After nominating 50 candidate books, the 12 editors of the Thought News Center voted the top ten books of 2021 (five for Chinese and foreign authors) after two rounds of voting. The results are as follows, and the sorting is sorted in reverse order from the number of votes received from the smallest to the most. For this selection result, we once again declare that it only represents the reading preferences of the editors of this department, and the scope of the selection is mainly based on the social sciences and humanities categories published this year.
"Foreign Affairs and Relief Affairs: Forty Years of the Late Qing Dynasty"
Zhu Hu/Author, Chinese Min University Press, August 2021 edition
Testimonials:
Sheng Xuanhuai was an important figure in the official and business circles of modern China. For a long time, the attention paid to him was focused on the "foreign affairs" of industry and ignored the "relief services" of social relief. Professor Zhu Hu's book "Foreign Affairs and Relief Affairs - Forty Years of Sheng Xuanhuai's Late Qing Dynasty" uses the huge "Sheng Xuanhuai Archives" to use the interaction between "relief affairs" and "foreign affairs" as a clue to explore the following questions: "How has the social changes in modern China created a situation and conditions, so that Sheng Xuanhuai, an ordinary person born from an ordinary gentry, can actually become a character who once controlled the lifeline of the country's new economy and then withdrew completely under the impact of the revolutionary tide." (Zheng Shiliang)
"The Sages in the Township: Yan Yuan and the Transformation of Ming and Qing Thought"
Wang Dongjie/Author, Nanjing University Press, September 2021
When it comes to the intellectual history of the late Ming and early Ming dynasties, the most eye-catching is often Gu Yanwu, Huang Zongxi, Wang Fuzhi and other thinkers. Yan Yuan, who was the same era as them, as a "saint in the township", became a relevant researcher who "has to talk about everyone, but he is not very good at speaking." In "Sages in the Township: Yan Yuan and the Ideological Transformation of the Ming and Qing Dynasties", Professor Wang Dongjie uses theories such as "psychological historiography" and "embodied cognition" to find another way and re-examine Yan Yuan. Reading this book will help us get out of the "misreading" of Liang Qichao, Liu Shipei, Hu Shi, Hou Wailu and other scholars who are far away from Yan Yuan's own problem vision, saying that he is too "modern" and too "clever", and returnIng Yan Yuan to Yan Yuan. (Zheng Shiliang)
Through the Wall: A World of Thought for Individual Investors
Wu Xiaoqun/Author, Shanghai Sanlian Bookstore, January 2021 edition
Wu Xiaoqun writes at the beginning of "Through the Wall: The Thought World of an Individual Investor":
In my understanding, for historians, the significance of their study and observation may lie in the fact that, as the French historian Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges put it: "History is not only the study of events and institutions, its real object of study should be the human mind; history should be to understand what is thought, believed, and felt in the human mind at different times." ”
Herodotus once saw himself as a storyteller, and I have always believed that history itself is a science of storytelling. A historian once said: "The meaning of a story in the study of history may be embodied in the story itself, or it may be far beyond the meaning of the story itself... The question of historiography should be essentially a question of meaning. It is the search for meaning itself that makes us choose these facts, and it is meaning that gives life to the story. ”
However, unlike telling the story of the past, what I want to tell now is a story that is still in progress.
This book has appeared twice in our "Book List". In today's era when "knowledge" is transformed into "information" and "information" fully interferes with "knowledge", we try to read such a book that is neither serious enough nor completely casual, perhaps in addition to reading this "story that is still in progress", but also an opportunity to review the so-called "knowledge" or the so-called "world of thought". (Han Shaohua)
Cheese and Maggots: A 16th-Century Miller's Universe
【Italian】 Carlo Günzburg/ by Rui/Translation, Guangxi Normal University Press, Republic of China, July 2021 edition
45 years after the first publication of Cheese and Maggots, the Chinese translation launched by Guangxi Normal University Press this year can be described as "a thousand calls to come out", which has long been expected by readers. For historians and researchers, as a masterpiece of microhistory, the importance of "Cheese and Maggots" is self-evident, and those who have not read it will probably add this book to their shopping carts. Even without considering the classic significance of the book in academic circles, the era in which Menocchio lived, his spiritual world and his trial, the "universe" of this little man in Günzburg's pen also fascinated the reader. (Yu Shujuan)
"A Knife, a Thousand Words"
Wang Anyi/Author, People's Literature Publishing House, April 2021 edition
First of all, I would like to express my admiration for Mr. Wang Anyi's continuous and uninterrupted creative power. This year's new work, which should be regarded as a masterpiece since "Long Hate Song", continues her previous writing theme: the times and the fate of the characters. The novel is divided into two parts, and an epilogue, the protagonist is Huaiyang cuisine chef Chen Cheng, the upper part is his present life, from the northeast birth to Shanghai to settle in Flushing, New York; the lower part is Chen Cheng's past life, telling his mother's life, and the fate of the whole family. A knife is a profession, a thousand words is life. Wang Anyi's diet men and women are not only concerned with the emotional relationship of a family, but also an era and a period of history. The novel spans a large time and space span, and Wang Anyi also pays attention to the group of overseas Chinese immigrants. Reading some of Wang An's past long stories, there will be a feeling that the language is too serious and thick, but in this new work, it becomes dense and rhythmic, full of charm. All in all, very good-looking. (Gu Ming)
Hidden Valley Road: The Despair and Hope of a Schizophrenic Family
【Beauty】 Robert Cork / By Huang Qi / Translation, CITIC Publishing Group, Synopsys Culture, October 2021 edition
In 1937, Mimi, a 13-year-old girl from an upper-class family in Texas, met Dorne, who was 10 months older than her, at a swimming competition, and 7 years later, the two married lightning on the eve of Dorne's trip to the Battlefield of The Great Plains, giving birth to 10 boys and two girls for the next 20 years. This family epic begins with a romantic romance, and as they move to Colorado in the early 1950s with a majestic western color, they end up in endless darkness as 6 boys in the family are diagnosed with schizophrenia... But there is still light coming in, in addition to the never-ending love and eventual reconciliation between the family, a family that has struggled for decades in chaos and pain, witnessed the different treatments for schizophrenia in several eras, and also contributed as a rare genetic sample to solve the mystery of the disease.
