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22 General Interest
The Memoirs of Walter Bagehot
Frank Prochaska
Walter Bagehot (1826–1877) was a prominent English journalist,
banker and man of letters. For many years he was editor of
The Economist, and to this day the magazine includes a weekly
‘Bagehot’ column. His analyses of politics, economics and public affairs
were nothing short of brilliant. Sadly, he left no memoir.
How, then, does this book bear the title, The Memoirs of Walter Bagehot?
Frank Prochaska explains, ‘Given my longstanding interest in Bagehot’s
life and times, I decided to compose a memoir on his behalf’. And so,
in this imaginative reconstruction of the memoir Bagehot might have
written, Prochaska assumes his subject’s voice, draws on his extensive
writings (Bagehot’s Collected Works fill 15 volumes), and scrupulously
avoids what Bagehot considered that most unpardonable of faults –
dullness.
A faux autobiography allows for considerable license, but Prochaska
remains true to Bagehot’s character and accurate in his depiction of the
times. The memoir immerses us in the spirit of the Victorian era and
makes us wish to have known Walter Bagehot. He is, Prochaska
observes, the Victorian with whom we would most want to have dinner.
August
224 pp. 203x127mm.
HB ISBN 978-0-300-19554-5 £18.99*
Frank Prochaska, the author of more than a dozen books, has taught,
researched and published British history throughout his career. He is
Honorary Fellow, Institute of Historical Research, London University,
and Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.
Primo Levi
The Matter of a Life
Berel Lang
In 1943, twenty-four-year-old Primo Levi had just begun a career in
chemistry when, after joining a partisan group, he was captured by the
Italian Fascist Militia and deported to Auschwitz. Of the 650 Italian
Jews in his transport, he was one of only 24 who survived the eleven
months before the camp’s liberation. Upon returning to his native
Turin, Levi resumed work as a chemist and was employed for thirty
years by a company specialising in paints and other chemical coatings.
Yet soon after his return to Turin, he also began writing – memoirs,
essays, novels, short stories, poetry – and it is for this work that he has
won international recognition. His first book, If This Is a Man, issued
in 1947 after great difficulty in finding a publisher, remains a landmark
document of the 20th century.
Jewish Lives
January
224 pp. 210x140mm. 7 b/w illus.
HB ISBN 978-0-300-13723-1 £18.99*
Berel Lang’s groundbreaking biography shines new light on Levi’s role
as a major intellectual and literary figure – an important Holocaust
writer and witness but also an innovative moral thinker in whom his
two roles as chemist and writer converged, providing the ‘matter’ of his
life. Levi’s writing combined a scientist’s attentiveness to structure and
detail, an ironic imagination that found in all nature an ingenuity at
once inviting and evasive, and a powerful and passionate moral
imagination. Lang’s approach provides a philosophically acute and
nuanced analysis of Levi as thinker, witness, writer and scientific
detective.
Berel Lang is Professor of Philosophy Emeritus, State University of
New York, Albany. He is the author or editor of twenty-one books.