"Originally published in German as Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle by Carl Hanser Verlag GmbH & Co. KG, München"--Title page verso

Stars, the sea -- El Alamein -- Mythical figures -- Flying -- Fabius Maximus and Siegel Hans -- Along the border -- Ella and Rudolf -- Elisabeth and Dietrich -- Munich -- Second meeting with God -- Caves -- The valley of the ten thousand windmills -- Congo -- Dr. Fu Manchu -- John Okello -- Peru -- Privilegium Maius, Pittsburgh -- NASA, Mexico -- Pura vida -- Dance on the wire -- Menhirs and the vanishing area paradox -- The ballad of the littler solider -- Chatwin's rucksack -- Arlscharte -- Wives, children -- Waiting for the barbarians -- Unrealized projects -- The truth of the ocean -- Hypnosis -- Villains -- Transforming the world into music -- On reading minds -- Slow reader, long sleeper -- Friends -- My old mother -- The end of images

"Legendary filmmaker and celebrated author Werner Herzog tells in his inimitable voice the story of his epic artistic career in a long-awaited memoir that is as inventive and daring as anything he has done before. Werner Herzog was born in September 1942 in Munich, Germany, at a turning point in the Second World War. Soon Germany would be defeated and a new world would have to be made out the rubble and horrors of the war. Fleeing the Allied bombing raids, Herzog's mother took him and his older brother to a remote, rustic part of Bavaria where he would spend much of his childhood hungry, without running water, in deep poverty. It was there, as the new postwar order was emerging, that one of the most visionary filmmakers of the next seven decades was formed. Herzog made his first film in 1961 at age 19, and the wildly productive working life that followed-spanning the seven continents and encompassing both documentary and fiction-was an adventure as grand and otherworldly as any depicted in his many classic films, from early features Aguirre and Nosferatu, to Fitzcarraldo and later documentaries such as Grizzly Man and Cave of Forgotten Dreams. Every Man for Himself and God Against All is at once a firsthand personal record of one of the great and self-invented lives of our time, and a singular literary masterpiece that will enthrall fans old and new alike. In a hypnotic swirl of memory, Herzog untangles and relives his most important experiences and inspirations, telling the full story of his life for the first and only time."--

Includes a filmography (pages 341-351) and a list of opera productions