Download or read book Numero Zero written by Umberto Eco and published by Random House. This book was released on 2016-07-21 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The gripping new conspiracy thriller by the bestselling author of The Name of the Rose 1945, Lake Como. Mussolini and his mistress are captured and shot by local partisans. The precise circumstances of Il Duce's death remain shrouded in confusion and controversy. 1992, Milan. Colonna takes a job at a fledgling newspaper financed by a powerful media magnate. There he learns the paranoid theories of Braggadocio, who is convinced that Mussolini's corpse was a body-double and part of a wider Fascist plot. Colonna is sceptical. But when a body is found, stabbed to death in a back alley, and the paper is shut down, even he is jolted out of his complacency. Fuelled by conspiracy theories, Mafiosi, love, corruption and murder, Numero Zero reverberates with the clash of forces that have shaped Italy since the Second World War. This gripping novel from the author of The Name of the Rose is told with all the power of a master storyteller."
Download or read book Five Moral Pieces written by Umberto Eco and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2002-10-01 with total page 131 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this prescient essay collection, the acclaimed author of Foucault’s Pendulum examines the cultural trends and perils at the dawn of the 21st century. In the last decade of the 20th century, Umberto Eco saw an urgent need to embrace tolerance and multiculturalism in the face of our world’s ever-increasing interconnectivity. At a talk delivered during the first Gulf War, he points out the absurdity of armed conflict in a globalized economy where the flow of information is unstoppable and the enemy is always behind the lines. Elsewhere, he questions the influence of the news media and identifies its contribution to our collective disillusionment with politics. In a deeply personal essay, Eco recalls his boyhood experience of Italy’s liberation from fascism. He then analyzes the universal elements of fascism, including the “cult of tradition” and a “suspicion of intellectual life.” And finally, in an open letter to an Italian cardinal, Eco reflects on a question underlying all the reflections in the book: What does it mean to be moral or ethical when one doesn't believe in God? “At just 111 pages, Five Moral Pieces packs a philosophical wallop surprising in such a slender book. Or maybe not so surprising. Eco's prose here is beautiful.”—January Magazine
Download or read book Curiosity written by Alberto Manguel and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2015-01-01 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An eclectic history of human curiosity, a great feast of ideas, and a memoir of a reading life from an internationally celebrated reader and thinker Curiosity has been seen through the ages as the impulse that drives our knowledge forward and the temptation that leads us toward dangerous and forbidden waters. The question "Why?" has appeared under a multiplicity of guises and in vastly different contexts throughout the chapters of human history. Why does evil exist? What is beauty? How does language inform us? What defines our identity? What is our responsibility to the world? In Alberto Manguel's most personal book to date, the author tracks his own life of curiosity through the reading that has mapped his way. Manguel chooses as his guides a selection of writers who sparked his imagination. He dedicates each chapter to a single thinker, scientist, artist, or other figure who demonstrated in a fresh way how to ask "Why?" Leading us through a full gallery of inquisitives, among them Thomas Aquinas, David Hume, Lewis Carroll, Rachel Carson, Socrates, and, most importantly, Dante, Manguel affirms how deeply connected our curiosity is to the readings that most astonish us, and how essential to the soaring of our own imaginations.
Download or read book Red Sonja Vol 4 0 written by Amy Chu and published by Dynamite Entertainment. This book was released on 2016-12-14 with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The barbarian She-Devil with a Sword faces a whole different world and challenges in this new adventure written by Amy Chu and drawn by Carlos Gomez. Somewhere deep underground, strange and powerful demons clad in metal armor attack and roust Red Sonja from a deep magical sleep. Confused and weaponless, she must find a way to defeat these mysterious creatures, escape from her solitary prison, and make her way to the surface to discover where she is, and why she was put there...
