Get Free eBook Sample
Until his death from ALS in 2010 Tony Judt was the Erich Maria Remarque Professor in European Studies at New York University. In 1996 he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 2007 a corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. In 2009 Judt was awarded a Special Orwell Prize for Lifetime Achievement for his contribution to British Political writing. Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 (2005) was a runner up for the 2006 BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction and Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction.
The Memory Chalet
by Tony Judt
eBook
$4.99
-
ISBN-13:
9781101484012
- Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
- Publication date: 11/11/2010
- Sold by: Penguin Group
- Format: eBook
- Pages: 240
- File size: 185 KB
- Age Range: 18 Years
What People are Saying About This
Available on NOOK devices and apps
Want a NOOK? Explore Now
4.99
In Stock
"It might be thought the height of poor taste to ascribe good fortune to a healthy man with a young family struck down at the age of sixty by an incurable degenerative disorder from which he must shortly die. But there is more than one sort of luck. To fall prey to a motor neuron disease is surely to have offended the Gods at some point, and there is nothing more to be said. But if you must suffer thus, better to have a well-stocked head." —Tony Judt
The Memory Chalet is a memoir unlike any you have ever read before. Each essay charts some experience or remembrance of the past through the sieve of Tony Judt’s prodigious mind. His youthful love of a particular London bus route evolves into a reflection on public civility and interwar urban planning. Memories of the 1968 student riots of Paris meander through the divergent sex politics of Europe, before concluding that his generation “was a revolutionary generation, but missed the revolution.” A series of road trips across America lead not just to an appreciation of American history, but to an eventual acquisition of citizenship. Foods and trains and long-lost smells all compete for Judt’s attention; but for us, he has forged his reflections into an elegant arc of analysis. All as simply and beautifully arranged as a Swiss chalet—a reassuring refuge deep in the mountains of memory.
Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought
-
- Thinking the Twentieth Century
- by Timothy Snyder
-
- Ill Fares the Land
- by Ta-Nehisi Coates
-
- Reappraisals: Reflections on…
- by Tony Judt
-
- Human Smoke: The Beginnings of…
- by Nicholson Baker
-
- Ideas: A History of Thought…
- by Peter Watson
-
- The Modern Mind: An…
- by Peter Watson
-
- Doctor Thorne (Barnes &…
- by Anthony Trollope
-
- The Man Who Would Be King: The…
- by Ben Macintyre
-
- The Crusades Through Arab Eyes
- by Amin Maalouf
-
- Great Tales from English…
- by Robert Lacey
-
- Strategy: A History
- by Lawrence Freedman
-
- The Birth of Britain (Barnes…
- by Winston S. ChurchillMichael Frassetto
-
- The Mental Floss History of…
- by Erik SassSteve WiegandEditors of Mental Floss
-
- The Enemy at the Gate:…
- by Andrew Wheatcroft
-
- In Search of the Dark Ages
- by Michael Wood
-
- Mukiwa: A White Boy in Africa
- by Peter Godwin
Recently Viewed
Geoff Dyer
With its vivid haze of detail, The Memory Chalet is the work of a historian forced to do without many of the tools on which he had placed the greatest reliance. It used to be said—maybe still is—that in the instant of death, your life flashes before your eyes. By prolonging Judt's life the miracles of medical technology effectively extended the process of his dying over several grueling years. So what we have is that instant of compressed recollection expanded and expounded upon. It is the furthest cry imaginable—not a cry at all—from The Death of Ivan Ilyich. You can almost sense the soul of the historian leaving his body, leaving the still-living body of work behind.—The New York Times
From the Publisher
"[A] tremendously moving memorial to a first-class historian and essayist... humane, fearless, unsparingly honest."—The Financial Times
"Each of these beautifully crafted pieces presents a self-contained vignette. Together they form a picture of an age, seen through the prism of an extraordinary mind... Judt never pretended that the illness that befell him was a hidden blessing. 'Loss is loss, and nothing is gained by calling it a nicer name.' But if tragedy cannot be redeemed it can sometimes be defied, as Judt confirms in this exquisitely graceful memoir of a happy life."
—The Daily Beast
"More than a memoir, [The Memory Chalet is] a bracing spiritual autobiography of a man whose lofty and old-fashioned goal, repeatedly realized in these pages, was to think for himself - and push each of us to do the same."
—Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel
"[B]oth an autobiography and a lovely little social history of the second half of the 20th century... all in a spare and nicely demotic prose."
—Time
"Despite his stature as a 'public intellectual,' Judt's observations in this collection are more impressionistic than analytical. For the most part, he's not arguing points but simply re-savoring the things that once pleased him... This is a memorable collection from a memorable man."
—BookPage