Book Description
Italy is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world, and this beautiful, useful volume is an ideal reminder for those who have been there and fallen in love with the country, as well as a book to stir the expectations of those who plan to travel there. Lavishly illustrated with photographs, this collection captures the local color of every remarkable corner of this richly diverse land-the clamor and vitality of Naples, the idyllic enchantment of Lago Maggiore, the intriguing cultural contradictions of Genova, the breathtaking (if terrifying) cliffside trails in Cinqueterre.
Contributors include Oliver Bernier, Rachel Billington, Frank Bruni, Shirley Hazzard, Paul Hofmann, Alison Lurie, Malachi Martin, Alastair McEwen, Michael Mewshaw, Jan Morris, Francine Prose, Barry Unsworth, Muriel Spark, and William Weaver. Essays full of history, philosophical ruminations, humorous anecdotes, cultural musings, and useful travel information-in short the best of The New York Times talent-will make you want to drop everything and fly to this land that continues to inspire writers, artists, and casual visitors alike. AUTHOR BIO: Umberto Eco is the author of four novels as well as numerous works of criticism, philosophy, and literary theory. His fifth novel, The Mysterious Flame, will be published in June. He is professor of semiotics at the University of Bologna.
Customer Reviews:
WONDERFUL COLLECTION!.......2007-07-05
There are many interesting articles in this wonderful collection of travel articles from the New York Times. This great book covers Italy from top to bottom and it includes articles of some well known cities such as Rome and Venice as well as some unknown villages and islands. This book shows how diversfied a small country such as Italy is. The photos are gorgeous and the writing is superb from the many different talented writers. I highly recommend this book to any fan of Italy or of travel. This is much more than a coffee table book. Also, a great price through Amazon!
italy !.......2007-04-11
this book is superb. plenty of great photos and informative writing. if we get to italy we will feel comfortable in a foreign speaking country as we will have learned heaps about the people and more about this interesting destination. this book covers all the areas from top to bottom and places in between. thanks to amazon for this purchase as i could find nothing like it in new zealand with such interesting information ! yes it is a must weather you get to italy or not and has pride of place in the travel section of our library.
Great Gift.......2006-02-28
I got this beautiful book for two dear friends, brilliant musicians, who will be traveling to Italy soon. They were entranced, and have thanked me several times, saying the book makes them feel "as if we are already in Italy."
Italy Coffee Table Book.......2006-02-25
The book is beautifully photographed. It has pictures of some out of the way places that some of the other brochures and books don't touch on. If you are looking for information, this is not the book for you.
Discovering/ Revisiting Every Corner of Italy: THE Book To Read Before Travel.......2005-11-19
This is one of those books that defies description. Formed as a joint project between the Italian Tourism people and the New York Times, this generously illustrated volume covers all of Italy, not only photographically but also with immensely readable and helpful articles about the regions, the people and their idiosyncrasies, the culture, the history, the sights not to be missed, the foods, and an ebullient flow of gentle humor that makes this the first choice of reading in preparation for a visit to this popular country - or an invaluable memento for perusing once home from the pleasures Italian.
Not only are there superb 'articles' by NY Times staff writers about the famous places (Milan, Rome, Venice, Florence, Sienna, etc), but here are also vignettes about the tiny secrets of Italy like Posillipo, the Aeolian Islands, Trieste, Portofino and on and on. Forty articles do far more than describe a place: these articles are written by people who can define the flavors so clearly they leap from the page.
Keeping the book in the realm of art, the introduction is by none other than the brilliant Italian novelist Umberto Eco who puts a spin on the wealth of pleasures that follow, basking in Italy's history and the reasons the people are so unique. It is a joy to read. Highly Recommended for both active and armchair travelers! Grady Harp, November 05
Average customer rating:
- A guide to Transitions in Art
- Umberto Eco book
- Excellent introduction to the Aesthetics of Beauty
- A delightful catalog and tease
- The beauty is easy to define: It's all what it desperates us!