Download or read book Chronicles of a Liquid Society written by Umberto Eco and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2017 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A posthumous collection of essays by the great novelist, essayist, literary critic, and philosopher Umberto Eco
Download or read book Travels in Hyperreality written by Umberto Eco and published by HMH. This book was released on 2014-06-24 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “scintillating collection” of essays on Disneyland, medieval times, and much more, from the author of Foucault’s Pendulum (Los Angeles Times). Collected here are some of Umberto Eco’s finest popular essays, recording the incisive and surprisingly entertaining observations of his restless intellectual mind. As the author puts it in the preface to the second edition: “In these pages, I try to interpret and to help others interpret some ‘signs.’ These signs are not only words, or images; they can also be forms of social behavior, political acts, artificial landscapes.” From Disneyland to holography and wax museums, Eco explores America’s obsession with artificial reality, suggesting that the craft of forgery has in certain cases exceeded reality itself. He examines Western culture’s enduring fascination with the middle ages, proposing that our most pressing modern concerns began in that time. He delves into an array of topics, from sports to media to what he calls the crisis of reason. Throughout these travels—both physical and mental—Eco displays the same wit, learning, and lively intelligence that delighted readers of The Name of the Rose and Foucault’s Pendulum. Translated by William Weaver
Download or read book Misreadings written by Umberto Eco and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 1993 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Playful parodies by the author of The Name of the Rose and Foucault's Pendulum. Here, Eco pokes fun at the oversophisticated, overacademic, and overintellectual, and along the way makes penetrating comments about our modern mass culture and the elitist avant-garde in art in criticism.
Download or read book The Nothing that is written by and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2000 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the tradition of "Longitude, " a small and engagingly written book on the history and meaning of zero--a "tour de force" of science history that takes us through the hollow circle that leads to infinity. 32 illustrations.
Download or read book Six Walks in the Fictional Woods written by Umberto Eco and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1998-07-21 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Six Walks in the Fictional Woods Umberto Eco shares with us his Secret Life as a reader—his love for MAD magazine, for Scarlett O'Hara, for the nineteenth-century French novelist Nerval's Sylvie, for Little Red Riding Hood, Agatha Christie, Agent 007 and all his ladies. We see, hear, and feel Umberto Eco, the passionate reader who has gotten lost over and over again in the woods, loved it, and come back to tell the tale, The Tale of Tales. Eco tells us how fiction works, and he also tells us why we love fiction so much. This is no deconstructionist ripping the veil off the Wizard of Oz to reveal his paltry tricks, but the Wizard of Art himself inviting us to join him up at his level, the Sorcerer inviting us to become his apprentice.
Download or read book On the Shoulders of Giants written by Umberto Eco and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2019-10-22 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A posthumous collection of essays by one of our greatest contemporary thinkers that provides a towering vision of Western culture. In Umberto Eco’s first novel, The Name of the Rose, Nicholas of Morimondo laments, “We no longer have the learning of the ancients, the age of giants is past!” To which the protagonist, William of Baskerville, replies: “We are dwarfs, but dwarfs who stand on the shoulders of those giants, and small though we are, we sometimes manage to see farther on the horizon than they.” On the Shoulders of Giants is a collection of essays based on lectures Eco famously delivered at the Milanesiana Festival in Milan over the last fifteen years of his life. Previously unpublished, the essays explore themes he returned to again and again in his writing: the roots of Western culture and the origin of language, the nature of beauty and ugliness, the potency of conspiracies, the lure of mysteries, and the imperfections of art. Eco examines the dynamics of creativity and considers how every act of innovation occurs in conversation with a superior ancestor. In these playful, witty, and breathtakingly erudite essays, we encounter an intellectual who reads comic strips, reflects on Heraclitus, Dante, and Rimbaud, listens to Carla Bruni, and watches Casablanca while thinking about Proust. On the Shoulders of Giants reveals both the humor and the colossal knowledge of a contemporary giant.
