening and makes sure we can still
sense the text’s grieving mother, sharing Christ’s pain.”

Gramophone Magazine “A precondition for success here is the assembling of a matched quartet of technically accomplished singers blessed with a sense of the Rossini style. Pappano has this absolutely. The pairing of Anna Netrebko and Joyce DiDonato is a match made in heaven...This is one of the great choral recordings.”

Classic FM Magazine “Pappano is alive to nuance and inflection in Rossini's score. He allows Anna Netrebko and Joyce DiDonato ample scope for display but never at subtlety's expense...Imaginatively conceived and beautifully delivered.”

BBC Radio 3 Disc of the Week
BBC Music Magazine Disc of the Month
Gramophone Editors Choice Disc of The Month

To The One by John McLaughlin

With his new album To The One, iconic guitarist, composer and 2010 Grammy Nomineee John McLaughl in look s bac kwards and forwards simultaneously. The six original songs are hauntingly evocative - with roiling rhythmic swells, modal expanses, and telepathic group interaction echoing the profound influence of John Coltrane's 1965 spiritual jazz masterpiece A Love Supreme. The music of To The One was set down in the studio with very few overdubs, by McLaughlin's current performing outfit, the Fourth Dimension: Gary Husband (keyboards, drums), Etienne M'Bappe (electric bass), and Mark Mondesir (drums).

Compositional devices clearly inspired by Coltrane are fused with elements of McLaughlin's own multifaceted approach, all delivered with a group empathy and shared vision that harkens back to Coltrane's fearless mid-'60s quartet of Elvin Jones, McCoy Tyner, and Jimmy Garrison. The effect of Jones' kaleidoscopic approach to rhythm and drumming is especially felt, brilliantly recast and explored via McLaughlin's gift for complex metrical structures

Peter & the Wolf directed by Suzie Templeton

An animated retelling set to Prokofiev's suite. Peter is a slight lad, solitary, locked out of the woods by his protective grandfather, his only friend a duck. In town, he's bullied. When a wolf menaces the duck - as well as grandfather's fat cat and an ill-flying bird that Peter has befriended - Peter bravely tries to tree the wolf. Grandfather, the townspeople, and the hunters who have antagonized Peter figure in the dénouement.

Academy Awards, USA (Oscar) Best Short Film, Animated
Annecy International Animated Film Festival Grand Prix
British Animation Awards
Krok International Animated Films Festival Special Prize
BAFTA Film Award Nominated

The King's Speech directed by Tom Hooper

After the death of his father King George V (Michael Gambon) and the scandalous abdication of King Edward VIII (Guy Pearce), Bertie (Colin Firth) who has suffered from a debilitating speech impediment all his life, is suddenly crowned King George VI of England. With his country on the brink of war and in desperate need of a leader, his wife, Elizabeth (Helena Bonham Carter), the future Queen Mother, arranges for her husband to see an eccentric speech therapist, Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush).

After a rough start, the two delve into an unorthodox course of treatment and eventually form an unbreakable bond. With the support of Logue, his family, his government and Winston Churchill (Timothy Spall), the King will overcome his stammer and deliver a radio-address that inspires his people and unites them in battle.
Based on the true story of King George VI, THE KING'S SPEECH follows the Royal Monarch's quest to find his voice.

21 wins & 80 nominations
Nominated for 12 Oscars.
BAFTA Film Award
British Independent Film Award
Independent Publisher Book Award Gold Medal
ForeWord Magazine 2009 Book of the Year Award

The Art of Not Being Governed. An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia by James Scott

For two thousand years the disparate groups that now reside in Zomia (a mountainous region the size of Europe that consists of portions of seven Asian countries) have fled the projects of the organized state societies that surround them—slavery, conscription, taxes, corvée labor, epidemics, and warfare. This book, essentially an “anarchist history,” is the first-ever examination of the huge literature on state-making whose author evaluates why people would deliberately and reactively remain
stateless. Among the strategies employed by the people of Zomia to remain stateless are physical dispersion in rugged terrain; agricultural practices that enhance mobility; pliable ethnic identities; devotion to prophetic, millenarian leaders; and maintenance of a largely oral culture that allows them to reinvent their histories and genealogies as they move between and around states.

In accessible language, James Scott, recognized worldwide as an eminent authority in Southeast Asian, peasant, and agrarian studies, tells the story of the peoples of Zomia and their unlikely odyssey in search of self-determination. He redefines our views on Asian politics, history, demographics, and even our fundamental ideas about what constitutes civilization, and challenges us with a radically different approach to history that presents events from the perspective of stateless peoples and redefines state-making as a form of “internal colonialism.” This new perspective requires a radical reevaluation of the civilizational narratives of the lowland states. Scott’s work on Zomia represents a new way to think of area studies that will be applicable to other runaway, fugitive, and marooned communities, be they Gypsies, Cossacks, tribes fleeing slave raiders, Marsh Arabs, or San-Bushmen.