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History of Beauty
Umberto Eco
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ASIN: 0847826465
Release Date: 2004-11-13 |
Amazon.com
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but it also has a lot to do with the beholder's cultural standards. In History of Beauty, renowned author Umberto Eco sets out to demonstrate how every historical era has had its own ideas about eye-appeal. Pages of charts that track archetypes of beauty through the ages ("nude Venus," "nude Adonis," and so forth) may suggest that this book is a historical survey of beautiful people portrayed in art. But History of Beauty is really about the history of philosophical and perceptual notions of perfection and how they have been applied to ideas and objects, as well as to the human body. This survey ranges over such themes as the mathematics of ideal proportions, the problem of representing ugliness, the fascination of the exotic and art for art's sake. Along the way, the text examines the intersection of standards of beauty with Christian belief, notions of the Sublime, the philosophies of Kant and Hegel, and bourgeois culture. More than 300 illustrations trace the history of Western art as it relates, in the broadest sense, to the topic of beauty. Yet despite its wealth of information, History of Beauty is an odd and unsatisfying book. Beginning with ancient Greece and ending with a too-brief chapter on "The Beauty of the Media," the text focuses exclusively (and unapologetically) on the Western world. Ultimately, it seems that "beauty" serves simply as a sexy peg on which to hang an abbreviated history of Western culture. Readers expecting a sophisticated treatment of the subject will be surprised at the textbook-like design, with numbered sections and boldfaced words keyed to small-type excerpts from writings by thinkers ranging from Boethius to Barthes. The main narrative (or perhaps the translation from the Italian?) can be ponderous and awkward. Only nine of the 17 chapters were written by Eco; the remainder are by lesser-known Italian novelist Girolamo de Michele. All in all, it looks as though someone had the bright idea of translating a textbook for Italian students into English, hoping to coast on the fame of Eco's name. --Cathy Curtis
Book Description
What is beauty? What is art? What is taste and fashion? Is beauty something to be observed coolly and rationally or is it something dangerously involving? So begins Umberto Eco's intriguing journey into the aesthetics of beauty, in which he explores the ever-changing concept of the beautiful from the ancient Greeks to today. While closely examining the development of the visual arts and drawing on works of literature from each era, Eco broadens his enquiries to consider a range of concepts, including the idea of love, the unattainable woman, natural inspiration versus numeric formulas, and the continuing importance of ugliness, cruelty, and even the demonic.
Professor Eco takes us from classical antiquity to the present day, dispelling many preconceptions along the way and concluding that the relevance of his research is urgent because we live in an age of great reverence for beauty, "an orgy of tolerance, the total syncretism and the absolute and unstoppable polytheism of Beauty."
In this, his first illustrated book, Professor Eco offers a layered approach that includes a running narrative, abundant examples of painting and sculpture, and excerpts from writers and philosophers of each age, plus comparative tables. A true road map to the idea of beauty for any reader who wishes to journey into this wonderful realm with Eco's nimble mind as guide.
Customer Reviews:
A guide to Transitions in Art.......2007-06-03
I have been a fan of Mr. Eco's work since I read 'The Name of the Rose'. This book is a great example of the devotion Mr. Eco has in the imagery he describes in all of his other work (fictional and Non-Fictional). The book is sincere and a great guide though work which exemplifies the Beauty in the transitions Art has evolved though. The hard cover version of this book is beautiful indeed.
Umberto Eco book.......2007-02-18
The panels in this book are wonderful. Umberto Eco is known for excelllent research. If studying cosmetic history is something you are interested in doing, I highly recommend this book. Excellent choice!
Excellent introduction to the Aesthetics of Beauty.......2006-11-23
Umberto Eco is one of the world's leading experts on aesthetics and art, as well as being an outstanding novelist in his own right.
This work on the history of beauty is aimed at a general audience rather than a specialised one, and as such it abounds more in beautiful works of art and illustrations rather than scholarly analysis of art itself. However, it still contains an excellent history of the idea of beauty, and how artists through the ages have tried to implement somewhat abstract ideas, while philosophers and theologians have abstracted from art to apply artistic and creative terms to entities such as Platonic Forms or God.
One of the most interesting developments in the history of beauty was the identification of beauty with reality as it was in itself. Platonists identified the beautiful with the Good or the One, and Christians planted these ideas onto God. The notion that God was the most beautiful entity that existed, that God could be represented in art, and also that the cosmos in many ways is God's work of Art, expressed itself in many great works of art, poetry and architecture in the medieval period.
With the Renaissance, the concept of beauty became more grounded in human and earthly realities, and one sees far more focus on the beauty of material objects, nature, and people, as they are rather than their ideal nature. Art becomes more and more focused on the material world until the 20th century when in the era of late capitalism, art itself has become a consumable commodity and the chief virtue of art seems to be to cause pleasant feelings to arise in the consumer (something Andy Warhol satirises a lot in his works of art). Yet even in this period, artists still manage to create works of creative beauty which capture both the beautiful and the ugly, as we now see them.
