搜索结果：books

This book examines the special qualities of picture books-books intended to educate or tell stories to young children. Drawing from a number of aesthetic and literary sources, Perry Nodelman explores the way in which the interplay of the verbal and visual aspects of picture books conveys more narrative information and stimulation than either medium could acheive alone. Moving from baby books, alphabet books, and word books to such well-known children's picture books as Nancy Ekholm Burkert's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Gerald McDermott's Arrow to the Sun, Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are, and Chris Van Allsburg's The Garden of Abdul Gasazi, reveals how picture-book design and illustration as well as by the relationships between pictures and their complementary texts.

The conservative movement and especially its think tanks play a critical role in denying the reality and significance of anthropogenic global warming (AGW), especially by manufacturing uncertainty over climate science. Books denying AGW are a crucial means of attacking climate science and scientists, and we examine the links between conservative think tanks (CTTs) and 108 climate change denial books published through 2010. We find a strong link, albeit noticeably weaker for the growing number of self-published denial books. We also examine the national origins of the books and the academic backgrounds of their authors or editors, finding that with the help of American CTTs climate change denial has spread to several other nations and that an increasing portion of denial books are produced by individuals with no scientific training. It appears that at least 90% of denial books do not undergo peer review, allowing authors or editors to recycle scientifically unfounded claims that are then amplified by the conservative movement, media, and political elites.

Since its original publication in 1949, Irving A. Leonard's pioneering Books of the Brave has endured as the classic account of the introduction of literary culture to Spain's New World. Leonard's study documents the works of fiction that accompanied and followed the conquistadores to the Americas and goes on to argue that popular texts influenced these men and shaped the way they thought and wrote about their New World experiences. For the first time in English, this edition combines Leonard's text with a selection of the documents that were his most valuable sources--nine lists of books destined for the Indies. Containing a wealth of information that is sure to spark future study, these lists provide the documentary evidence for what is perhaps Leonard's greatest contribution: his demonstration that royal and inquisitorial prohibitions failed to control the circulation of books and ideas in colonial Spanish America. Rolena Adorno's introduction signals the lasting value of Books of the Brave and brings the reader up to date on developments in cultural-historical studies that have shed light on the role of books in Spanish American colonial culture. Adorno situates Leonard's work at the threshold between older, triumphalist views of Spanish conquest history and more recent perspectives engendered by studies of native American peoples. With its rich descriptions of the book trade in both Spain and America, Books of the Brave has much to offer historians as well as literary critics. Indeed, it is a highly readable and engaging book for anyone interested in the cultural life of the New World.

It is tempting to treat frequency trends from the Google Books data sets as indicators of the "true" popularity of various words and phrases. Doing so allows us to draw quantitatively strong conclusions about the evolution of cultural perception of a given topic, such as time or gender. However, the Google Books corpus suffers from a number of limitations which make it an obscure mask of cultural popularity. A primary issue is that the corpus is in effect a library, containing one of each book. A single, prolific author is thereby able to noticeably insert new phrases into the Google Books lexicon, whether the author is widely read or not. With this understood, the Google Books corpus remains an important data set to be considered more lexicon-like than text-like. Here, we show that a distinct problematic feature arises from the inclusion of scientific texts, which have become an increasingly substantive portion of the corpus throughout the 1900 s. The result is a surge of phrases typical to academic articles but less common in general, such as references to time in the form of citations. We use information theoretic methods to highlight these dynamics by examining and comparing major contributions via a divergence measure of English data sets between decades in the period 1800-2000. We find that only the English Fiction data set from the second version of the corpus is not heavily affected by professional texts. Overall, our findings call into question the vast majority of existing claims drawn from the Google Books corpus, and point to the need to fully characterize the dynamics of the corpus before using these data sets to draw broad conclusions about cultural and linguistic evolution.