Book of the Year, ForeWord Magazine
Fukuoka Asian Academic Prize
John K. Fairbank Book Prize, American Historical Association
Bernard Schwartz Book Award, Asia Society

Paradoxical Life. Meaning, Matter, and the Power of Human Choice by Andreas Wagner

What can a fingernail tell us about the mysteries of creation? In one sense, a nail is merely a hunk of mute matter, yet in another, it’s an information superhighway quite literally at our fingertips. Every moment, streams of molecular signals direct our cells to move, flatten, swell, shrink, divide, or die. Andreas Wagner’s ambitious new book explores this hidden web of unimaginably complex interactions in every living being. In the process, he unveils a host of paradoxes underpinning our
understanding of modern biology, contradictions he considers gatekeepers at the frontiers of knowledge.

Though we tend to think of concepts in such mutually exclusive pairs as mind-matter, self-other, and naturejavascript:void(0)-nurture, Wagner argues that these opposing ideas are not actually separate. Indeed, they are as inextricably connected as the two sides of a coin. Through a tour of modern biological marvels, Wagner illustrates how this paradoxical tension has a profound effect on the way we define the world around us.

Paradoxical Life is thus not only a unique account of modern biology. It ultimately serves a radical—and optimistic—outlook for humans and the world we help create.
Andreas Wagner is a professor in the department of biochemistry at the University of Zurich and an external faculty member at the Santa Fe Institute. Educated at Yale University and at the University of Vienna, Wagner focuses his research on the evolution and evolvability of biological systems. He lives in Zurich.

Independent Publisher Book Award Gold Medal
ForeWord Magazine 2009 Book of the Year Award

Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 1 by Mark Twain

Mark Twain is his own greatest character in this brilliant self-portrait, the first of three volumes collected by the Mark Twain Project on the centenary of the author's death. It is published complete and unexpurgated for the first time. (Twain wanted his more scalding opinions suppressed until long after his death.) Eschewing chronology and organization, Twain simply meanders from observation to anecdote and between past and present. There are gorgeous reminiscences from his youth of landscapes, rural idylls, and Tom Sawyeresque japes; acidetched profiles of friends and enemies, from his "fiendish" Florentine landlady to the fatuous and "grotesque" Rockefellers; a searing polemic on a 1906 American massacre of Filipino insurgents; a hilarious screed against a hapless editor who dared tweak his prose; and countless tales of the author's own bamboozlement, unto bankruptcy, by publishers, business partners, doctors, miscellaneous moochers; he was even outsmarted by a wild turkey. Laced with Twain's unique blend of humor and vitriol, the haphazard narrative is engrossing, hugely funny, and deeply revealing of its author's mind. His is a world where every piety conceals fraud and every arcadia a trace of violence; he relishes the human comedy and reveres true nobility, yet as he tolls the bell for friends and family--most tenderly in an elegy for his daughter Susy, who died in her early 20s of meningitis--he feels that life is a pointless charade. Twain's memoirs are a pointillist masterpiece from which his vision of America--half paradise, half swindle--emerges with indelible force. 66 photos and line illus.

"Dip into the first enormous volume of Twain's autobiography that he had decreed should not appear until 100 years after his death. And Twain will begin to seem strange again, alluring and still astonishing, but less sure-footed, and at times both puzzled and puzzling in ways that still resonate with us, though not the ways we might expect."--New York Times

"Twain generously provides the 21st century aficionado a marvelous read. His crystalline humor and expansive range are a continuous source of delight and awe. . . . [He] has given us 'an astonishment' in his autobiography with his final, beautifully unorganized genius and intemperate thoughts. Pull up a chair and revel."--Los Angeles Times Book Review

The Bible and the People by Lori Anne Ferrell

In the eleventh century, the Bible was available only in expensive and rare hand-copied manuscripts. Today, millions of people from all walks of life seek guidance, inspiration, entertainment, and answers from their own editions of the Bible. This illustrated book tells the story of what happened to the ancient set of writings we call the Bible during those thousand years. Anchoring the story in material evidence—hundreds of different translations and versions of the Bible—Lori Anne Ferrell discusses how the Bible has been endlessly retailored to meet the changing needs of religion, politics, and the reading public while retaining its special status as a sacred text.