This work is essential reading for anyone curious about Art and its history, and its relation to abstract ideas.
A delightful catalog and tease.......2006-08-16
This wonderful collection of art work History of Beauty edited by Umberto Eco attempts to answer the questions: What is beauty? What is art? What is taste and fashion? and Is beauty something to be observed coolly and rationally or is it something dangerously involving? With literally hundreds of reproductions of fine art works speaking to these questions, this book would be a joy even without the words. But of course the words tell the deeper story and attempt to give at least partial answers - sometimes directly, more often indirectly.
The chapters cover such things as the aesthetic ideal in ancient Greece, light and color in the Middle Ages, magic beauty between the 15th and 16th centuries, and romantic beauty. The reader and observer sees that the depiction of beauty has both changed and remained constant over the centuries. The symmetry, the color, the poetry might change with the art form while it is clear that the characteristics of the human bodies (both female and male) have not changed.
History of Beauty would make a wonderful coffee table book in any home except maybe those who find the naked body distasteful.
The beauty is easy to define: It's all what it desperates us!.......2006-01-17
This clever statement of Paul Valery works out as magnificent frame to remark this passionate and fabulous journey through the times. Umberto Eco is withtout any shadow of doubt, a true Renaissance man. His erudition becomes him a stalker, a wise explorer of the most significative aspects about the beauty in all orders. Of course, this ambitious and succesful project includes a whole vision since the initial premise of The Greeks around this concept, the Middle Age, Renaissance until our days.
But the visual support enriches still more, this invaluable information, the search of the beauty as main motive for many artists of the Past; its alluring charm ignited the febrile imagination of Novalis when affirmed: "Truth is beauty; beauty is truth".
All the positive adjectives of any reviewer will still remain incomplete to describe in its intrinsic grandness, the importance and transcendence of this outstanding essay.
Book Description
Reveals a dark secret of the ideological environmental movement. The movement imposes the views of mostly wealthy, comfortable Americans and Europeans on mostly poor, desperate Africans, Asians and Latin Americans. It violates these people's most basic human rights, denying them economic opportunities, the chance for better lives, the right to rid their countries of diseases that were vanquished long ago in Europe and the United States.
Customer Reviews:
Eco-Imperialism Will Enrage You.......2007-04-05
Paul Driessen convincingly argues that eco-imperialism is responsible for the widespread hunger and deaths of millions. The world's poor truly pay the ultimate price tag for their nonsense. Malaria should be a minor problem. The disgraceful banning of DDT alone results in countless deaths. Eco-imperialists normally live extravagantly and it is very fair to describe them as hypocrites. One has every moral right to demand that they wear hair shirts and eat uncooked grass. There is one thing, however, that Driessen should have stressed. He overlooked the sad fact that most people are self centered and really don't care about Third World poverty. Driessen needs to remind them that the extremist also hurt them. We all pay a steep financial price tag. Our own lifestyles are negatively impacted.
The author even takes to task a number of large corporations who have jumped onto this bandwagon. They do so, if for no other reason, then to earn billions of dollars from their investments in so-called green technologies. This is why they often seem so willing to partner with those dedicated to destroying capitalism. Driessen points out that the environmental crazies have no problem with funding. The big bucks only go to causes such as global warming hysteria. Government bureaucracies and the larger non-profits have often been captured by left-wing ideologues. They dictate policy and punish those daring to oppose them. I strongly encourage you to read Eco-Imperialism. You might even want to purchase copies for your friends and relatives.
Greenpeace: The Eco-Barbarians at the Gates.......2007-02-25
Rabid environmentalists have blood on their hands.
Through their quasi-religious promotion of theoretical eco-catastrophes, they have forced a virulent agenda that has resulted in the deaths of millions of people in poor, developing nations. Forced to follow the unquestioned shibboleths of "sustainability" and "social responsibility", poor nations (notably in Africa) are prevented from developing infrastructure that the first world enjoys and indeed seems to take for granted - instead, inefficient power sources like wind and solar are promoted, food imports are regulated and even banned, and ultimately, people are prevented from rising out of poverty. Note: even in the developed world, solar and wind power account for less than 1% of the total energy produced. Access to cheap electricity and clean water are crucial steps in development. Without it, these developing nations will remain forever mired in this tragic cycle of poverty. Preventing access to coal, nuclear, and hydroelectric power - the very foundation of the first world's energy infrastructure - is pure hypocrisy.
