Every human society displays some form of behavior that can be called “art,” and in most societies other than our own the arts play an integral part in social life. Those who wish to understand art in its broadest sense, as a universal human endowment, need to go beyond modern Western elitist notions that disregard other cultures and ignore the human species’ four-million-year ...(展开全部)

What is it to be a work of art? Renowned author and critic Arthur C. Danto addresses this fundamental, complex question. Part philosophical monograph and part memoiristic meditation, "What Art Is challenges" the popular interpretation that art is an indefinable concept, instead bringing to light the properties that constitute universal meaning. Danto argues that despite varied ...(展开全部)

Who gets to say what counts as contemporary art? Artists, critics, curators, gallerists, auctioneers, collectors, or the public? Revealing how all of these groups have shaped today's multifaceted definition, Terry Smith brilliantly shows that a historical approach offers the best answer to the question: What Is Contemporary Art? Smith argues that the most recognizable kind is c...(展开全部)

How will protecting our digital infrastructure shape our future? Cybersecurity is one of the key practical and political challenges of our time. It is at the heart of how modern societies survive and thrive, yet public understanding is still rudimentary: media portrayals of hoodie-wearing hackers accessing the Pentagon don’t convey its complexity or significance to contemporary...(展开全部)

Does charitable giving still matter but need to change? Philanthropy, the use of private assets for public good, has been much criticised in recent years. Do elite philanthropists wield too much power? Is big-money philanthropy unaccountable and therefore anti-democratic? And what about so-called “tainted donations” and “dark money” funding pseudo-philanthropic political projec...(展开全部)

“History”, suggests Robert Gildea, “is a battlefield.” Questions of power, rights, identity and nationhood always have an ancient and modern historical dimension and countries still go to war over their interpretation of history. Yet accounts of history are just as prone to fabrication as fake news, so how can we tell good history from bad? How can history be critical, learning...(展开全部)

Art Is Not What You Think It Is utilizes original research to present a series of critical incursions into the current state of debate on the idea of art, making manifest what has been largely missing or unsaid in those discussions. Links museology, history, theory, and criticism to the realities of contemporary social conditions and shows how they have structurally functione...(展开全部)

Art Is Not What You Think It Is utilizes original research to present a series of critical incursions into the current state of debate on the idea of art, making manifest what has been largely missing or unsaid in those discussions. Links museology, history, theory, and criticism to the realities of contemporary social conditions and shows how they have structurally functione...(展开全部)

At the heart of this astonishing novel is a true story of courage and endurance in the face of one of the most brutal civil wars the world has ever known. Valentino Achak Deng is just a boy when conflict separates him from his family and forces him to leave his small Sudanese village, joining thousands of other orphans on their long, long walk to Ethiopia, where they find safet...(展开全部)

今天要介紹的是他最新的一本書"What Is the What". 要談這本書呢得從頭開始說.80年代初期在蘇丹這塊土地上,佔多數及擁有政府優勢的阿拉伯裔,與位居南方主要為非洲裔的反抗軍開始了蘇丹的第二次內戰.政府軍在絕對優勢下迫使許多並未與反抗軍結盟,卻只因種族相同被一視同仁的普通居民開始逃難生活.這其中有一群小孩子,年齡大部分都在15歲以下,幾乎都是孤兒,獨自的穿越沙漠,途中經歷兇猛動物和政府軍的追殺,逃到了衣索比亞.這群孩子後來被國際間稱為"The Lost Boys of Sudan".書的主角Valentino Achak Deng就是Lost Boys的其中一員,在後來國際人道救援中,他被送到了美國.原本以為就此平靜的生活卻又因為自己非洲人的身分,又起了波折. 基本上這本書是以Achak這個人口述經歷,撰寫的一本書.故事一開始已經在美國亞...(展开全部)