Focusing on the English-speaking world, The Bible and the People charts the extraordinary voyage of the Bible from manuscript Bibles to the Gutenberg volumes, Bibles commissioned by kings and queens, the Eliot Indian Bible, salesmen’s door-to-door Bibles, children’s Bibles, Gideon Bibles, teen magazine Bibles, and more. Ferrell discusses the Bible’s profound impact on readers over the centuries, and, in turn, the mark those readers made upon it. Enjoyable and informative, this book takes a fresh look at the fascinating and little-recognized connections among Christian, political, and book history.

"This unusual and very readable book offers an insight into the reception of the Bible by ordinary people at different times in history. Full of historical gems, this is a fascinating account of the world's most read (and owned), but least understood, book."—Christopher Rowland, University of Oxford

"In this . . . engaging text, Ferrell tours the history of the Bible as it has been copied, translated, annotated, dressed up and every which way adapted to changing times for English-speaking readers. . . . Ferrell rightly recognized this text's crucial place in the evolution of Anglo-American Christianity and in the heart of Christians."—Publishers Weekly

Adam Smith. An Enlightened Life by Nicholas Phillipson

Adam Smith (1723–90) is celebrated all over the world as the author of The Wealth of Nations and the founder of modern economics. A few of his ideas--that of the “invisible hand” of the market and that “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest” have become iconic. Yet Smith saw himself primarily as a philosopher rather than an economist and would never have predicted that the ideas for which he is now best known were his most important. This book shows the extent to which The Wealth of Nations and Smith’s other great work, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, were part of a larger scheme to establish a grand “Science of Man,” one of the most ambitious projects of the European Enlightenment, which was to encompass law, history, and aesthetics as well as economics and ethics, and which was only half complete on Smith’s death in 1790.

Nick Phillipson reconstructs Smith’s intellectual ancestry and shows what Smith took from, and what he gave to, in the rapidly changing intellectual and commercial cultures of Glasgow and Edinburgh as they entered the great years of the Scottish Enlightenment. Above all he explains how far Smith’s ideas developed in dialogue with those of his closest friend, the other titan of the age, David Hume.

Nick Phillipson is one of the leading scholars of the Scottish Enlightenment. An Honorary Research Fellow in History at the University of Edinburgh, he has held visiting appointments at Princeton, Yale, the Folger Library, and the Ludwigs-Maximillian Universitat. An associate editor on the New Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and a founding editor of the journal Modern Intellectual History, he was codirector of the Science of Man in Scotland project and past president of the Eighteenth-Century Scottish Studies Society.

Favorite Business Book of the Year, James Pressley, Bloomberg BusinessWeek
Best Book of 2010, The Atlantic
Critics' Favorite Book of 2010, The New Yorker
Best Business Book of 2010, Tyler Cowen, NPR's "Marketplace"

How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer by Sarah Bakewell

In a wide-ranging intellectual career, Michel de Montaigne found no knowledge so hard to acquire as the knowledge of how to live this life well. By casting her biography of the writer as 20 chapters, each focused on a different answer to the question How to live? Bakewell limns Montaigne’s ceaseless pursuit of this most elusive knowledge.

Embedded in the 20 life-knowledge responses, readers will find essential facts—when and where Montaigne was born, how and whom he married, how he became mayor of Bordeaux, how he managed a public life in a time of lethal religious and political passions. But Bakewell keeps the focus on the inner evolution of the acute mind informing Montaigne’s charmingly digressive and tolerantly skeptical essays.

Flexible and curious, this was a mind at home contemplating the morality of cannibals, the meaning of his own near-death experience, and the puzzlingly human behavior of animals. And though Montaigne has identified his own personality as his overarching topic, Bakewell marvels at the way Montaigne’s prose has enchanted diverse readers—Hazlitt and Sterne, Woolf and Gide—with their own reflections. Because Montaigne’s capacious mirror still captivates many, this insightful life study will win high praise from both scholars and general readers. -- Booklist

“This charming biography shuffles incidents from Montaigne’s life and essays into twenty thematic chapters…Bakewell clearly relishes the anthropological anecdotes that enliven Montaigne’s work, but she handles equally well both his philosophical influences and the readers and interpreters who have guided the reception of the essays.”—The New Yorker

Inside Job. Directed by Charles Ferguson

Inside Job provides a comprehensive analysis of the global financial crisis of 2008, which at a cost over $20 trillion, caused millions of people to lose their jobs and homes in the worst recession since the Great Depression, and nearly resulted in a global financial collapse. Through exhaustive research and extensive interviews with key financial insiders, politicians, journalists, and academics, the film traces the rise of a rogue industry which has corrupted politics, regulation, and academia. It was made on location in the United States, Iceland, England, France, Singapore, and China.

