A gapper is a bit of a 'burr' but it is a dangerous thing. When it attaches itself to the goats the goats become very unhappy and even stop giving milk. There is nothing gappers like more than goats and nothing goats hate more than gappers. When gappers get your goats it means trouble. In one small town gappers are a real pest and it takes the ingenious approach of Capable to f...(展开全部)

In an impeccably argued work, a venerable economist examines commonly held beliefs about the economy and how it works. E. J. Mishan, an iconoclastic economist who has taught at such schools as the London School of Economics and the New School for Social Research, is in this volume a provocateur, smashing staunchly held beliefs of the right (free trade and common markets are goo...(展开全部)

[英]格瑞斯·戴维（Grace Davie），国际著名社会学家，英国埃克塞特大学宗教社会学荣休教授，国际社会学协会宗教社会学分会第22届学术委员会轮值主席（2002～2006年）、美洲宗教社会学协会主席（2003年）。她的著作有Religion in Modern Europe (2000)、Europe: The Exceptional Case (2002)、The Sociology of Religion (Sage 2007,2013)等。 隋嘉滨，中国人民大学社会学博士，日本爱知大学中国研究学博士。律师。现为社会科学文献出版社编辑。相关博士学位论文有《建堂——当代北京基督教研究》，相关译著有《英国的宗教与法律》《基督教与法律》《七国宗教法制的基础与前沿》《俄国的东正教与劝诱改宗》《当今世界的宗教人权》《法治与宗教》等。 冯燕，北京联合大学...(展开全部)

Mathematics is a fundamental human activity that can be practised and understood in a multitude of ways; indeed, mathematical ideas themselves are far from being fixed, but are adapted and changed by their passage across periods and cultures. In this Very Short Introduction, Jacqueline Stedall explores the rich historical and cultural diversity of mathematical endeavour from th...(展开全部)

Astronomy, perhaps the first of the sciences, was already well developed by the time of Christ. Seventeen centuries later, after Newton showed that the movements of the planets could be explained in terms of gravitation, it became the paradigm for the mathematical sciences. In the nineteenth century the analysis of star-light allowed astrophysicists to determine both the chemic...(展开全部)

'Philosophers have an infuriating habit of analysing questions rather than answering them', writes Terry Eagleton, who, in these pages, asks the most important question any of us ever ask, and attempts to answer it. So what is the meaning of life? In this witty, spirited, and stimulating inquiry, Eagleton shows how centuries of thinkers - from Shakespeare and Schopenhauer to Ma...(展开全部)

From the sudden expansion of a cloud of gas or the cooling of a hot metal, to the unfolding of a thought in our minds and even the course of life itself, everything is governed by the four Laws of Thermodynamics. These laws specify the nature of 'energy' and 'temperature', and are soon revealed to reach out and define the arrow of time itself: why things change and why death mu...(展开全部)

Against the backdrop of unprecedented concern for the future of health care, this Very Short Introduction surveys the history of medicine from classical times to the present. Focussing on the key turning points in the history of Western medicine, such as the advent of hospitals and the rise of experimental medicine, Bill Bynum offers insights into medicine's past, while at the...(展开全部)

- Each chapter describes a major step in the history of life - the breakthroughs that made new forms of life possible - Explores the origins of sex, the first multicellular creatures, explains how hard skeletons evolved, why animals moved to land, and how the first forests were born - Presents a completely up-to-date picture of the earliest origins of life, exploring new concep...(展开全部)

The concept of law lies at the heart of our social and political life, shaping the character of our community and underlying issues from racism and abortion to human rights and international war. But what actually is law? A set of naturally occurring moral principles, or simply rules agreed by a particular society? What is a 'right' and what rights should people actually have? ...(展开全部)