《经济学人》2015年最值得阅读的书

近日，《经济学人》推出了"2015年度好书"。这份长长的书单涵盖种类丰富，从时政、经济、科技到历史、文学皆有涉足。下面让我们一起看看今年上榜好书都有哪些：

政治时事

《近邻远邻：苏联情报新史》Near and Distant Neighbours: A New History of Soviet Intelligence
作者：Jonathan Haslam

A detailed appraisal of how the Soviet Union handled undercover operations from the communist revolution in 1917 until the end of the cold war. The most gripping chapters focus on the chaos that was unleashed by Josef Stalin.
详尽评价了苏联自1917年革命到冷战结束期间在秘密战线的行动，最扣人心弦的篇章斯大林制造的混乱。

《我们的孩子：危机中的美国梦》Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis
作者：Robert Putnam

The most important divide in America today is class, not race, and the place where it matters most is in the home. In a thoughtful and persuasive book, the former dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government analyses the growing gulf between how the rich and the poor raise their children, adding a liberal voice to long-standing conservative complaints about family breakdown.
今天美国最重要的鸿沟是阶级而非种族，最要紧的地方是家里。在这部思想深刻、令人信服的作品中，哈佛大学肯尼迪政府学院的前主任分析了穷人富人怎样抚养孩子时日益增大的差距。保守主义者长久以来对家庭分崩抱怨不断，这部作品增加了自由主义的声音。

《朝鲜秘闻：私人市场、时尚潮流、劳改营、异见者与叛国者》North Korea Confidential: Private Markets, Fashion Trends, Prison Camps, Dissenters and Defectors
作者：Daniel Tudor and James Pearson

Two knowledgeable journalists offer a bird's-eye view of everyday life that teases out how the famine of the 1990s prompted unexpected change in the attitudes, governance and lives of ordinary North Koreans, giving the lie to the simplistic view that Koreans are a homogenous people under the thumb of a power-crazed dictator.
两位博闻强识的作者通观日常生活，找出上世纪九十年代的饥荒如何让普通朝鲜人的生活态度、政府治理和生活发生不期的变化，人们以为朝鲜人是一个嗜权独裁者股掌中的同质人，这一简单看法被证明是谎言。

《贫民窟：调查谋杀潮》Ghettoside: Investigating a Homicide Epidemic
作者：Jill Leovy

Black men are still dying at alarming rates in the toughest urban pockets even though, overall, America's murder rate is down. A study of one neighbourhood in Los Angeles has the power to change how people think about policing in America.
尽管美国谋杀率整体下降，但最恶劣的城市环境中，黑人还是以惊人的速度死去。对洛杉矶一个社区的研究将改变人们对美国警察执法的看法。

《曾经辉煌：底特律往事》Once in a Great City: A Detroit Story
作者：David Maraniss

One of America's finest non-fiction writers, a son of Detroit, offers a lively and meticulously researched account of how the city, once the engine room of America, began sputtering.
生于底特律的Maraniss是美国最好的非虚构作家，他详尽、栩栩如生地描述了这个曾经是美国引擎的城市如何开始分崩离析。

历史

《长崎：核劫余生》Nagasaki: Life after Nuclear War
作者：Susan Southard

The searing account of five teenage hibakusha ("explosion-affected people"): how they survived the atom bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki in 1945, and the terrible price they paid in the aftermath of the war.
五个"受辐射"少年的经历令人心碎，1945年原子弹落在长崎后，他们怎么活下来的？他们在战后付出了巨大的代价。

《滑铁卢：四天三军三战史》Waterloo: The History of Four Days, Three Armies and Three Battles
作者：Bernard Cornwell

A great and terrible story of a battle that was fought 200 years ago, told with energy and clarity by a writer who has a deep understanding of men in combat and why they do what they do. "Waterloo" proves that Bernard Cornwell's non-fiction is as fine as his novels, if not finer.
200年前的伟大战斗，如此磅礴、清晰。作者对战斗中的人和动机有着深刻的理解。《滑铁卢》证明Cornwell非虚构作品的功力不输于虚构作品。

《奥斯曼衰亡：中东大战》The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East
作者：Eugene Rogan

How a multinational Muslim empire was destroyed by the first world war, by a historian of the 20th century who is director of the Middle East Centre at Oxford University.
一个横跨多国的穆斯林帝国如何在第一次世界大战中毁灭？剑桥大学中东中心主任娓娓道来。

《黑土地：作为历史和警示的大屠杀》Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning
作者：Timothy Snyder

A historian at Yale University has made a detailed study of where Jews were in most danger during the second world war. In France and Italy, three-quarters of the Jews survived. In eastern territories, which suffered "double occupation", first by the Soviets and then by the Nazis, at least 90% of them perished.
耶鲁大学历史学家详尽研究了二战中哪里的犹太人最危险。在法国和意大利，四分之三的犹太人存活了下来。在东部战场，被苏联和纳粹双重占领的地区，至少90%的犹太人死亡。

《元老院与市民：古罗马史》SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome
作者：Mary Beard

A masterly new chronicle, by Britain's most engaging historian of the ancient world, about Rome from its myth-shrouded origins to the early third century. She shows that the key to its dominance was granting citizenship to so many people.
一部了不起的新编年史，英国最出色的古代史学家从罗马的神秘起源讲到三世纪早期。她证明统治的关键是给予更多人公民权。

《棉花帝国》Empire of Cotton: A Global History
作者：Sven Beckert

By focusing on a sector that until 1900 was the world's most important manufacturing industry, Sven Beckert offers a fine account of 900 years of globalisation.
直到1900年，棉花都是世界上最重要的制造产业，作者专注于其900年的全球化历史。

《眼睛听到什么？踢踏舞的历史》What the Eye Hears: A History of Tap Dancing
作者：Brian Seibert

How tap-dancing entertained many, even as it had clear racist overtones. An engaging, warts-and-all history of one of America's greatest creative inventions by a dance critic at the New York Times.
踢踏舞如何娱乐人民，尽管它有着显著的种族主义意味，这是《纽约时报》舞评家对美国最伟大创造毫无保留的精彩叙述。

《扑火：沙皇俄罗斯的帝国、战争与终结》Towards the Flame: Empire, War and the End of Tsarist Russia
作者：Dominic Lieven

How Russia went to war. A gripping, poignant and in some respects revolutionary contribution to European history by a distinguished British scholar who is descended from several of the protagonists he describes.
俄国人如何参战。出色的英国学者对几个主人公的描写，给欧洲史带来引人入胜、尖锐甚至革命性的贡献。