Academy Awards, Oscar. Nominated
Gotham Awards, Best Documentary. Nominated
Satellite Awards Best Motion Picture, Documentary. Nominated

Countdown to Zero. Directed by Lucy Walker

Countdown to Zero traces the history of the atomic bomb from its origins to the present state of global affairs: nine nations possessing nuclear weapons capabilities with others racing to join them, leaving the world held in a delicate balance that could be shattered by an act of terrorism, failed diplomacy, or a simple accident. The film makes a compelling case for worldwide nuclear disarmament; an issue more topical than ever with the Obama administration working to revive this goal in the present day.

With a rigorous eye, Blindsight's Lucy Walker examines the arms race from the inception of the atomic bomb to the present. She builds her three-part structure around a speech from President Kennedy, in which he warns of "accident, miscalculation, and madness" in regard to nuclear power. If Kennedy serves as the film's conscience, physicist Robert Oppenheimer serves as its heart--the man who oversaw the Manhattan Project only to regret the death and destruction it would engender (footage of the pale-eyed Oppenheimer is almost as eerie as his prophetic words). Even Oppenheimer, though, couldn't have predicted the ready availability of highly enriched uranium in the years after the Cold War, one of Walker's more hilling revelations. Aside from the deadly explosions in Oklahoma City, Madrid, and other urban centers, Walker looks at a number of near misses. Her speakers include
top minds from the fields of academia, government, and journalism, from Russia's Mikhail Gorbachev to Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf (former CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson serves as de facto narrator). As Kennedy concluded, "The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us," and Walker ends on a note of guarded optimism,
speaking with F. W. de Klerk, who dismantled South Africa's nuclear infrastructure during his administration. Most of Walker's other subjects, regardless of their political affiliation, agree that it's the right thing to do.

Satellite Awards Best Motion Picture, Documentary. Nominated

The Nature of Existence. Directed by Roger Nygard

Roger Nygard has taken his open-minded attitude and aptitude for locating incredible/insane people, and applied it to answering the big question: Why do we exist? By locating beliefs in their geographical origins the link between culture and faith is exposed, and the beauty of the landscape and architecture is just as compelling as the views expressed in them. --Fiona Scoble, Festival Daily, Cambridge Film Festival, England

“The film is really mostly about the foibles of religion, but gently so. It benefits from director Roger Nygard’s (“Trekkies”) light comic touch and heartfelt “desire to communicate truth,” as one subject says is often lacking in discussions of religious beliefs.” Michael Ordoña, Los Angeles Times

“The film treads ground covered in films like Diane Keaton’s ‘Heaven’ and James Toback’s ‘Big Bang’ … [The Nature of Existence] is quicker, funnier and less pretentious.” Mike Hale, The New York Times

“The Nature of Existence, is not so much an inquiry into the nature of religion and the eternal, but a tossed salad of all the world’s ideas about religion.” Peter Simek, D Magazine

Bartók: Piano Concertos Nos. 1, 2 & 3 (complete)

This is the first concerto recording by Jean-Efflam Bavouzet for Chandos. Following the tremendous success of his complete Debussy piano music edition (‘This could well be the finest and most challenging of all Debussy piano cycles’ – Bryce Morrison, Gramophone) – which scooped awards from both Gramophone and BBC Music – and the launch of his ambitious Haydn Piano Sonatas series, the pianist now turns his attention to
some of the mightiest concertos of the twentieth century.

International Piano Choice
Gramophone Editors Choice
The Independent Album of the Week
BBC Music Magazine Orchestral Choice
BBC Music Magazine Awards 2011 Orchestral Finalist

Chandos, 10610

Poul Ruders. Four Dances

Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, Oliver Knussen, conductor

On this disc three of Ruders’s pivotal chamber works are in the hands of one of Europe's leading new music ensembles Birmingham Contemporary Music Group. Four Dances in One Movement (1983) is an emotional sequence of four pure musical characters. Abysm (2000), which Ruders has written for BCMG, and Nightshade (1987) are two modern tone poems rooted in both dark and moving sound worlds.

BIRMINGHAM CONTEMPORARY MUSIC GROUP (BCMG) was formed in 1987 by musicians from the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Simon Rattle, the Group’s Founding Patron. BCMG is one of Europe’s
leading ensembles and has won many awards for its work in attracting new audiences for contemporary music.

OLIVER KNUSSEN is one of the most respected figures in British contemporary music. He is in international demand as an illuminating interpretation of twentieth century music, and he appears regularly with the major orchestras of the world. He was made a CBE in 1994 and is Conductor Laureate of the London Sinfonietta.

American Record Guide - "I have been listening to this constantly for over a month...The playing is spectacular"

BBC Music Magazine, 5 Stars - “Performances are as accurate and committed as you would expect from the BCMG and Knussen, with recorded sound that gives the textures clarity and depth”

The Guardian - "This is a bracing, sensuous ear-opener."

