The Cultural Amnesia special edition eBook comes with an exclusive foreword from the author and three additional essays. These eBook extras are offered both as an extension of the scope of Cultural Amnesia - of the story of a hundred years as told by Clive James - and as a preview of writing that will be included in Clive’s next essay collection.

In his introduction to the extras, Clive writes about wrangling with the size and extent of his project:

'I thought that I would have room to prove that a Formula One racing driver could be partly motivated by the temperament of an artist. When it became apparent that there would be no room even to suggest such a thing, I had to think again. But I didn’t drop the idea, because it was based on an aesthetic perception, and that kind of idea is impossible to drop. We don’t hold such ideas. They hold us.'

In ‘Damon’s Bravest Day’, one of the special edition extras, Clive James finds the space to include this idea in Cultural Amnesia after all. The other extras are ‘Starting with Sludge’, a journey through the reading life of the young Clive James, and ‘Nicole Kidman’s Poetic Stalker’.

For the Cultural Amnesia special edition eBook you might find the bookmarks feature useful. We include a ‘Begin reading’ link, so that you can dive directly into the eBook, but, with its multiplicity of enticing subjects, it’s great to be able to start reading anywhere in the book, using the bookmarks to jump around from Terry Gilliam to Walter Benjamin to Damon Hill.

Entering into the spirit of the book, which is subtitled ‘Notes in the Margin of My Time’, you can also add your own bookmarks and annotations on any page, creating your own threads of interest that run across a hundred years, and more. The hyperlinked index might be handy too!

Other features include the ability to re-size the text to a degree you find most comfortable, and the weightless portability of the digital medium, for those who fear being flattened by the hardback.

The Cultural Amnesia special edition eBook comes 'DRM-free', that is, without a 'wrapper' that locks the eBook to a single reader or device. This is a deliberate choice on the part of both Pan Macmillan and Clive James, which we hope will make this eBook more attractive and even easier to use.

You can browse inside the eBook using the widget below - just click the cover to get started. There is also an audio excerpt to listen to. Please feel free to add the widget to your own blog or site.