A BLACK SWAN is a highly improbable event with three principal characteristics: It is unpredictable; it carries a massive impact; and, after the fact, we concoct an explanation that makes it appear less random, and more predictable, than it was. The astonishing success of Google was a black swan; so was 9/11. For Nassim Nicholas Taleb, black swans underlie almost everything about our world, from the rise of religions to events in our own personal lives.Why do we not acknowledge the phenomenon of black swans until after they occur? Part of the answer, according to Taleb, is that ...
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WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZEThe first full account of how the Cold War arms race finally came to a close, this riveting narrative history sheds new light on the people who struggled to end this era of massive overkill, and examines the legacy of the nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons that remain a threat today.Drawing on memoirs, interviews in both Russia and the US, and classified documents from deep inside the Kremlin, David E. Hoffman examines the inner motives and secret decisions of each side and details the deadly stockpiles that remained unsecured as the Soviet Union collapsed. This is the fascinating story of how Reagan, Gorbachev, and a previously unheralded collection of scientists, soldiers, diplomats, and spies changed the course of history.
Russia’s recent past has encompassed revolution, civil war, mass terror and two world wars, and the country is still undergoing huge change.In his acclaimed history, now updated to 2009, Robert Service provides a superb panoramic viewpoint on Russia, exploring the complex, changing interaction between rulers and ruled from Nicholas II, Lenin and Stalin through to Gorbachev, Yeltsin, Putin and beyond.This new edition also discusses Russia’s unresolved economic and social difficulties and its determination to regain its leading role on the world stage and explains how, despite the recent years of de-communization, the seven decades of communist rule which penetrated every aspect of life still continue to influence Russia today.
In December 1937, in what was then the capital of China, one of the most brutal massacres in the long annals of wartime barbarity occurred. The Japanese army swept into the ancient city of Nanking (Nanjing) and within weeks not only looted and burned the defenseless city but systematically raped, tortured, and murdered more than 300,000 Chinese civilians. Amazingly, the story of this atrocity—one of the worst in world history—continues to be denied by the Japanese government.Based on extensive interviews with survivors and newly discovered documents in four different languages (many never before published), Iris Chang, whose ...
‘Everitt takes [listeners] on a remarkable journey into the creation of the great civilization's political institutions, cultural traditions, and social hierarchy…. [E]ngaging work that will captivate and inform from beginning to end.”— Booklist Starred ReviewFrom Anthony Everitt, the bestselling author of acclaimed biographies of Cicero, Augustus, and Hadrian, comes a riveting, magisterial account of Rome and its remarkable ascent from an obscure agrarian backwater to the greatest empire the world has ever known.Emerging as a market town from a cluster of hill villages in the eighth and seventh centuries B.C., Rome ...
Фильм «The Soviet Story», активно поддерживаемый официальными властями Латвии, является примером пропагандистской лжи. Зрителю обещают показать правду о «преступлениях коммунистического режима», а показывают ложь, сдобренную большим числом поддельных документов, манипуляцией видео-рядом и демагогией времен «холодной войны».
The world’s foremost expert on the English language takes us on an entertaining and eye-opening tour of the history of our vernacular through the ages.In , an entertaining history of the world’s most ubiquitous language, David Crystal draws on one hundred words that best illustrate the huge variety of sources, influences and events that have helped to shape our vernacular since the first definitively English word—‘roe’—was written down on the femur of a roe deer in the fifth century. Featuring ancient words (‘loaf’), cutting edge terms that relfect our world (‘twittersphere’), indispensible words that shape our tongue (‘and’, ‘what’), fanciful words (‘fopdoodle’) and even obscene expressions (the “c word”…), David Crystal takes readers on a tour of the winding byways of our language via the rude, the obscure and the downright surprising.
Most of us take for granted the features of our modern society, from air travel and telecommunications to literacy and obesity. Yet for nearly all of its six million years of existence, human society had none of these things. While the gulf that divides us from our primitive ancestors may seem unbridgeably wide, we can glimpse much of our former lifestyle in those largely traditional societies still or recently in existence. Societies like those of the New Guinea Highlanders remind us that it was only yesterday—in evolutionary time—when everything changed and that we moderns still possess bodies ...
IVARS V?KSTrejdevi?i Latvijas br?numiLatvija ir br?numu pilna zeme ar neparasti sp?c?gu bioener??tisku starojumu. P?ri tai k? milzu sag?a kl?jas bl?vs senu sv?tvietu t?kls. ?eit ir p?rsteidzo?i daudz ?oti sp?c?gu sv?tavotu, kas t?lu p?rsp?j dziednieciskos avotus cit?s zem?s. Patiesi apbr?nojamas lietas notiek m?su debes?s un ?de?os. Mums ir t?das izcilas zemeslodes vietas k? Pokai?i, trejdevi?i ?eveles avoti, Ska?ais kalns. Un par to visu var p?...
VAMIREHS ?.Ron?(vec?kais)Eiropas l?dzenumos mamuti jau s?ka izmirt, lielie pl?s?gie zv?ri jau bija aizklejoju?i uz silt?k?m zem?m, bet zieme?briedis — uz saltajiem apgabaliem, me?os un step?s gan?j?s sumbru, pirmv?r?u tauru un lielragu brie?u bari. Bija jau aizrit?ju?i gadu simte?i kop? t? laika, kad izmira milzu l??i, kas mitin?j?s dzi??s al?s.Tajos laikos slaidi, gargalvaini cilv?ki apdz?voja visu Eiropu no Baltijas j?ras l?dz Vidusj?rai un no austrumiem l?dz rietumiem. Vi?i mitin?j?s al?s un klejoja no vienas vietas uz otru. ?ie klejot?ji jau pieprata da?u amatu un tiec?s p?c m?kslas. Ar trauslu akmens asmeni vi?i darin?ja z?m?jumus, kuros bija j?tama tieksme atveidot dabu.
With , Peter Ackroyd is at his most magical and magisterial, presenting a glittering, evocative, fascinating, story-filled portrait of the ultimate city. “Ackroyd provides a history of and meditation on the actual and imaginary Venice in a volume as opulent and paradoxical as the city itself. . . . How Ackroyd deftly catalogues the overabundance of the city’s real and literary tropes and touchstones is itself a kind of tribute to , as Venice is called, and his seductive voice is elegant and elegiac. The resulting book is, like Venice, something rich, labyrinthine and unique that makes itself and its subject both ...
1711 год.Десять лет не прекращается война. Аббат Мелани, секретный агент Людовика XIV, прибывает в Вену. Он узнает о заговоре против императора Иосифа I.Но кто готовится нанести смертельный удар? Брат, мечтающий о троне, или коварные иезуиты? Вероломные англичане или турки, извечные враги империи?Разгадка кроется в таинственном сообщении турецкого посла. Пытаясь расшифровать это сообщение, помощники аббата гибнут один за другим.Впервые на пути агента Людовика XIV оказался столь безжалостный противник.
