Nostalgia

A History of a Dangerous Emotion

By: Agnes Arnold-Forster

Narrated by: Agnes Arnold-Forster

Read by the author, Agnes Arnold-Forster.

‘Arnold-Forster belongs to that valuable non-jargon-spouting breed of academic who is capable of explaining complex ideas in simple language.’ – The Times

In Nostalgia: A History of a Dangerous Emotion, Agnes Arnold-Forster blends neuroscience and psychology with the history of medicine and emotions to explore the evolution of nostalgia from its first identification in seventeenth-century Switzerland (when it was held to be an illness that could, quite literally, kill you) to the present day (when it is co-opted by advertising agencies and politicians alike to sell us goods and policies).

Nostalgia is a social and political emotion, vulnerable to misuse, and one that reflects the anxieties of the age. It is one of the many ways we communicate a desire for the past, dissatisfaction with the present and our visions for the future. Arnold-Forster’s fascinating history of this complex, slippery emotion is a lens through which to consider the changing pace of society, our collective feelings of regret, dislocation and belonging, the conditions of modern and contemporary work, and the politics of fear and anxiety. It is also a clear-eyed analysis of what we are doing now, how we feel about it and what we might want to change about the world we live in.

Critic reviews

This absorbing exploration of nostalgia raises questions about its slippery nature, and shows how it has been chillingly deployed in politics, from the cold war to Trumpism

Arnold-Forster is a shrewd critic and delightful guide. Her prose is fluent but not flashy...She carries weighty learning lightly – embracing everything relevant, from dubious neuroscience to cod sociology.'

Beautifully compact, wide-ranging and enjoyable

Illuminating