Five Moral Pieces

Five Moral Pieces PDF Author: Umberto Eco
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0547564058
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 131

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Book Description
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

Five Moral Pieces

Five Moral Pieces PDF Author: Umberto Eco
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0547564058
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 131

Get Book Here

Book Description
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

Misreadings

Misreadings PDF Author: Umberto Eco
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 9780156607520
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description
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.

Turning Back the Clock

Turning Back the Clock PDF Author: Umberto Eco
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 9780151013517
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 396

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Book Description
The time: 2000 to 2005, the years of neoconservatism, terrorism, the twenty-four-hour news cycle, the ascension of Bush, Blair, and Berlusconi, and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Umberto Eco's response is a provocative, passionate, and witty series of essays--which originally appeared in the Italian newspapers La Repubblica and L'Espresso--that leaves no slogan unexamined, no innovation unexposed. What led us into this age of hot wars and media populism, and how was it sold to us as progress? Eco discusses such topics as racism, mythology, the European Union, rhetoric, the Middle East, technology, September 11, medieval Latin, television ads, globalization, Harry Potter, anti-Semitism, logic, the Tower of Babel, intelligent design, Italian street demonstrations, fundamentalism, The Da Vinci Code, and magic and magical thinking.The famous author and respected scholar shows his practical, engaged side: an intellectual involved in events both local and global, a man concerned about taste, politics, education, ethics, and where our troubled world is headed.

Chronicles of a Liquid Society

Chronicles of a Liquid Society PDF Author: Umberto Eco
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0544974484
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 319

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Book Description
A posthumous collection of essays by the great novelist, essayist, literary critic, and philosopher Umberto Eco

Foucault's Pendulum

Foucault's Pendulum PDF Author: Umberto Eco
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1448181984
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 656

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Book Description
Three book editors, jaded by reading far too many crackpot manuscripts on the mystic and the occult, are inspired by an extraordinary conspiracy story told to them by a strange colonel to have some fun. They start feeding random bits of information into a powerful computer capable of inventing connections between the entries, thinking they are creating nothing more than an amusing game, but then their game starts to take over, the deaths start mounting, and they are forced into a frantic search for the truth

How to Travel with a Salmon

How to Travel with a Salmon PDF Author: Umberto Eco
Publisher: HMH
ISBN: 0547540434
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
“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

Travels in Hyperreality

Travels in Hyperreality PDF Author: Umberto Eco
Publisher: HMH
ISBN: 0547545967
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
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

Gabi, a Girl in Pieces

Gabi, a Girl in Pieces PDF Author: Isabel Quintero
Publisher: Cinco Puntos Press
ISBN: 1935955942
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
Gabi’s a girl in pieces. She wants a lot of things. Will she find the thing she needs most?

From Shakespeare to Obama

From Shakespeare to Obama PDF Author: J. Hart
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137375825
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
From Shakespeare to Obama discusses language, slavery, and place from the Portuguese enslavement of African people, through slavery in Shakespeare's plays, to President Obama's 2012 speech on "modern slavery." Balancing close reading with context, this expansive book offers new insight into questions of otherness, rhetoric, and stereotyping.

Umberto Eco, The Da Vinci Code, and the Intellectual in the Age of Popular Culture

Umberto Eco, The Da Vinci Code, and the Intellectual in the Age of Popular Culture PDF Author: Douglass Merrell
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319547895
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 295

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Book Description
This book provides a philosophical overview of Umberto Eco's historical and cultural development as a unique, internationally recognized public intellectual who communicates his ideas to both an academic and a popular audience. It describes Eco’s intellectual development from his childhood during World War II and student involvement as a Catholic youth activist and scholar of the Middle Ages, to his early writings on the "openness" of modern works such as Joyce's Finnegans Wake. Merrell also explores Eco’s pioneering role in semiotics and his later career as a novelist.