Peter Conrad's review of Verso's new edition of Walter Benjamin's archive serves as a poignant reflection on the man himself and his ambition to exhume a forgotten European past before it vanished for good under the heavy boot of fascism. Don't forget that we're issuing the latest in our collection of Benjamin volumes this May, and this time it's the big one. "The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility" is Benjamin's most well-known work, a document that serves as a foundation for modern criticism, and probably one of the most endlessly-cited pieces written during the 20th Century.
Our new edition, The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media, collects the strongest version of this seminal essay, along with Benjamin's other writings on media, many appearing here for the first time in English. And carrying on with our tradition of making Benjamin's writings look as good as they read, we've illustrated the cover with a fantastic drawing of Benjamin by none other than Ralph Steadman of "Fear and Loathing" fame.
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