Cultural Amnesia

By Clive James,

Book cover of Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts

Book description

This international bestseller is an encyclopedic A-Z masterpiece-the perfect introduction to the very core of Western humanism. Clive James rescues, or occasionally destroys, the careers of many of the greatest thinkers, humanists, musicians, artists, and philosophers of the twentieth century. Soaring to Montaigne-like heights, Cultural Amnesia is precisely the book…

When you buy books, we may earn a commission that helps keep the lights on. Or join the rebellion as a member.

Why read it?

3 authors picked Cultural Amnesia as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

I love this book because it’s a collection of mini-biographies of contemporary writers, musicians, and artists from the 20th century, some I’d heard of and some I hadn’t, but they’re all weird.

Like, as I’m writing this, I just flipped to a random page and there’s a section on Michael Mann, who once owned the apartment I’m writing this in. And then I flip a little more and get five succinct and totally bizarre pages about Mao.

I love how random his book is!

A collection of biographical essays, from Louis Armstrong and Jorge Luis Borges to Isoroku Yamamoto and Stefan Zweig.

Written with James’s distinctive wit and verve, each essay distills features specific to an individual and also characteristic of the long twentieth century. James is anti-ideological and so are his heroes—Nadezhda Mandelstam, Albert Camus, Duke Ellington, among others.

They tolerated ambiguity and resisted certainty even in the midst of unimaginable violence and shocking injustices. (He includes many of his “intellectual bêtes noires”—Edward Said, Bertold Brecht, Mao Zedong.) This deeply personal collection constitutes James’s battering ram against the walls erected by willful…

From Abby's list on when history gets personal.

Clive James will probably be remembered in this country for his moving poem Red Maple, and for a decade’s worth of wry commentary talking about the Japanese Gameshow, ‘Endurance’ on TV, but his essays and literary criticism were every bit as significant (and often just as funny). Cultural Amnesia is a peculiar collection of short essays on important literary, cultural, and historical figures of the past, which James compiled over the course of his life. Many of the subjects will be familiar to everyone: Charlie Chaplin, Coco Chanel, Adolf Hitler, but many will not (but should be): Egon Friedell…

Want books like Cultural Amnesia?

Our community of 12,000+ authors has personally recommended 100 books like Cultural Amnesia.

Browse books like Cultural Amnesia

Book cover of A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City
Book cover of Danube: A Sentimental Journey from the Source to the Black Sea
Book cover of Daily Life in Late Antiquity

Share your top 3 reads of 2024!

And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.

1,117

readers submitted
so far, will you?

5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in humanism, Western culture, and artists?

Humanism 34 books
Western Culture 56 books
Artists 95 books