Today's medical view is that schizophrenia is the result of a combination of inherited susceptibility qualities and undesirable experiences in an individual's growth, but most people know very little about the disease, and ignorance brings fear. The story of Mimi and the Dorne family gives us a chance to see "madness" and thus better understand the human fabric. (Zhu Fan)
The Art of Domination and Resistance: The Hidden Script
【Beauty】James C. Scott / By Wang Jiapeng / Translation, Nanjing University Press, Sanhui Books, April 2021 edition
In the book Domination and the Art of Resistance: The Hidden Script, author James W. Bush C. Scott believes that hidden scripts have three major characteristics: First, hidden scripts are often aimed at a specific social place and a specific type of actor... Second, it is not limited to verbal action, but also includes various practices in the whole range; this is the most important aspect of the hidden script, but it is not given enough attention... Finally, the line between the public script and the hidden script is not a physical wall, but necessarily a constant struggle between the dominant and the subordinate.
Looking at the behavior of human groups, the combination of public script and hidden script is everywhere. Although we can also think that this is a set of concepts created by the author, which are only true under certain conditions, it is almost impossible to try to apply the concepts of these two scripts.
An excerpt from chapter 4 of the book, "False Consciousness or Flattery," is as follows:
Perhaps the most important concerns of the social system are those subordinates who seem to prove that the hegemonic system is the most successful. The mission boy [Cliban], who accepted the promise of an established religion, was the greatest threat to the religion, compared to the infidels who had never accepted the promise of the established religion. The anger that comes from feeling betrayed always implies the conviction that was once there. (Han Shaohua)
"Red Star": How Did the World Know Mao Zedong? 》
【Japanese】Akihiro Ishikawa / Yuan Guangquan / Translation, Peking University Press, June 2021 edition
An academic mystery sparked by a photograph.
The author writes the entire book in a detective fictional narrative, the first half of which revolves around a suspicious "photograph of Mao Zedong", and the second half focuses on answering the subtitle question: How did the world know Mao Zedong? He re-sorted out the interviews and writing experiences before the book "Red Star Shines on China", discussed its fate in the process of being translated and disseminated, and completed the "rediscovery" of this famous book.
All of Professor Ishikawa's previous translations of Chinese works were done by Mr. Yuan Guangquan, who praised him as his "most trusted translator" with "outstanding and exquisite translation talent". Due to the unexpected death of Mr. Yuan, the book is in a sense a masterpiece. (Peng Shanshan)
Mirror Images of The Late Qing Dynasty Officialdom: A Study of Du Fengzhi's Diary
Jie Qiu, Social Sciences Academic Press, May 2021
In the introduction to the book "Mirror Images of Late Qing Dynasty Officialdom: A Study of Du Fengzhi's Diary", the author Qiu Jie said: Chinese and foreign scholars have done in-depth research on the Qing Dynasty's state and county system, justice, taxation, official life and other issues, and the results have been fruitful, but previous treatises have paid little attention to "details" and "stories", and basically did not quote Du Fengzhi's diary, while this book tries to provide readers with some "details" or "stories" that have not been fully noticed in the past or have not been fully noticed. Since 1866, Du Fengzhi has successively served in Guangdong Guangning Zhi County, Sihui Zhi County, Nanhai Zhi County, and ZhiZhou of Luoding Prefecture in Guangdong for more than ten years, leaving a million-word diary to record his eunuch career in detail. By analyzing and discussing the details and stories in Du Fengzhi's diary, the author presents the social conditions of the late Qing Dynasty's social injustice and the darkness of the officialdom. Based on Du Fengzhi's diary, a valuable historical material, and the author's in-depth analysis and research, this book connects the history of the political system of the Qing Dynasty, the history of taxation, the history of the legal system, the history of modern society, the history of modern Guangdong and other fields, and is a rare work. (Gong Siliang)
"Personal Experiences of the Collapse of the Soviet Union"
【Beauty】Little Jack F. Matlock/Zhang Minqian et al.,,Shanghai Sanlian Bookstore:New Classic Culture,December 2021 edition.]/
When the "synergy" accumulated by history for a long time erupts in a certain moment, people seem to have an opportunity to sort out the past, explain the present, and plan for the future. Thirty years ago, the Soviet Union collapsed, and the former U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, Jack Jr. F. Matlock witnessed everything on the historical scene. In this book, the author comprehensively tells the amazing events from 1987 to 1991 from the perspective of a witness, not only incisively analyzes the achievements and problems of the Soviet system, but also vividly describes the people and events that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union, which is a good book that wants to understand the Soviet Union. (Zhong Yuan)