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Product Summary
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN-10: 0393061167
ISBN-13: 9780393061161
Buy.com Sku: 202886635
Publish Date: 4/10/2007
Dimensions:
(in Inches) 9.5H x 6.5L x 2.25T
Pages:
876
Age Range:
NA
See more in Essays
| Containing more than 100 original essays organized by quotations, James illuminates, rescues, or occasionally destroys the careers of many of the greatest thinkers, humanists, musicians, artists, and philosophers of the 20th century. 110 photographs. |
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From the Publisher:
In a compilation of one hundred essays, a critic offers an illuminating study of humanism that examines the work of Louis Armstrong, Sigmund Freud, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Franz Kafka, Walter Benjamin, Marcel Proust, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and other notable philosophers, musicians, artists, humanists, and writers of the twentieth century. |
Annotation:
In CULTURAL AMNESIA Clive James, an Australian comic intellectual, has attempted the impossible: to encapsulate the lives and ideas of the of the most significant contributors--in art, music, politics, and everything else--to modern culture. Amazingly, he not only nearly succeeds, but he writes with such verve, wit, and insight that digesting the 800-plus pages feels like a breeze. Cultural giants like Hitler, Camus, Chaplin, and Satie intermingle with more obscure and forgotten (thus the "amnesia" of the title: we are always forgetting the people who matter) individuals such as Viennese scholar Egon Friedell, Basque philosopher Miguel de Unamuno, and Albert Einstein's cousin Alfred. Mixing ideas with aphorism and anecdotes, James makes the most obscure topics delectable. If you're hungry for knowledge, CULTURAL AMNESIA is a veritable feast.
In CULTURAL AMNESIA Clive James, an Australian comic intellectual, has attempted the impossible: to encapsulate the lives and ideas of the of the most significant contributors--in art, music, politics, and everything else--to modern culture. Amazingly, he not only nearly succeeds, but he writes with such verve, wit, and insight that digesting the 800-plus pages feels like a breeze. Cultural giants like Hitler, Camus, Chaplin, and Satie intermingle with more obscure and forgotten (thus the "amnesia" of the title: we are always forgetting the people who matter) individuals such as Viennese scholar Egon Friedell, Basque philosopher Miguel de Unamuno, and Albert Einstein's cousin Alfred. Mixing ideas with aphorism and anecdotes, James makes the most obscure topics delectable. If you're hungry for knowledge, CULTURAL AMNESIA is a veritable feast.
"[Clive] James is a natural master of the art form where 'serious delivery avails itself of comic timing'"
- Liesl Schillinger
04/08/2007
"[Clive] James's brilliantly aphoristic prose, full of aesthetic insights but careful not to let aesthetics obscure morality, makes for a delightful browse suffused with a potent message." (starred review)
01/22/2007
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