Download or read book How to Travel with a Salmon written by Umberto Eco and published by HMH. This book was released on 1995-09-15 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Impishly witty and ingeniously irreverent” essays on topics from cell phones to librarians, by the author of The Name of the Rose and Foucault’s Pendulum (The Atlantic Monthly). A cosmopolitan curmudgeon the Los Angeles Times called “the Andy Rooney of academia”—known for both nonfiction and novels that have become blockbuster New York Times bestsellers—Umberto Eco takes readers on “a delightful romp through the absurdities of modern life” (Publishers Weekly) as he journeys around the world and into his own wildly adventurous mind. From the mundane details of getting around on Amtrak or in the back of a cab, to reflections on computer jargon and soccer fans, to more important issues like the effects of mass media and consumer civilization—not to mention the challenges of trying to refrigerate an expensive piece of fish at an English hotel—this renowned writer, semiotician, and philosopher provides “an uncanny combination of the profound and the profane” (San Francisco Chronicle). “Eco entertains with his clever reflections and with his unique persona.” —Kirkus Reviews Translated from the Italian by William Weaver
Download or read book Kant and the Platypus written by Umberto Eco and published by HMH. This book was released on 2000-11-09 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do we know a cat is a cat . . . and why do we call it a cat? An “intriguing and often fascinating” look at words, perceptions, and the relationship between them (Newark Star-Ledger). In Kant and the Platypus, the renowned semiotician, philosopher, and bestselling author of The Name of the Rose and Foucault’s Pendulum explores the question of how much of our perception of things is based on cognitive ability, and how much on linguistic resources. In six remarkable essays, Umberto Eco explores in depth questions of reality, perception, and experience. Basing his ideas on common sense, Eco shares a vast wealth of literary and historical knowledge, touching on issues that affect us every day. At once philosophical and amusing, Kant and the Platypus is a tour of the world of our senses, told by a master of knowing what is real and what is not. “An erudite, detailed inquirity into the philosophy of mind . . . Here, Eco is continental philosopher, semiotician, and cognitive scientist rolled all into one.” —Library Journal (starred review)
Download or read book The Limits of Interpretation written by Umberto Eco and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents four theories describing the limits of literary interpretation, challenging "the cancer of uncontrolled interpretation" that diminishes the meaning and the basis of communication. -- Back cover.
Download or read book The Story of Time written by Kristen Lippincott and published by Merrell. This book was released on 1999 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tentoonstellingscatalogus over de cultuurgeschiedenis van tijd en tijdmeting, de voorstelling van tijd in de beeldende kunst en tijdsbesef in verschillende perioden en culturen.
Download or read book The Virtual Life of Film written by D. N. Rodowick and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2007-10-30 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rodowick proposes and examines three different critical responses to the disappearance of film in relation to other time-based media, and to the study of contemporary visual culture.
Download or read book The Infinity of Lists written by Umberto Eco and published by MacLehose Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reflections on how the idea of catalogs has changed over the centuries and how, from one period to another, it has expressed the spirit of the times. Companion to the author's History of beauty and On ugliness.
Download or read book Novel Explosives written by Jim Gauer and published by Zerogram Press. This book was released on 2021-02-15 with total page 722 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It's an otherwise ordinary week in April, the week after Easter, 2009. Late in the week, a man wakes up in Guanajuato, Mexico, with his knowledge intact, but with no memory of who he is, or how he came to live in Guanajuato. Early in the week, a venture capitalist sits at his desk in an office tower in Los Angeles, attempting to complete his business memoirs, but troubled by the fact that a recent deal appears to be some sort of money-laundering scheme. And in the middle of the week, just before dawn on April 15, two gunmen arrive at an El Paso motel to retrieve a duffel bag stuffed full of currency, and eliminate the man who brought it to El Paso. Thus begins the three-stranded narrative of Novel Explosives, a fiendishly funny search for identity that travels through the worlds of venture finance, the Juarez drug wars, and the latest innovations in thermobaric weaponry, a joyride of a novel with only one catch: the deeper into the book you go, the more dangerous it gets. At the palpitating heart of the novel, at its roiling fundamental core, lies an agonizing reappraisal of the way the U.S behaves in the world, a project that grows more urgent by the day.