《经济学人》2015年最值得阅读的书

科技

《超级预测的艺术与科学》Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction
作者：Philip Tetlock and Dan Gardner

A scientific analysis of the ancient art of divination which shows that forecasting is a talent; luckily it can be learned. You need a healthy appetite for information, a willingness to revisit predictions in light of new data, and the ability to synthesise material from sources with very different outlooks on the world.
对古代占卜艺术的科学分析显示预测是一种禀赋，我们有幸从中学习。你需要对信息有嗜好，愿意根据新的数据调整预测，有能力用世界上不同的观点综合材料。

《神经部落：自闭症的遗产和神经多样性的未来》Neurotribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity
作者：Steve Silberman

The descriptions of how autistic children were treated in the 20th century is especially shocking.
自闭症的孩子在二十世纪的遭遇，令人惊骇。

《重要问题：生活何以如是？》The Vital Question: Why Is Life the Way It Is?
作者：Nick Lane

A persuasive and demanding attempt, by a thought-provoking British scientist, a biochemist at University College London, to answer some of the most fundamental questions in biology. It posits a new theory of how life came to be.
一个生化学家回到了生物学中一些最基本的问题，答案令人信服、引人深思。作品指出了生命何来的新理论。

《人无需适用：人工智能时代的财富与工作指南》Humans Need Not Apply: A Guide to Wealth and Work in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
作者：Jerry Kaplan

An intriguing, insightful and well-written look at how modern artificial intelligence, powering algorithms and robots, threatens jobs and may increase wealth inequalities, by a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and AI expert.
现代的人工智能、强大的算法和机器人如何威胁了你的工作，并加大财富的不平等，一个硅谷企业家及人工智能专家的讲述生动且深刻。

《在第四维要做什么？》Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension
作者：Matt Parker

This is an unusual, in-depth but highly accessible popular-maths book by a member of the London Mathematical Society who also has a sideline in stand-up comedy.
伦敦数学学会的一本数学科普书，就像在说相声。

《物理学七讲》Seven Brief Lessons on Physics
作者：Carlo Rovelli

A startling and illustrative distillation of centuries of science by an Italian theoretical physicist.
意大利理论物理学家来梳理几个世纪以来的科学史，丰富且生动。

《新荒野：入侵物种何以拯救自然》The New Wild: Why Invasive Species Will Be Nature's Salvation
作者：Fred Pearce

A carefully researched, analytical look at the effects that new species have on different environments into which they are introduced. The book debunks poor science and the cherry-picking of statistical examples to feed hysteria about keeping invasive species out and protecting an imaginary perfect past.
本书对新物种被引入不同环境后带来的后果进行了细致分析。本书驳斥了科学和统计样本选择行为中的谬误，后者认为要抵制入侵物种，保护想象中的完美过去。

《人体冒险》Adventures in Human Being
作者：Gavin Francis

A Scottish doctor takes a delightful journey closer to home, through the wondrous human body, from top to tail, inside to out.
苏格兰医生让你走进奇妙人体，从头到脚，从里到外。

《时间螺旋：探秘海贝的生前身后》Spirals in Time: The Secret Life and Curious Afterlife of Seashells
作者：Helen Scales

A marine biologist-turned-science writer describes coming face-to-shell with a giant clam on the Great Barrier Reef, enjoying a bag of smoked oysters in Gambia and meeting a sea-silk seamstress in Italy. She makes an impassioned and convincing argument that, contrary to expectations, molluscs have much to teach us.
海洋生物学家、科普作家描写大堡礁的贝壳，尝一包冈比亚烤生蚝，采访意大利的海丝女裁缝。她不动声色却令人信服的表明，与我们想象的不同，软体动物能教会我们很多东西。

《怎么讨论可视化游戏？》How to Talk about Videogames
作者：Ian Bogost

Some say video games are the great sport of the 21st century, the summit of art and entertainment. Others call them mindless. Meditative essays on the meaning of gaming, by a game designer and professor of interactive computing.
有人说可视化游戏是21世纪最伟大的运动，艺术和娱乐的巅峰。有人却认为无脑。一个游戏设计师和交互计算机教授对游戏的意义进行思考。

虚构

《七次谋杀简史》A Brief History of Seven Killings
作者：Marlon James

A failed assassination of Bob Marley becomes a prism through which to see Jamaica's history from the early 1970s to the early 1990s. Violent, lurid, scabrous, hilarious and beautiful, this novel teems with life, death and narrators.
对Bob Marley一次失败的谋杀成为七十年代出初到九十年代初牙买加历史的镜子。暴力、夸张、猥琐、放浪却又美丽，这部小说洋溢着生与死，有众多讲述者。

《捕鱼者说》The Fishermen
作者：Chigozie Obioma

A lyrical retelling of the Cain-and-Abel story in which four Nigerian brothers play truant from school, go fishing and meet a soothsayer who predicts that one brother will kill another. Not yet 30, Chigozie Obioma is a writer to watch.
该隐杀弟的重演。四个尼日利亚兄弟逃课、打渔，碰到了一个算命者说一个兄弟要杀死其他三个。作者不过三十岁，他的作品大有看点。

《下面的西王母》Seiobo There Below
作者：Laszlo Krasznahorkai. Translated by Ottilie Mulzet

Seventeen stories by a Hungarian modernist whose sentences wind and unwind and rewind, creating what one translator described as "a slow lava-flow of narrative, a vast black river of type".
匈牙利现代主义者的十七个故事，文辞婉转，译者称之为"a slow lava-flow of narrative, a vast black river of type"。

《投降》Submission
作者：Michel Houellebecq

No other French novelist knows how to stir trouble quite like Michel Houellebecq. This account of France under Muslim rule is set in 2022. It came out on the day of the Charlie Hebdo attack and has been called scaremongering. Its fans say it speaks to France's deepest secret fears.
没有哪个法国小说家比Michael Houellebecq更会挑事儿。他假想法国在2022年被穆斯林占领。这发生在《查理周刊》事件后，被指为兜售恐慌。其支持者则认为其道出法国最深处的恐惧。

《小生活》A Little Life
作者：Hanya Yanagihara

On the surface a story about four university graduates trying to make it in New York, at heart Hanya Yanagihara's second novel is a fairy-tale about child abuse, pitting good against evil, love against viciousness, hope against hopelessness.
表面上是四个大学毕业生在纽约谋生活的故事，实质上是作者关于儿童虐待的童话：正对邪，爱对恶，希望对无望。

《亲历者回忆伟大奥克的衰落》An Account of the Decline of the Great Auk, According to One Who Saw It
作者：Jessie Greengrass

Restraint and a formal writing style, by a philosophy graduate from Cambridge University, give a tone of melancholy to this spectacularly accomplished, chilly debut collection of short stories about thwarted lives and opportunities missed. The strongest are also the most ordinary.
剑桥大学哲学毕业生的首部短篇小说集风格端正，格调忧郁，讲述了被扼杀的生命和失去的机会。最炽烈的也是最平淡的。

《丢失的孩子》The Story of the Lost Child
作者：Elena Ferrante. Translated by Ann Goldstein

This four-volume narrative, with all its operatic overtones, is a tribute to feminism and female friendship in mid-20th-century Naples.
四卷本的故事行文如歌，讴歌了二十世纪中叶那不勒斯的女性主义和女性友谊。

（来源：英文联播 编辑：丁一）