Considering a range of present-day phenomena, from the immediacy effects of literature to the impact of hypercommunication, globalization, and sports, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht notes an important shift in our relationship to history and the passage of time. Although we continue to use concepts inherited[...]

By the hundreds of millions we show up, stand in line, turn on, and tune in to watch, mesmerised, as athletes perform. And yet this experience, so widely craved and intensely felt, we commonly dismiss as 'only a game'. A book that looks beyond the usual explanations of why sport fascinates, "In Prai[...]

What are the various atmospheres or moods that the reading of literary works can trigger? Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht has long argued that the function of literature is not so much to describe, or to re-present, as to make present. Here, he goes one step further, exploring the substance and reality of lan[...]