This chapter discusses the nature of the lag between contract law and the real world developments and looks as consumer contract law as an example. It then discusses the longstanding idea of the difference between law in the books (formal or blackletter law) and law in action (law as applied or operative rules). It also discusses the role of contract law in society and examines law as a “shadow” and the escaping from contract law. Examples of escaping are private legal systems and smart contracts. It further examines convergence of contract law across legal systems and the development of international sales law. The final topics explored include the role of contract scholarship, essence of contracts, and relational contracts.

Books are a rich source of both fine-grained information, how a character, an object or a scene looks like, as well as high-level semantics, what someone is thinking, feeling and how these states evolve through a story. This paper aims to align books to their movie releases in order to provide rich descriptive explanations for visual content that go semantically far beyond the captions available in the current datasets. To align movies and books we propose a neural sentence embedding that is trained in an unsupervised way from a large corpus of books, as well as a video-text neural embedding for computing similarities between movie clips and sentences in the book. We propose a context-aware CNN to combine information from multiple sources. We demonstrate good quantitative performance for movie/book alignment and show several qualitative examples that showcase the diversity of tasks our model can be used for.

ABSTRACTS This study examines the impact of an intervention targeting economically disadvantaged children in child care centers. The program was designed to flood over 330 child care centers with high‐quality children's books, at a ratio of 5 books per child, and provide 10 hours of training to child‐care staff. Conceptualized as a formative experiment, this study examined the project's impact, systematically sampling 400 3‐ and 4‐year‐old children randomly selected from 50 centers across 10 regions and 100 control children from comparable child care centers not involved in the project. Children's early literacy skills (receptive language, concepts of print, environmental print, letter name knowledge, concepts of writing, and narrative competence) were assessed prior to and following the study. In addition, a posttest‐only sample and a kindergarten sample were included, focusing on the project's longerterm impact. Changes in child care practices were assessed throughout the project, using photographic accounts of the physical environments of classrooms, literacy‐related interactions between teachers and children in sample classrooms, and storybook reading activity in both treatment and control classrooms. Process measures indicated enhanced physical access to books, greater verbal interaction around literacy, and more time spent reading and relating to books as a result of the intervention. With greater access, children in the intervention group scored statistically significantly higher than the control group on four of six assessment measures, with gains still very much evident 6 months later in kindergarten. Findings provide powerful support for the physical proximity of books and the psychological support to child care staff on children's early literacy development. ESTE ESTUDIO examina el impacto de una intervención diseñada para niños de sectores económicamente en desventaja que asistían a centros de atención para niños. El programa fue elaborado para colmar de libros infantiles de buena calidad 330 centros, a un promedio de 5 libros por niño, así como proveer 10 horas de entrenamiento al personal de los centros. Conceptualizado como un experimento de formación, este estudio examinó el impacto del proyecto mediante el muestreo sistemático de 400 niños de 3 y 4 años seleccionados al azar en 50 centros de 10 regiones y, 100 niños control de centros comparables que no estuvieran involucrados en el proyecto. Antes de comenzar el estudio y al final del proyecto se evaluaron las habilidades tempranas de los niños en comprensión del lenguaje, conceptos sobre la escritura, lectura de logos, nombre de las letras, conceptos sobre el lenguaje escrito y competencia narrativa. Además se incluyeron una muestra post‐test y una muestra de preescolar, poniendo el foco en el impacto del proyecto a largo plazo. Durante el transcurso del proyecto se evaluaron los cambios en las prácticas de atención a los niños usando fotografías del contexto físico de las aulas, así como las interacciones docente‐niño relacionadas con la lectoescritura en las aulas de la muestra y las actividades de lectura de cuentos en los grupos de tratamiento y en el grupo de control. Las medidas tomadas durante el proceso indicaron, como resultado de la intervención, un mayor acceso a los libros, mayor interacción verbal acerca de la lectoescritura y más tiempo dedicado a la