Awards

• Short-listed for NCR Book Award 1996
• Shortlisted for NCR Book Award 1996.
• Winner of W H Smith Annual Literary Award 1996.
• Winner of WH Smith Annual Literary Award 1996
• Winner of WH Smith Annual Literary Award 1996.
• Winner of WH Smith Literary Prize 1996.

Overview

‘Landscape and Memory’ is a history book unlike any other. In a series of journeys through space and time, it examines our relationship with the landscape around us – rivers, mountains, forests – the impact each of them has had on our culture and imaginations, and the way in which we, in turn, have shaped them to answer our needs.

Full Product Details

9780006863489

Table of Contents

Reviews

'One of the most intelligent, original, stimulating, self-indulgent, perverse and irresistibly enjoyable books I have ever read.' Philip Ziegler 'This is a tour de force of vivid historical writing!It is astonishingly learned, and yet offered with verve, humour and an unflagging sense of delight.' Michael Ignatieff, IOS 'Simon Schama is a giant, a great thinking machine and a golden lyricist as well. He takes us beyond geololgy and vegetation into myth and memory, to unravel the ancient connections which bring mountain, forest and river into our soul.' Brian Masters, MoS 'Schama long ago established himself as one of the most learned, original and provocative historians in the English speaking world!Unclassifiable, inimitable, fascinating, Landscape and Memory will inform and haunt, chasten and enrage. It is that rarest of commodities in our cultural marketplace -- a work of genuine originality.' Anthony Grafton, New Republic 'Schama's inensely visual prose is the product of an historical imagination which is not restrained by conventional academic inhibitions. It is his ability and willingness to write this sort of narrative prose -- vivid, elaborate, unashamedly colourful -- that makes Simon Schama the obvious modern successor to Macaulay. He is a masterly narrator who spins and embroiders his yarns with unflagging zest. The book abounds in virtuoso passages, some of them reminiscent of Rabelais or Sterne.' Keith Thomas, NYRB

'One of the most intelligent, original, stimulating, self-indulgent, perverse and irresistibly enjoyable books I have ever read.' Philip Ziegler 'This is a tour de force of vivid historical writing...It is astonishingly learned, and yet offered with verve, humour and an unflagging sense of delight.' Michael Ignatieff, IOS 'Simon Schama is a giant, a great thinking machine and a golden lyricist as well. He takes us beyond geololgy and vegetation into myth and memory, to unravel the ancient connections which bring mountain, forest and river into our soul.' Brian Masters, MoS 'Schama long ago established himself as one of the most learned, original and provocative historians in the English speaking world...Unclassifiable, inimitable, fascinating, Landscape and Memory will inform and haunt, chasten and enrage. It is that rarest of commodities in our cultural marketplace - a work of genuine originality.' Anthony Grafton, New Republic

'This is a tour de force of vivid historical writing... It is astonishing learned, and yet offered with verve, humour and an unflagging sense of delight.' Michael Ignatieff, IOS'Simon Schama is a giant, a great thinking machine and a golden lyricist as well. He takes us beyond geololgy and vegetation into myth and memory, to unravel the ancient connections which bring mountain, forest and river into our soul.' Brian Masters, MoS'Schama long ago established himself as one of the most learned, original and provocative historians in the English speaking world... Unclassifiable, inimitable, fascinating, Landscape and Memory will inform and haunt, chasten and enrage. It is that rarest of commodities in our cultural marketplace -- a work of genuine originality.' Anthony Grafton, New Republic'Schama's inensely visual prose is the product of an historical imagination which is not restrained by conventional academic inhibitions. It is his ability and willingness to write this sort of narrative prose -- vivid, elaborate, unashamedly colourful -- that makes Simon Schama the obvious modern successor to Macaulay. He is a masterly narrator who spins and embroiders his yarns with unflagging zest. The book abounds in virtuoso passages, some of them reminiscent of Rabelais or Sterne.' Keith Thomas, NYRB

With this fascinating, encyclopedic survey of cultural landscapes, Schama (Dead Certainties, 1991, etc.) demonstrates once again just why he holds a charmed place in the literature of historical interpretation. The landscape is a work of the mind, argues Schama, another compartment in the cultural baggage we all lug about. The scenery is built up as much from strata of memory as from layers of rock, shaped by the same rich and complex traditions that frame other aspects of our cultural world. Without the proper context (or rather the proper contexts, as our way of seeing changes with the prevailing ideological fashion), we are unable to harvest from a look at the land all that it has to offer - all the allegorical, mythological, and metaphorical notes (not to mention a greater appreciation of just what we stand to lose by continuing to degrade the land); instead, we emerge with an impoverished sense of place. Schama proceeds by slicing the landscape into three elements - wood, water, and rock-and then digging deep and wide to excavate their manifold traditions, unveiling a luxurious wealth of landscape history. But Schama's project goes beyond the cataloging of marvelous incidentals and minutiae-from Druid grove to tabernacle, from Mt. Olympus to Mt. Rushmore, from sacred stream to the Yangtze. As each and every aspect of the cultural landscape comes bubbling up through the overburden of history, Schama knits it together with what has come before, creating on the page an environment so palpable you can almost crawl inside and marvel at an ancient oak, a swath of meadow, and do so through the eyes of a pagan, or a renegade, or a Victorian mountaineer. Wearing his erudition lightly, Schama effortlessly juggles a landslide of material and presents his tale with the captivating, inviting intimacy of a gifted storyteller. (Kirkus Reviews)

Citizens, patriots, liberators: Simon Schama has always had a good eye for a subject, but in Landscape and Memory we find him discussing wood, water and rock - what on earth is he getting at? In fact, he is undermining those who would like to compartmentalize and channel the study of history into a narrow and recognizable framework. This a different 'way of looking', not at people and events, but at the myths about landscape which form part of the common Western cultural tradition. In nearly 600 pages and with 300 illustrations, he travels from one side of the world to the other, surveying the ways in which landscape and the elemental forces of nature have served to influence the imaginations of peoples through the centuries. An interesting and worthwhile read because, as all good historians should, Schama forces you to think, and to reconsider the apparently familiar in a new, different, and sometimes startling light. (Kirkus UK)

Author Information

Simon Schama is University Professor of Art History and History at Columbia University. He is the author of 'Patriots and Liberators', which won the Wolfson Prize for History, 'The Embarrassment of Riches', 'Citizens' which won the 1990 NCR book award for non-fiction, 'Dead Certainties', 'Landscape and Memory' which won the W H Smith Literary Award in 1995, and 'Rembrandt's Eyes' (1999). He is also the author of the monumental 'History of Britain' published in three volumes. He was art critic of the 'New Yorker' from 1995 to 1998 and was made CBE in the 2001 New Year's Honours list.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available