Except for the Marabar Caves--and they are twenty miles off--the city of Chandrapore presents nothing extraordinary. Edged rather than washed by the river Ganges, it trails for a couple of miles along the bank, scarcely distinguishable from the rubbish it deposits so freely. There are no bathing-steps on the river front, as the Ganges happens not to be holy here; indeed there is no river front, and bazaars shut out the wide and shifting panorama of the stream. The streets are mean, the temples ineffective, and though a few fine houses exist they are hidden away in gardens or down alleys whose filth deters all but the invited guest...

  Charlotte's Web is a children's novel by American author E. B. White and illustrated by Garth Williams; it was published in 1952 by Harper & Brothers. The novel tells the story of a pig named Wilbur and his friendship with a barn spider named Charlotte. When Wilbur is in danger of being slaughtered by the farmer, Charlotte writes messages praising Wilbur (such as "Some Pig") in her web in order to persuade the farmer to let him live.

  Where I want to start telling is the day I left Pencey Prep. Pencey Prep is this school that’s in Agerstown, Pennsylvania. You probably heard of it. You’ve probably seen the ads, anyway. They advertise in about a thousand magazines, always showing some hotshot guy on a horse jumping over a fence. Like as if all you ever did at Pencey was play polo all the time. I never even once saw a horse anywhere near the place. And underneath the guy on the horse’s picture, it always says: “Since 1888 we have been molding boys into splendid, clear-thinking young men.” Strictly for the birds. They don’t do any damn more molding at Pencey than they do at any other school. And I didn’t know anybody there that was splendid and clear-thinking and all. Maybe two guys. If that many. And they probably came to Pencey that way.

  He didn’t say any more but we’ve always been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence I’m inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men. Most of the confidences were unsought—frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon—for the intimate revelations of young men or at least the terms in which they express them are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions. Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth.

  Эта книга содержит интересную и полезную информацию из области астрономии, языкознания, естественных наук, искусства, культурологии, медицины. Станьте эрудитом с этой замечательной энциклопедией! Издание адресовано широкой читательской аудитории.

  Китайская мудрость гласит: «ребенок учится сложному искусству речи без помощи великих учителей». Удивительная способность человека копировать других (а значит, учиться у них), разделять их чувства (а значит, понимать их) заложена в самой нашей природе. Но только недавно ученые выяснили, как именно и где она заложена. Эта революция в нейронауке произошла после открытия особых клеток мозга, «зеркальных нейронов», ответственных за имитацию и эмпатию. Именно благодаря их работе мы можем жить в обществе себе подобных, а расстройство «зеркально-нейронной» системы приводит к «провалу социализации», к аутизму.
  Об истории этого замечательного открытия, о его последствиях для науки и для обычных людей читайте в знаменитой книге «Отражаясь в людях» Марко Якобони – одного из тех ученых, которые находятся на переднем крае нейронауки.