lectura y a la relación con los libros. Con mayor acceso al lenguaje escrito, los niños del grupo de intervención se desempeñaron estadísticamente mejor que los del grupo control en 4 de las 6 medidas de evaluación; la ventaja de los niños del grupo de intervención fue evidente aún seis meses más tarde, en preescolar. Los hallazgos constituyen evidencia poderosa acerca de los efectos del contacto con los libros y el soporte psicológico al personal de los centros de atención sobre el desarrollo temprano de la lectoescritura. DIESE STUDIE untersucht die Auswirkungen mit einer gezielten Intervention von wirtschaftlich benachteiligten Kindern in zentralen Kindertagesstätten. Das Progamm wurde darauf ausgerichtet, über 330 Zentren von Kindertagesstätten mit hochwertigen Büchern zu beliefern, im Verhältnis von 5 Büchern pro Kind, und die Kinderbetreuer mit jeweils 10 Stunden Training zu versorgen. Als formatives Experiment konzipiert, untersuchte diese Studie die Auswirkungen des Projektes, indem sie systematisch 400 3‐ und 4‐jährige Kinder wahllos aus 50 Zentren quer über 10 Regionen aussuchte und zur Kontrolle 100 Kinder aus vergleichbaren zentralen Kindertagesstätten auswählte, die nicht in das Projekt einbezogen waren. Frühe Leseund Schreibfertigkeiten der Kinder (rezeptive Sprachanwendung, Konzepte des Ausdrucks, Umweltausdruck und‐schrift, Buchstabenkenntnis, Konzepte beim Schreiben, und die Befähigung zum Nacherzählen) wurden vor und nach erfolgter Studie bewertet. Zusätzlich wurde ein Anschlußtest‐Alleinbeispiel und ein Kindergarten‐Beispiel eingefügt, welche auf die Langzeitauswirkungen des Projekts ausgerichtet waren. Veränderungen in der praktischen Handhabung der Kinderbetreuung wurden über die ganze Laufzeit des Projektes erfaßt, durch die Anwendung fotografischer Mittel in gegen ständlich Bereichen des Klassenraums, durch lese‐ und schreibbezogene Wechselbeziehungen zwischen Lehrern und Kindern in ausgewählten Klassenräumen, und durch das aktive Lesen von Erzählungen und Geschichte—sowohl in beiden Klassenraumtypen—den betreuten und den kontrollierten. Als Ergebnis dieser Eingriffe zeigten die undersuchten Maßnahmen einen verbesserten physischen Zugang zu Büchern, größere mündliche wechselseitige Beteiligung beim Lesen und Schreiben und mehr mit dem Lesen und dem Zugang zu Büchern verbrachter Zeit. Mit ihrem größeren Zugang erzielten die Kinder in der Interventionsgruppe wesentlich höhere statistische Werte als die Kontrollgruppe bei 4 von 6 Bewertungsmaßstäben; mit Verbesserungen, die auch nach sechs Monaten immer noch recht deutlich im Kindergarten erkennbar waren. Die Erkenntnisse unterstützen ganz erheblich die Bedeutung der physischen Nähe von Büchern und des psychologischen Rückhalts des Kinderbetreuungspersonals bei der Frühentwicklung von Lese‐ und Schreibfertigkeiten. CETTE ÉTUDE examine l'impact d'une intervention ayant pour cible des enfants de milieu défavorisé fréquentant des centres de jour pour enfants. Le programme a été planifié de façon à plonger plus de 330 centres de jour pour enfants dans des livres de haute qualité, à raison de 5 livres par enfant, et de fournir 10 heures d'entraînement aux équipes chargées des enfants. Conçue comme une expérience de formation, cette étude a examiné l'impact du projet en échantillonnant 400 enfants de 3 et 4 ans choisis au hasard dans 50 centres de 10 régions différentes et 100 enfants témoins provenant de centres de jour pour enfants comparables qui n'étaient pas impliqués dans le projet. Les compétences relatives à l'entrée dans l'écrit (compréhension orale, représentations de l'écrit, écrits de l'environnement, connaissance du nom des lettres, représentations de l'écriture, et capacités discursives) ont été évaluées avant et après l'intervention. On a inclus également un échantillon ne passant que le post‐test, et un échantillon de jardin d'enfant, en se centrant sur l'impact à plus long terme du projet. On a évalué les changements des pratiques relatives aux enfants tout au long du projet, au moyen de comptes rendus photographiques de l'environnement physique des classes, des interactions maître‐enfants concernant la littéracie dans les classes de l'échantillon, et l'activité de lecture de livres dans les classes de l'intervention et les classes témoins. Les mesures de processus ont montré, suite à l'intervention, un développement de l'accès physique aux livres, plus d'interactions verbales autour de la littéracie, et plus de temps consacré à la lecture et aux livres. L'accès étant plus important, les enfants du groupe concerné par l'intervention ont obtenu des résultats statistiquement plus élevés que les enfants du groupe contrôle dans 4 des 6 évaluations effectuées, ces bénéfices étant encore plus grands six mois après l'intervention quand ils étaient au jardin d'enfants. Ces résultats fournissent un soutien puissant en faveur d'une proximité physique des livres et un soutien psychologique aux équipes s'occupant des enfants en ce qui concerne le développement de l'entrée des enfants dans l'écrit.

