Cultural Amnesia: Notes in the Margin of My Time

Description

An almanac combining a comprehensive survey of modern culture with an annotated index of who-was-who and what-was-what, Cultural Amnesia is Clive's unique take on the places and the faces that shaped the 20th-century. From Charles de Gaulle to Thomas Mann, from Hitler to Wittgenstein, from Argentina to Australia, this varied and unfailingly absorbing book is both story and history, both public memoir and personal record - and provides an essential field-guide to the vast movements of taste, intellect, politics and delusion that helped to prepare the times we live in now.

Clive James is the author of more than 20 books. As well as essays, he has published collections of literary and television criticism, travel writing, verse and novels, plus three volumes of autobiography. In 1992 he was made a Member of the Order of Australia and in 2003 he was awarded the Philip Hodgins memorial medal for literature.

[A] fabulously gifted, enviably well-read, generously inclusive, and always commonsensical writer -- John Banville * New York Review of Books * One stupendous starburst of wild brilliance. -- Simon Schama Aphoristic and acutely provocative: a crash course in civilization. -- J. M. Coetzee This is a beautiful book. James proves himself not only to be in possession of a towering intellect, but a singular ability to communicate his passions. * Observer * Witty, insightful and unashamedly erudite, the book is a superb miscellany of 20th-century cultural and political subjects. * The Sunday Times * Over the past forty years James has been scribbling notes in the margins of the books he has read . . . and this is the result. Clever, contentious and funny. * Guardian * An eclectic journey through the 20th century, as Clive James explores the careers of luminaries such as Charles de Gaulle and Charlie Chaplin. * Daily Express *