Richard Terdiman is Professor of Literature and the History of Consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

This breathtaking explication of the importance of memory in modernity sets the stage for brilliant readings that analyze a series of canonical works as symptoms of and reflections on the memory crisis.... Present Past is most importantly a contribution to our historical understanding of modernism and modernity.- Eugene W. Holland (Nineteenth-Century French Studies)

Richard Terdiman is Professor of Literature and the History of Consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

This breathtaking explication of the importance of memory in modernity sets the stage for brilliant readings that analyze a series of canonical works as symptoms of and reflections on the memory crisis.... Present Past is most importantly a contribution to our historical understanding of modernism and modernity.- Eugene W. Holland (Nineteenth-Century French Studies)