BBC Music Magazine Awards 2011 Chamber Finalist

Dacapo: 8226028

QUANTUM: EINSTEIN, BOHR, AND THE GREAT DEBATE ABOUT THE NATURE OF REALITY by Manjit Kumar

Quantum theory is weird. As Niels Bohr said, if you weren’t shocked by quantum theory, you didn’t really understand it. For most people, quantum theory is synonymous with mysterious, impenetrable science. And in fact for many years it was equally baffling for scientists themselves. In this tour de force of science history, Manjit Kumar gives a dramatic and superbly written account of this fundamental scientific revolution, focusing on the central conflict between Einstein and Bohr over the nature of reality and the soul of science.

This revelatory book takes a close look at the golden age of physics, the brilliant young minds at its core—and how an idea ignited the greatest intellectual debate of the twentieth century.

As a fairly innumerate non-scientist, I am perversely drawn to books about maths and science and usually abandon them with ignorance intact. However, Quantum by Manjit Kumar … is so well written that I now feel I’ve more or less got particle physics sussed. Quantum transcends genre—it is historical, scientific, biographical, philosophical. The Guardian

Kumar is an accomplished writer who knows how to separate the excitement of the chase from the sometimes impenetrable mathematics. Financial Times

Lively....a wide-ranging account, written for readers who are curious about the theory but what to sidestep its mathematical complexities....fascinating. The New York Times Book Review

DENG XIAOPING AND THE MAKING OF MODERN CHINA by Richard Evans

Evans, a former British ambassador to China, has penned a noteworthy biography of the most significant Chinese political leader of the post-Mao era. Since Deng Xiaoping's life literally parallels the course of modern Chinese history, this chronicle also provides a blueprint for comprehending the often arcane complexities of twentieth-century China. One of the original members of Mao's revolutionary cadre, Deng tenaciously survived civil strife, the Japanese invasion, the legendary Long March, and the purges of the Cultural Revolution, emerging as the preeminent national leader after the death of Mao. Renowned as the architect of contemporary China's amazingly successful economic development program, Deng is also credited with reintroducing a radically refashioned China into the eager embrace of the international community. Highly recommended for Asian studies collections. Booklist

ДЭН СЯОПИН И ЕГО ВРЕМЯ. В. Н. Усов

Книга известного российского китаиста-историка В.Н.Усова "Дэн Сяопин и
его время" является первым, самым полным и объективным в России
оригинальным исследованием биографии видного китайского революционера
и выдающегося политического деятеля. На богатом фактическом материале,
часто неизвестном широкому кругу читателей, включая новые архивные
источники и литературу, в книге подробно рассказывается о жизни и
деятельности китайского архитектора реформ на фоне эпохи и трагических
перемен происходящих как в его судьбе, так и в жизни страны. Со
страниц книги Дэн Сяопин предстает не только умным и умелым политиком,
но и живым человеком, со всеми его достоинствами и недостатками.

ОСНОВНЫЕ ВОПРОСЫ СОВРЕМЕННОГО КИТАЯ. Дэн Сяопин

Во вступительной речи на XII съезде КПК Дэн Сяопин указал на необходимость "сочетать всеобщую истину марксизма с конкретной реальностью страны, идти собственным путем и строить социализм с китайской спецификой...". К этой же теме он неоднократно возвращался и в последующие годы, говоря о коренных задачах в период строительства
социализма, о формировании социалистической духовной культуры, о реформе хозяйственной системы и политической структуры, внешней политике КНР, об идее "одно государство - два строя" и других проблемах.

В настоящем сборнике сфокусированы основные взгляды автора относительно строительства социализма с китайской спецификой. Красной нитью проходит мысль, что, твердо придерживаясь четырех основных принципов социализма, надо решительно выступать против буржуазной идеологии. В экономике же неуклонно проводить курс на реформу и расширение внешних сношений. Как указывает автор, четыре модернизации,
которые сейчас осуществляются в Китае,- это социалистические модернизации. Они включают не только реформу хозяйственной системы, но и перестройку политической- структуры.

АПОЛОГИЯ МАТЕМАТИКИ. Владимир Успенский

Премия «Просветитель» 2010

В этот сборник вошли статьи разных лет российского математика и лингвиста Владимира Андреевича Успенского, ученика великого Колмогорова, существенно переработанные и дополненные. Очерчивая место математики в современной культуре, автор пытается прояснить для читателей-нематематиков некоторые основные понятия и проблемы "царицы наук".