Academic reputation rests on publication. But unlike many fields, sociology recognizes both journal articles and books, thereby complicating the relation of publication to reputation. Drawing on the sociology of science and organization theory to analyze elite sociology journals and books nominated for a major prize, the authors show how genre structures scholarly fields and shapes the reception of texts. Method and evidence, not subject matter, distinguish articles from books. Private universities "prefer" books, while scholars trained at public universities are more likely to publish articles. Gender and rank are associated with choice of genre, while citation rates increase with authors' prior publication records. Books generate conversations across subfields and disciplines; articles serve as a currency of evaluation within sociology.

From Pierre de Fermat to Samuel Taylor Coleridge to Graham Greene, readers have related to books through the notes they write in the margins. In this pioneering book-the first to examine the phenomenon of marginalia-H.J. Jackson surveys an extraordinary range of annotated books to explore the history of marginalia, the forms they take, the psychology that underlies them, and the reactions they provoke. Based on a study of thousands of books annotated by readers both famous and obscure over the last three centuries, this book reveals the intensity of emotion that characterizes the process of reading. For hundreds of years, readers have talked to other people in the margins of their books-not only to authors, but also to friends, lovers, and future generations. With an infectious enthusiasm for her subject, Jackson reflects on the cultural and historical value of writing in the margins, examines works that have invited passionate annotation, and presents examples of some of the most provocative marginalia. Imaginative, amusing, and poignant, this book will be treasured by-and maybe even annotated by-anyone who cares about reading.

Acknowledgments Introduction: books and sciences Marina Frasca-Spada and Nick Jardine Part I. Triumphs of the Book: 1. Books and sciences before print Rosamond McKitterick 2. Printing the world Jerry Brotton 3. Geniture collections, origins and uses of a genre Anthony Grafton 4. Annotating and indexing natural philosophy Ann Blair 5. Illustrating nature Sachiko Kusukawa 6. Astronomical books and courtly communication Adam Mosley 7. Reading for the philosophers' stone Lauren Kassell 8. Writing and talking of exotic animals Silvia De Renzi Part II. Learned and Conversable Reading: 9. Compendious footnotes Marina Frasca-Spada 10. On the bureaucratic plots of the research library William Clark 11. Encyclopaedic knowledge Richard Yeo 12. Periodical literature Thomas Broman 13. Natural philosophy for fashionable readers Mary Terrall 14. Rococo readings of the book of nature Emma Spary 15. Young readers and the sciences Aileen Fyfe 16. The physiology of reading Adrian Johns Part III. Publication in the Age of Science: 17. A textbook revolution Jonathan Topham 18. Useful knowledge for export Eugenia Rold...n Vera 19. Editing a hero of modern science Lisa Jardine and Alan Stewart 20. Progress in print James Secord Afterwords: Books, texts, and the making of knowledge Nick Jardine The past, present, and future of the scientific book Adrian Johns Notes on contributors.