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The Fall of Public Man
The Fall of Public Man
Nov 15, 2024 3:34 AM

Author:Richard Sennett

The Fall of Public Man

Richard Sennett's The Fall of Public Man examines the growing imbalance between private and public experience, and asks what can bring us to reconnect with our communities.

Are we now so self-absorbed that we take little interest in the world beyond our own lives? Or has public life left no place for individuals to participate?

Tracing the changing nature of urban society from the eighteenth century to the world we now live in, and the decline of involvement in political life in recent decades, Richard Sennett discusses the causes of our social withdrawal. His landmark study of the imbalance of modern civilization provides a fascinating perspective on the relationship between public life and the cult of the individual.

'Brilliant ... One admires the breadth of Professor Sennett's erudition, the reach of his historical imagination, the doggedness of his analysis ... Buy this book and read it. Ironically, it may provide a key to happiness'

  Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York Times

'A powerful argument for a more formal public culture and a swipe against the rise of a self-indulgent counter-culture'

  Melissa Benn, Guardian

'A provocative book ... Sennett brings us to an undeniably recognizable place, the contemporary urban scene'

  Richard Todd, Atlantic Monthly

Richard Sennett's previous books include The Fall of Public Man, The Corrosion of Character, Flesh and Stone and Respect. He was founder director of the New York Institute for the Humanities, and is now University Professor at New York University and Academic Governor and Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics.

Reviews

Refreshing and invigorating, full of fascinating fact

—— Independent on Sunday

This is an extraordinary little book, unputdownable, written in the most lyrical, flowing style which paints vivid pictures and, at the same time, punches into place hard facts that stop you dead in your tracks. A compulsive read

—— Sir Roy Strong , Express on Sunday

Crisply and elegantly written - piques the appetite and sharpens the senses

—— Sunday Telegraph

A rich stew about every salt-influenced concoction and creation, from the first sausages and cured hams and fish sauces to the invention of parmesan, tomato ketchup and Tabasco sauce

—— Financial Times

An entertainingly anecdotal and lovingly partisan history.

—— Independent

Keates has a dry humour that is very modern and I loved his relish for the subject

—— Daily Express

A fast-moving, well-researched and readable account of a dramatic slice of European history

—— Tablet

... This bright, engaging and breezy book ... suits the tenor of our times.

—— The Times

A remarkable feat of documentary detail and novelistic vividness...an unfolding literary event

—— New York Times Book Review

The Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus tells the story of Vladek Spiegelman, a Jewish survivor of Hitler's Europe, and his son, a cartoonist coming to terms with his father's story. Maus approaches the unspeakable through the diminutive. Its form, the cartoon (the Nazis are cats, the Jews mice), shocks us out of any lingering sense of familiarity and succeeds in 'drawing us closer to the bleak heart of the Holocaust'

—— New York Times

A quiet triumph, moving and simple - impossible to describe accurately, and impossible to achieve in any medium but comics

—— Washington Post

All too infrequently, a book comes along that' s as daring as it is acclaimed. Art Spiegelman's Maus is just such a book

—— Esquire

A remarkable work, awesome in its conception and execution... at one and the same time a novel, a documentary, a memoir, and a comic book. Brilliant, just brilliant

—— Jules Feiffer

Maus is a masterpiece, and it's in the nature of such things to generate mysteries, and pose more questions than they answer. But if the notion of a canon means anything, Maus is there at the heart of it. Like all great stories, it tells us more about ourselves than we could ever suspect

—— Philip Pullman

Spiegelman's Maus changed comics forever. Comics now can be about anything

—— Alison Bechdel

Reading [his work] has been an amazing lesson in storytelling

—— Etgar Keret

It can be easy to forget how much of a game-changer Maus was.

—— Washington Post
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