Успенский транслирует несколько важных мыслей: что математика — не просто набор формул, а часть духовной культуры, что «математические идеи способны вызывать эмоции, сравнимые с теми, что вызывают литературные произведения, музыка, архитектура», что математика существует не только для пользы, но и для красоты, что у математики есть этический аспект и что математика «позволяет осмыслить те свойства, которые открыты другими науками. Более того, она позволяет сделать более понятными некоторые такие свойства, какие трудно себе представить, она объясняет, как такое может быть» (например, конечность Вселенной). Вдолбить все это в головы тех, кого в школе тошнило от математики, непросто, поэтому Успенский пользует­ся всеми
средствами из арсенала профессионального популяризатора: пишет от «я», апеллирует к собственному опыту, объясняет теоремы, не упуская курьезные моменты из биографии математиков, смакует не только факты, но и заблуждения, и когда ему приходится выбирать между точностью и понятностью, отдает предпочтение последней.

Это чрезвычайно концентрирован­ная книга, в которой помимо общих ­рассуждений о природе математики ­об­наруживается нечто вроде повторения школьного курса — но как бы «для взрослых», с примерами из литературы, ­фи­лософии и повседневной жизни. Здесь есть отдельные главы о теореме Пифагора и теореме Ферма, краткий очерк геометрии
Лобачевского и основ топологии, ­емкие замечания о проблеме пресловутой «квадратуры круга», а также достаточно подробное разъяснение того, ­какую именно «проблему на миллион ­долларов» решил математик Григорий Перельман. Вообще, история математи­ки — некоторым образом конек Успенского: он травит байки о «ферматистах», рассказывает анекдоты об академике Колмогорове и позволяет себе несколь­ко кратких экскурсов в историю советской математики, иногда мемуарного ­характера. - Афиша

SUPREME POWER: FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT VS. THE SUPREME COURT. Jeff Shesol

Supreme Power is an extraordinary book that rings with relevance for our time. One of the most eloquent historians of his generation, Jeff Shesol has a deep understanding of the presidency, and the interplay of politics, personalities, and principles, all of which he brings to life in this rich, remarkable book. Full of surprises and new insights—each rendered in clear and confident prose – this book is
about more than FDR’s plan to pack the Court. It’s about America’s enduring struggle to reconcile our founders’ ideals with conflicting challenges in our constant pursuit to build a more perfect union. (President Bill Clinton )

Once in a generation a groundbreaking book comes along to provide a major reinterpretation of a familiar historical event. Shesol tells the story of FDR's court packing plan as it has never been told before. This is a stunning work of history. (Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of No Ordinary Time and Team of Rivals)

With insight and more than occasional humor, Shesol covers all aspects of the controversy, deftly explaining the issues at stake in a variety of legal opinions and shrewdly analyzing the intra-Court dynamics. (Kirkus Reviews)

Supreme Power is by far the most detailed—and most riveting—account of this extraordinary event.... an impressive and engaging book—an excellent work of narrative history. It is deeply researched and beautifully written. (The New York Times Book Review)

ЛЕВ ТОЛСТОЙ. БЕГСТВО ИЗ РАЯ. Павел Басинский

Премия «Большая книга» 2010

Ровно 100 лет назад в Ясной Поляне произошло событие, которое потрясло весь мир. Восьмидесятидвухлетний писатель граф Л.Н.Толстой ночью, тайно бежал из своего дома в неизвестном направлении. С тех пор обстоятельства ухода и смерти великого старца породили множество мифов и легенд... Известный писатель и журналист Павел Басинский на основании строго документального материала, в том числе архивного, предлагает не свою версию этого события, а его живую реконструкцию. Шаг за шагом вы можете проследить всю жизнь и уход Льва Толстого, разобраться в причинах его семейной драмы и тайнах подписания им духовного завещания.

У ревизиониста Басинского получилась крайне удачная, отвечающая самым высоким критериям научно-популярной литературы компиляция сведений из источников — компиляция, которая переросла в оригинальный текст. Это детальная хроника жизни Толстого, исследованная со всех возможных сторон. Не только история эксцентричного умирания — но полноценная биография, рассказанная через сюжет об уходе, с подробными флешбэками. Ревизия отношений Толстого и церкви. Люди, населявшие дом Толстых, приживалы и частые гости. Социальная сеть, внутри которой жил поздний Толстой. Финансовая сторона жизни. История брака. Экономика Ясной Поляны. Был ли уход сложной формой самоубийства? Был ли Толстой «женофобом»? Был ли Толстой латентным гомосексуалистом? Что произошло с толстовским завещанием? У автора хорошее «чувство Толстого», его толкования текстов глубоки и вызывают доверие; у него есть вкус на
курье­зы, он проявляет интерес не только к тому, что то или иное событие значило, но и к бытовой стороне, в частности, к «логистике» странного похода. Соблюдая баланс «изнанки» и лицевой стороны, Басинский не злоупотребляет первым — и не стесняется показывать вторую. Он уверен, что — несмотря на общераспространенное мнение,
будто «Толстой ушел, чтобы умереть со своим народом», — Толстой ушел не чтобы умереть, а чтобы НЕ умереть. Несмотря на масштабы фигуры своего героя — «русский Будда», — автор имеет смелость не только следовать за ним, но и рассуждать о нем критически, не стесняясь называть вещи своими именами. - Афиша

