The James Bond franchise has flourished for over six decades, and in the process shaped pop culture in manifold ways, from the image of the spy to the conventions of the action film. Yet, well-known as James Bond is, a very great deal about the series as it was originally conceived, from the self-parody in the original Ian Fleming novels, to the places some of the most and least-praised Bond films hold in cinematic history, to the various ways the authors of the continuation novels have handled the adventures, are now remembered only vaguely, or not at all. THE FORGOTTEN JAMES BOND takes all these and more for its subject, concentrating not on the James Bond everyone knows, but the James Bond fans and critics tend to overlook.