Travels In Hyperreality

Author : Umberto Eco
Publisher : HMH
ISBN 13 : 0547545967
Total Pages : 322 pages
Book Rating : 4.67/5 ( download)

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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

Author : Umberto Eco
Publisher : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN 13 : 9780156913218
Total Pages : 328 pages
Book Rating : 4.16/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Travels in Hyper Reality written by Umberto Eco and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 1986 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eco displays in these essays the same wit, learning, and lively intelligence that delighted readers of The Name of the Rose and Foucault's Pendulum. His range is wide, and his insights are acute, frequently ironic, and often downright funny. Translated by William Weaver. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book

Author : Umberto Eco
Publisher : HMH
ISBN 13 : 0547540434
Total Pages : 259 pages
Book Rating : 4.36/5 ( download)

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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

Author : Umberto Eco
Publisher : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN 13 : 0547577605
Total Pages : 276 pages
Book Rating : 4.09/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Inventing the Enemy written by Umberto Eco and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2012-09-04 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This essay collection by the revered public intellectual displays his “profound erudition, lively wit, and passion for ideas of all shapes and sizes” (Booklist). In these fourteen essays, Umberto Eco examines many of the ideas that have inspired his provocative and illuminating fiction. From the title essay—a disquisition of the notion that every country needs an enemy—he takes readers on an exploration of lost islands, mythical realms, and the medieval world. His topics range from indignant reviews of James Joyce’s Ulysses by fascist journalists, to an examination of Saint Thomas Aquinas’s notions about the soul of an unborn child, to censorship, violence and WikiLeaks. Here are essays full of passion, curiosity, and probing intellect by one of the world’s most esteemed scholars and critically acclaimed, best-selling novelists. “True wit and wisdom coexist with fierce scholarship inside Umberto Eco, a writer who actually knows a thing or two about being truly human.” — Buffalo News

Author : Umberto Eco
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231500149
Total Pages : 168 pages
Book Rating : 4.42/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Serendipities written by Umberto Eco and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 1998-10-06 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Best-selling author Umberto Eco's latest work unlocks the riddles of history in an exploration of the "linguistics of the lunatic," stories told by scholars, scientists, poets, fanatics, and ordinary people in order to make sense of the world. Exploring the "Force of the False," Eco uncovers layers of mistakes that have shaped human history, such as Columbus's assumption that the world was much smaller than it is, leading him to seek out a quick route to the East via the West and thus fortuitously "discovering" America. The fictions that grew up around the cults of the Rosicrucians and Knights Templar were the result of a letter from a mysterious "Prester John"—undoubtedly a hoax—that provided fertile ground for a series of delusions and conspiracy theories based on religious, ethnic, and racial prejudices. While some false tales produce new knowledge (like Columbus's discovery of America) and others create nothing but horror and shame (the Rosicrucian story wound up fueling European anti-Semitism) they are all powerfully persuasive. In a careful unraveling of the fabulous and the false, Eco shows us how serendipities—unanticipated truths—often spring from mistaken ideas. From Leibniz's belief that the I Ching illustrated the principles of calculus to Marco Polo's mistaking a rhinoceros for a unicorn, Eco tours the labyrinth of intellectual history, illuminating the ways in which we project the familiar onto the strange. Eco uncovers a rich history of linguistic endeavor—much of it ill-conceived—that sought to "heal the wound of Babel." Through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Greek, Hebrew, Chinese, and Egyptian were alternately proclaimed as the first language that God gave to Adam, while—in keeping with the colonial climate of the time—the complex language of the Amerindians in Mexico was viewed as crude and diabolical. In closing, Eco considers the erroneous notion of linguistic perfection and shrewdly observes that the dangers we face lie not in the rules we use to interpret other cultures but in our insistence on making these rules absolute. With the startling combination of erudition and wit, bewildering anecdotes and scholarly rigor that are Eco's hallmarks, Serendipities is sure to entertain and enlighten any reader with a passion for the curious history of languages and ideas.

Author : Umberto Eco
Publisher : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN 13 : 9780156607520
Total Pages : 196 pages
Book Rating : 4.22/5 ( download)

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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.

Author : Umberto Eco
Publisher : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN 13 : 0547564058
Total Pages : 131 pages
Book Rating : 4.50/5 ( download)

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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

Author : Umberto Eco
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674503953
Total Pages : 160 pages
Book Rating : 4.53/5 ( download)

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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 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this exhilarating book, we accompany Umberto Eco as he explores the intricacies of fictional form and method. Using examples ranging from fairy tales and Flaubert, Poe and Mickey Spillane, Eco draws us in by means of a novelist's techniques, making us his collaborators in the creation of his text and in the investigation of some of fiction's most basic mechanisms.

Author : Umberto Eco
Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780300093049
Total Pages : 160 pages
Book Rating : 4.47/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages written by Umberto Eco and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2002-01-01 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this authoritative, lively book, the celebrated Italian novelist and philosopher Umberto Eco presents a learned summary of medieval aesthetic ideas. Juxtaposing theology and science, poetry and mysticism, Eco explores the relationship that existed between the aesthetic theories and the artistic experience and practice of medieval culture. "[A] delightful study. . . . [Eco's] remarkably lucid and readable essay is full of contemporary relevance and informed by the energies of a man in love with his subject." --Robert Taylor, Boston Globe "The book lays out so many exciting ideas and interesting facts that readers will find it gripping." --Washington Post Book World "A lively introduction to the subject." --Michael Camille, The Burlington Magazine "If you want to become acquainted with medieval aesthetics, you will not find a more scrupulously researched, better written (or better translated), intelligent and illuminating introduction than Eco's short volume." --D. C. Barrett, Art Monthly

Author : Umberto Eco
Publisher : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN 13 : 0544176561
Total Pages : 595 pages
Book Rating : 4.60/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Name of the Rose written by Umberto Eco and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2014 with total page 595 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1327, finding his sensitive mission at an Italian abbey further complicated by seven bizarre deaths, Brother William of Baskerville turns detective.