CLAUDE LÉVI-STRAUSS. THE POET IN HIS LABORATORY By Patrick Wilcken

NYT book of the Times

The definitive account of the life, work, and legacy of Claude Lévi-Strauss, father of modern anthropology and one of the postwar era's most influential thinkers. When Claude Lévi-Strauss passed away last October at age 100, France celebrated the life and contributions of not only a preeminent anthropologist, but also one of the defining intellectuals of the twentieth century. Just as Freud had shaken up the antiquarian discipline of psychiatry, so had Lévi-Strauss revolutionized anthropology, transforming it from the colonial era study of "exotic" tribes to one consumed with fundamental questions about the nature of humanity and civilization itself.

Remarkably, there has never been a biography in English of the enigmatic Claude Lévi-Strauss. Drawing on a welter of original research and interviews with the anthropologist, Patrick Wilcken's Claude Lévi-Strauss fills this void. In rich detail, Wilcken re-creates Lévi-Strauss's peripatetic life: his groundbreaking fieldwork in some of the remotest reaches of the Amazon in the 1930s; his years as a Jew in Nazi- occupied France and as an émigré in wartime New York; and his return to Paris in the late 1940s, where he clashed with Jean-Paul Sartre and fundamentally influenced fellow postwar thinkers from Jacques Lacan to Michel Foucault and Roland
Barthes. It was in France that structuralism, the school of thought he founded, first took hold, creating waves far beyond the field of anthropology. In his heyday, Lévi-Strauss was both a hero to contemporary intellectuals and an international celebrity.

In Claude Lévi-Strauss, Wilcken gives the reader a fascinating intellectual tour of the anthropologist's landmark works: Tristes Tropiques, a literary meditation on his travels and fieldwork; The Savage Mind, which showed that "primitive" people are driven by the same intellectual curiosities as their Western counterparts; and
finally his monumental four-volume Mythologiques, a study of the universal structures of native mythology in the Americas. In the years that Lévi-Strauss published these pioneering works, Wilcken observes, tribal societies seemed to hold the answers to the most profound questions about the human mind. Following the great anthropologist from São Paulo to the Brazilian interior, and from New York to Paris,
Patrick Wilcken's Claude Lévi- Strauss is both an evocative journey and an intellectual biography of one of the twentieth-century's most influential minds.

PERON: A BIOGRAPHY. Joseph A. Page

Latin America has produced no more remarkable or enduring political figure than Juan Peron. Born to modest circumstances in 1895 and trained in the military, he rose to power during a period of political uncertainty in Argentina. A shrewd opportunist who understood the needs and aspirations of the country's workers, Peron rode their votes to the presidency and then increased their share of the nation's wealth. But he also destroyed the independence of their unions and suppressed dissent. Ousted in a coup in 1955, he wandered about Latin America and finally settled in Spain, where he masterminded an astonishing political comeback that climaxed in his reelection as
president in 1973.

Joseph Page's engrossing biography is based upon interviews on 3 continents, never-before inspected Argentine and U.S. government documents and exhaustive research, Page's book spans Peron's formative years; his arrest and dramatic rescue by the 'descamisados' (workers) in 1945; his relationship with the now-mythic Evita; the violence and mysterious murders that punctuated his career; his tragic legacy,
personified by his third wife, Isabel, who assumed the presidency after his death under the influence of a Rasputin-like astrologer; and the continuing appeal of Peronism in Argentina. Page's study of Argentine-American relations is particularly penetrating, esp. in its description of the struggle between Peron and U.S. ambassador Spruille Braden.

Random House; 1st edition (July 12, 1983)
ISBN-13: 978-0394522975

BEING WRONG: ADVENTURES IN THE MARGIN OF ERROR by Kathryn Schulz

In the spirit of Blink and Predictably Irrational (but with a large helping of erudition), journalist Schulz casts a fresh and irreverent eye upon the profound meanings behind our most ordinary behaviors—in this instance, how we make mistakes, how we behave when we find we have been wrong, and how our errors change us. [I]t is ultimately wrongness, not rightness, that can teach us who we are, she asserts.

