"A loving and breezy set of essays" on today's most addictive TV shows from "an incisive and hilarious critic" ( Slate).Television is not what it once was. Award-winning author and critic Clive James spent decades covering the medium, and witnessed a radical change in content, format, and programming, and in the very manner in which TV is watched.Here he examines this unique cultural revolution, providing a brilliant, eminently entertaining analysi...

**Abridged for audio. Read by the author, Clive James.With fascinating essays on towering figures from Anna Akhmatova to Stefan Zweig, via Charles de Gaulle, Hitler, Thomas Mann and Wittgenstein, Cultural Amnesia is one of the crowning achievements in Clive James's illustrious career as a critic.'One stupendous starburst of wild brilliance' – Simon Schama, historian and author of The Power of Art**A comprehensive survey of modern culture, Cultural ...

"[A] collection of Clive James's essays on a variety of literary topics . . . This is sanity, humor and acuity in the face of death" ( The Wall Street Journal).In 2010, Clive James was diagnosed with terminal leukemia. Deciding that "if you don't know the exact moment when the lights will go out, you might as well read until they do," James moved his library to his Cambridge house, where he would "live, read, and perhaps even write." James is the award-win...

A best-selling classic around the world, Clive James’s hilarious memoir has long been unavailable in the United States.Before James Frey famously fabricated his memoir, Clive James wrote a refreshingly candid book that made no claims to be accurate, precise, or entirely truthful, only to entertain. In an exercise of literary exorcism, James set out to put his childhood in Australia behind him by rendering it as part novel, part memoir. Now, nearly thirty years afte...

Step into the heart of Jamaica through the eyes of someone who lived its stories, traditions, struggles, and triumphs firsthand.The Fantasy: A True Jamaican Living is a powerful memoir by Clive James that captures the essence of growing up in Portland, Jamaica. From childhood adventures and family traditions to the rhythms of reggae and dancehall, the book paints a vivid picture of Jamaican culture and the values that shape its people. Through twenty-one engaging chapters, readers ...

"I can't remember when I've learned as much from something I've read—or laughed as much while doing it." —Jacob Weisberg, SlateThis 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,

Television and TV viewing are not what they once were—and that’s a good thing, according to award-winning author and critic Clive James. Since serving as television columnist for the London Observer from 1972 to 1982, James has witnessed a radical change in content, format, and programming and in the very manner in which television is watched. Here he examines this unique cultural revolution, providing a brilliant, eminently entertaining analysis of many of the medium’s most notable twenty...

With essays taking the reader from London to Bali, theatre to library and from election campaigns to television, The Meaning of Recognition collects the best of Clive James on art, culture and politics from 2001–2005.Whether analysing Bing Crosby, Bruno Schulz or Shakespeare, celebrating The Sopranos and The West Wing, or lamenting the decline of Formula One, Clive James writes with style and substance, offering food for thought across a ...

In this deracinated age appears a miraculous epic that pays homage to Dante and Camus.“Few people read Poetry any more, but I still wish to write its seedlings down, if only for the lull of gathering: no less a harvest season for being the last time,” writes Clive James in his epic poem, The River in the Sky. What emerges from this lamentation is a soaring epic of exceptional depth and overwhelming feeling, all the more extraordinary given its appearance i...

The “technically and emotionally heart-stopping poems” (Spectator) of Clive James are collected in this decades-spanning volume.The poetry of Clive James has been delighting readers and winning awards for decades. His recent poems looking back over his extraordinarily rich life have brought him an even wider readership; some, such as “Japanese Maple” (first published in The New Yorker), became global news events upon their publication. In this fir...

Clive James presents the “prequel” to his celebrated Cultural Amnesia—forty-nine essays that form a cultural education in one brilliant volume.Six years after the much-heralded publication of Cultural Amnesia, Clive James presents his “prequel”—forty-nine essays that he has selected as the best of his half-century career. Originally appearing as As of This Writing, Cultural Cohesion examines the twisted cultural terrain of the tw...

Legendary poet and critic Clive James provides an unforgettably eloquent book on how to read and appreciate modern poetry.Since its initial publication, Poetry Notebook has become a must-read for any lover of poetry. Somewhat of an iconoclast, Clive James gets to the heart of truths about poetry not always addressed, “some hard” but always “firmly committed to celebration” (Martin Amis). He presents a distillation of all he’s learned about the art form tha...