Description:
"This extraordinary book provides a masterful survey of a notoriously baffling subject, yet does so in wonderfully accessible and engaging prose. What Is the Present? is superb scholarship but also exciting news--a captivating report from the front lines of cultural and intellectual engagement. I love this book."--Jesse Matz, author of Lasting Impressions: The Legacies of Impressionism in Contemporary Culture
"A bracing, expansive, and consistently surprising meditation on the notion of the present. In an authoritative yet lucid style, Michael North animates with great panache some of the most profound and persistent questions in the history of ideas."--David James, author of Modernist Futures: Innovation and Inheritance in the Contemporary Novel
Brief description: Michael North is professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles. His many books include Novelty: A History of the New, Machine-Age Comedy, and Camera Works: Photography and the Twentieth-Century Word.
Review Quotes: "A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year"