Schulz writes with such lucidity and wit that her philosophical enquiry becomes a page-turner. She deftly incorporates Wittgenstein, Descartes, and Freud, along with an array of contemporary social scientists and even a spin with Shakespeare and Keats. There's heavy stuff here, but no heavy-handedness. Being wrong encompasses the
cataclysmic (economic collapse) and the commonplace (leaving a laptop in front of the window before the storm). Being wrong may lead to fun (playing with and understanding optical illusions) or futility (the Millerite expectation of the Rapture in 1844). Being wrong can be transformative, and Schultz writes, I encourage us to see error as a gift in itself, a rich and irreplaceable source of humor, art,
illumination, individuality, and change—an apt description of her engrossing study. Publishers Weekly

“A funny and philosophical meditation on why error is mostly a humane, courageous and extremely desirable human trait. [Schulz] flies high in the intellectual skies, leaving beautiful sunlit contrails....It’s lovely to watch this idea warm in Ms. Schulz’s hands.” New York Times

Guardian first book award longlist

TROTSKY: A BIOGRAPHY by Robert Service

Robert Service completes his masterful trilogy on the founding figures of the Soviet Union in an eagerly anticipated, authoritative biography of Leon Trotsky.

Trotsky is perhaps the most intriguing and, given his prominence, the most understudied of the Soviet revolutionaries. Using new archival sources including family letters, party and military correspondence, confidential speeches, and medical records, Service offers new insights into Trotsky. He discusses Trotsky’s fractious relations with the leaders he was trying to bring into a unified party before 1914; his attempt to disguise his political closeness to Stalin; and his
role in the early 1920s as the progenitor of political and cultural Stalinism.

Trotsky evinced a surprisingly glacial and schematic approach to making revolution. Service recounts Trotsky’s role in the botched German revolution of 1923; his willingness to subject Europe to a Red Army invasion in the 1920s; and his assumption that peasants could easily be pushed onto collective farms. Service also sheds light on Trotsky’s character and personality: his difficulties with his
Jewish background, the development of his oratorical skills and his preference for writing over politicking, his inept handling of political factions and coldness toward associates, and his aversion to assuming personal power.

Although Trotsky’s followers clung to the stubborn view of him as a pure revolutionary and a powerful intellect unjustly hounded into exile by Stalin, the reality is very different. This illuminating portrait of the man and his legacy sets the record straight.

A New Yorker Reviewers’ Favorite Nonfiction Book of 2009
An Independent Best History Book of 2009

STALIN: A BIOGRAPHY. by Robert Service

Here is a life-and-times biography in the grand style: deeply researched, well written, brimming with interpretations. Oxford historian Service, author of an acclaimed biography of Lenin, provides the most complete portrait available of the Soviet ruler, from his early, troubled years in a small town in Georgia to the pinnacle of power in the Kremlin. Most previous biographers have depicted Stalin
as a plodding figure whose only distinguishing characteristic was brutality. But Service describes a man who was intelligent and hardworking, who learned from experience and who played an important role in the Russian revolutionary movement. On so many of the complex issues of Soviet history—including Stalin's rise to power within the Communist Party, the policy shift to forced collectivization, the
Great Terror and the prosecution of the war against Nazi Germany—Service provides lucid accounts based on his own research and the most recent scholarship. Stalin was the key figure behind every major development from the mid-1920s onward. He based his policy decisions on his understanding of Marxism-Leninism and on a hardheaded, realistic assessment of his own often uneasy position and of the Soviet Union's relatively weak standing in the world. By providing such a rich and complex portrait of the dictator and the Soviet system, Service humanizes Stalin without ever diminishing the extent of the atrocities he unleashed upon the Soviet population. 47
b&w photos, 4 maps. Publishers Weekly

LENIN: A BIOGRAPHY by Robert Service

The wonder of this particular account is that Service succeeds in explaining how Lenin came to [his] determined confidence and the complex and ultimately tragic circumstances that led to the triumph of his ambitions...The most significant contribution of this book is the wealth of personal information that makes Lenin a far more accessible, if not appealing, individual...Such details make Lenin all the more human and so all the more vivid and frightening...Service never allows his narrative to slip into sentimentality or forgets whom he is dealing with. Wall Street Journal

The most authoritative and well-rounded biography of Lenin yet written--and the one that is, in its quiet way, the most horrifying. Oxford historian Service (A History of Twentieth Century Russia) makes good use of Party and Presidential archives that were previously closed to historians. The portrait that emerges therefore has many
elements that were either altogether unknown or have only recently emerged...An important study that goes far in tracing the roots of the dire legacy Communism bequeathed to the third of mankind unfortunate enough to have suffered its rule. Kirkus Reviews

A comprehensive and intimate biography of the Russian revolutionary. Washington Post