On Saturday, while out with my parents who I haven't seen ina good while I happened upon a second hand copy of The Master and His Emissary in a charity shop. £2, good nick. I guess it was meant to be.
It is now in the 'to be read' stack. I loved Cultural Amnesia btw so I am pretty confident you are going to keep you 100% book recommendation batting average intact.
Yes, I thought you would like Cultural Amnesia - a beautiful book on many levels. You could never guess from seeing Clive James on TV that he had this taste and style.
The Master and His Emissary is really 3 books in 1: neuroscience, then philosophy, then cultural history. So you just need to make it through the big neuroscience chapter near the start. (There is a revised and expanded edition - hope you found that one - although I don't think there is that much of a difference.)
The author was originally a literature/philosophy scholar at Oxford before he trained as a psychiatrist. You will feel this throughout the book. The cultural history sections were a cascade of aha moments for me - everything starts to make sense. The central idea gives the best explanation for things like twitter brain and hustle culture etc, plus other themes of yours like idleness, slowing down etc.
On Saturday, while out with my parents who I haven't seen ina good while I happened upon a second hand copy of The Master and His Emissary in a charity shop. £2, good nick. I guess it was meant to be.
It is now in the 'to be read' stack. I loved Cultural Amnesia btw so I am pretty confident you are going to keep you 100% book recommendation batting average intact.
Cheers.
Yes, I thought you would like Cultural Amnesia - a beautiful book on many levels. You could never guess from seeing Clive James on TV that he had this taste and style.
The Master and His Emissary is really 3 books in 1: neuroscience, then philosophy, then cultural history. So you just need to make it through the big neuroscience chapter near the start. (There is a revised and expanded edition - hope you found that one - although I don't think there is that much of a difference.)
The author was originally a literature/philosophy scholar at Oxford before he trained as a psychiatrist. You will feel this throughout the book. The cultural history sections were a cascade of aha moments for me - everything starts to make sense. The central idea gives the best explanation for things like twitter brain and hustle culture etc, plus other themes of yours like idleness, slowing down etc.