Inventing the Enemy and Other Occasional Writings

Inventing the Enemy and Other Occasional Writings PDF Author: Umberto Eco
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0547640978
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 241

Get Book Here

Book Description
A collection of essays from Italian novelist Umberto Eco on a wide range of topics.

Inventing the Enemy and Other Occasional Writings

Inventing the Enemy and Other Occasional Writings PDF Author: Umberto Eco
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0547640978
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 241

Get Book Here

Book Description
A collection of essays from Italian novelist Umberto Eco on a wide range of topics.

Inventing the Enemy

Inventing the Enemy PDF Author: Umberto Eco
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0547577605
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 276

Get Book Here

Book Description
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

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

The Infinity of Lists

The Infinity of Lists PDF Author: Umberto Eco
Publisher: MacLehose Press
ISBN: 9781906694890
Category : Aesthetics
Languages : en
Pages : 408

Get Book Here

Book Description
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.

Chronicles of a Liquid Society

Chronicles of a Liquid Society PDF Author: Umberto Eco
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0544974573
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 345

Get Book Here

Book Description
The acclaimed author examines our contemporary world—from technology to politics and pop culture—in this collection of essays written for L’Espresso. Umberto Eco was an international cultural superstar. In this, his last collection, the celebrated essayist and novelist observes the changing world around him with irrepressible curiosity and philosophical insight. He illuminates the contemporary upheaval in ideological values, the crises in politics, and the unbridled individualism that have become the backdrop of our lives—creating a “liquid” society that defies any organizing principle. In these pieces, written for his regular column in the Italian magazine L’Espresso, Eco brings his dazzling erudition and keen sense of the everyday to bear on topics such as being seen, conspiracies, the old and the young, mass media, racism, and good manners. It is “a swan song from one of Europe’s great intellectuals…[Eco] entertains with his intellect, humor, and insatiable curiosity” (Kirkus Reviews). “An intelligent, intriguing, and often hilariously incisive set of observations on contemporary follies and changing mores.” —Publishers Weekly

Kant and the Platypus

Kant and the Platypus PDF Author: Umberto Eco
Publisher: HMH
ISBN: 0547563787
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 480

Get Book Here

Book Description
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)

On Literature

On Literature PDF Author: Umberto Eco
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 9780151008124
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 352

Get Book Here

Book Description
Publisher Description

Creativity, Inc. (The Expanded Edition)

Creativity, Inc. (The Expanded Edition) PDF Author: Ed Catmull
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0679644504
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 367

Get Book Here

Book Description
The co-founder and longtime president of Pixar updates and expands his 2014 New York Times bestseller on creative leadership, reflecting on the management principles that built Pixar’s singularly successful culture, and on all he learned during the past nine years that allowed Pixar to retain its creative culture while continuing to evolve. “Might be the most thoughtful management book ever.”—Fast Company For nearly thirty years, Pixar has dominated the world of animation, producing such beloved films as the Toy Story trilogy, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Up, and WALL-E, which have gone on to set box-office records and garner eighteen Academy Awards. The joyous storytelling, the inventive plots, the emotional authenticity: In some ways, Pixar movies are an object lesson in what creativity really is. Here, Catmull reveals the ideals and techniques that have made Pixar so widely admired—and so profitable. As a young man, Ed Catmull had a dream: to make the first computer-animated movie. He nurtured that dream as a Ph.D. student, and then forged a partnership with George Lucas that led, indirectly, to his founding Pixar with Steve Jobs and John Lasseter in 1986. Nine years later, Toy Story was released, changing animation forever. The essential ingredient in that movie’s success—and in the twenty-five movies that followed—was the unique environment that Catmull and his colleagues built at Pixar, based on philosophies that protect the creative process and defy convention, such as: • Give a good idea to a mediocre team and they will screw it up. But give a mediocre idea to a great team and they will either fix it or come up with something better. • It’s not the manager’s job to prevent risks. It’s the manager’s job to make it safe for others to take them. • The cost of preventing errors is often far greater than the cost of fixing them. • A company’s communication structure should not mirror its organizational structure. Everybody should be able to talk to anybody. Creativity, Inc. has been significantly expanded to illuminate the continuing development of the unique culture at Pixar. It features a new introduction, two entirely new chapters, four new chapter postscripts, and changes and updates throughout. Pursuing excellence isn’t a one-off assignment but an ongoing, day-in, day-out, full-time job. And Creativity, Inc. explores how it is done.

One of Ours

One of Ours PDF Author: Willa Cather
Publisher: IndyPublish.com
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 484

Get Book Here

Book Description
Claude has an intuitive faith in something splendid and feels at odds with his contemporaries. The war offers him the opportunity to forget his farm and his marriage of compromise; he enlists and discovers that he has lacked. But while war demands altruism, its essence is destructive

Contrary Notions

Contrary Notions PDF Author: Michael Parenti
Publisher: City Lights Books
ISBN: 0872864820
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 418

Get Book Here

Book Description
Internationally acclaimed, award-winning author Michael Parenti is one of America's most astute and engaging political analysts. Parenti's work has enlightened and enlivened readers for many years, covering a wide range of subjects. Here is a rich selection of his most lucid and penetrating writings on real history, political life, empire, wealth, class power, technology, culture, ideology, media, environment, sex, and ethnicity. Also included are a few choice selections drawn from his own life experiences and political awakening. Parenti goes where few political observers dare to tread. Time and again he takes the extra step beyond the parameters of permissible opinion, and time and again he succeeds in carrying the reader with him. The selections herein, that are reprinted from previously published works, have been revised and updated. Other offerings appear here for the very first time. "Radical in the true sense of the word, [Parenti] digs at the roots which...sustain our public consciousness."--Los Angeles Times Book Review "Prominent leftist public intellectual Parenti has built a reputation for himself as a trenchant, yet engaging and accessible, critic of capitalism, imperialism, and other forms of exploitation and violence and this diverse collection of his writings will not disappoint his fans (nor, probably, convince his detractors). Over the course of the collection he takes on the corporate media, intellectual repression in academia, the stolen presidential elections of 2000 and 2004 (not that he's a fan of Al Gore or John Kerry), right wing judicial activism, free-market orthodoxies and mythologies, racism, sexism, homophobia, postmodern attacks on Marxism, the distortions of dominant history, ill-informed demonizations of the Venezuelan political process, his own life, and many other topics."--Book News, Inc. "A prolific author, a charismatic speaker, and a regular guest on radio and television talk shows, Parenti communicates his message in an accessible, provocative, and historically informed style that is unrivaled among fellow progressive activists and thinkers."--Aurora Online Michael Parenti is a critically acclaimed author and an extraordinary public speaker. He received his Ph.D. in political science from Yale University and has taught at a number of colleges and universities, in the United States and abroad. He is the author of twenty books, including Superpariotism , The Assassination of Julius Caesar, Inventing Reality, and Democracy for the Few.