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The Memory Chalet

Author Tony Judt
Ebook
Penguin Adult HC/TR | Penguin Books
On sale Nov 11, 2010 | 240 Pages | 9781101484012
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A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year

“[A] tremendously moving memorial to a first-class historian and essayist . . . humane, fearless, unsparingly honest.” —The Financial Times

“[A] memorable collection from a memorable man.” —BookPage

"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.
© John R. Rifkin

Tony Judt (1948-2010) was educated at King’s College, Cambridge, and l’École Normale Supérieure, Paris, and taught at Cambridge, Oxford, and Berkeley. He was the Erich Maria Remarque Professor of European Studies at New University and the director of the Remarque Institute, which he founded in 1995. Among other books, Judt was the author of Thinking the Twentieth Century, The Memory Chalet, When the Facts Change (edited by Jennifer Homans), Reappraisals, and Postwar, which was one of The New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of 2005 and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

View titles by Tony Judt

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A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year

“[A] tremendously moving memorial to a first-class historian and essayist . . . humane, fearless, unsparingly honest.” —The Financial Times

“[A] memorable collection from a memorable man.” —BookPage

"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.

Author

© John R. Rifkin

Tony Judt (1948-2010) was educated at King’s College, Cambridge, and l’École Normale Supérieure, Paris, and taught at Cambridge, Oxford, and Berkeley. He was the Erich Maria Remarque Professor of European Studies at New University and the director of the Remarque Institute, which he founded in 1995. Among other books, Judt was the author of Thinking the Twentieth Century, The Memory Chalet, When the Facts Change (edited by Jennifer Homans), Reappraisals, and Postwar, which was one of The New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of 2005 and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

View titles by Tony Judt

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