What is most disturbing is that people (read: environmental organizations) with NO STAKE in these developing nations are actually dictating policy. We have no business telling people in other nations how they can develop, especially when our intervention only makes their lot in life worse. The banning of DDT, the prevention of imported GM crops, as well as the ridiculous obsession with wind and solar power, have only resulted in more disease, starvation, and death. Folks, this is misanthropy cloaked in the clever disguise of magnanimity. Is it any surprise, then, that Greenpeace's own founder abandoned the organization because it had become so politically shrill and unreasonable? Greenpeace's loss of perspective is exactly what happens when you have large groups of people with strong feelings but weak minds, and a very limited cultural and historical frame of reference. Their practice of GM crop slashing, vandalism, and other forms of hooliganism makes them fundamentally no different than barbarians.
My hope is that future environmentalists will have a more rational and humanistic approach to solving the world's problems. As it stands now, the environmentalist movement, for the most part, is fundamentally misanthropic. They are more concerned about the theoretical effects of global warming and other prefabricated bogeymen than the very real suffering that is occurring around them right now. Their ideology interferes with their analytical skills and ability to discern the likely consequences of their policies.
This is a very short but excellent book. If you are grounded in reality, many of the facts presented here may upset you deeply. I recommend it wholeheartedly, however, because it fully exposes the misguided and immoral nature of many of these eco-organizations.
"The environmental movement I helped found has lost its objectivity, morality, and humanity."
- Patrick Moore, Greenpeace founder
"Why do Europe's developed countries impose their environmental ethics on poor countries that are simply trying to pass through a stage they themselves went through?"
- James Shikwati, director of Kenya's Inter-Regional Economic Network
"Developing countries need to be free to make their own decisions about how to improve their people's lives."
- CS Prakash, professor, Tuskegee University
Dont believe the hype (of this book that is...).......2006-09-08
Firstly, i want to make clear that i have a degree in geography and am very familiar with the topics 'discussed' in this book. Paul Driessen is obviously well-educated and knows how to write, therefore it must be assumed that he has purposefully neglected the facts in order to contrive an argument that will appeal only to people with no prior knowledge of the topic...
For example,
He advocates the continued use of fossil fuels by declaring that there is no proof carbon emmisions are responsible for climate change. Regardless of climate change, the excessive air pollution caused by the burning of fossil fuels is indeed responsible for chronic respirotory illnesses worldwide (inc in the third world), and also catastrophic 'acid rain'...
This one example is indicative of basically every chapter in this book (this is why it was published by a small company and wasn't found in my university library). Without prior knowledge of the subject, one could easily be led astray.
As a geographer i found this book interesting. However, its profound inadequacies serve only to strengthen the integrity of the environmental movement.
I do fear though, that too many people have believed the rhetoric they have digested in this very short book with a catchy cover and title.
Mixes truth with falsehoods.......2006-07-17
Paul Driessen, the author of this book, is a PR specialist who works for two business lobbyist think tanks, Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow, and the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise. The purpose of organizations such as these is to spread right-wing and anti-environmentalist propaganda. As such, the message of this book should be taken with a grain of salt. One reviewer said that if DDT was used widely malaria would be wiped out. Well, the pesticide companies want you to believe that, but biologists have found out that mosquitoes quickly develop resistance to it, making that statement untrue.
Like most pro-business PR, it mixes scientific and economic facts with falsehood. The purpose is to make environmentalists who get in the way of their profits look like monsters, apparently this book has succeeded.
Useful account of environmental movement.......2004-11-23
The issue of global warming is scaremongering, a massive red herring to make workers take their eyes off the tasks facing us - stopping deindustrialisation, unemployment, the destruction of our services, the European Union's destruction of our nation Britain. Scare stories about global warming, melting ice caps and glaciers, intensifying storms and droughts, a `Day After Tomorrow'-style ice age, overpopulation, mass extinctions, imminent famines, nuclear proliferation and energy shortages are grounded not in reason but in false science and a fear of progress. They are kin to medieval fears of apocalypse. We need to denounce the doom-mongers who portray us as helpless victims, at the mercy of events beyond our control as a nation.
The facts are that Antarctica has been cooling and its glaciers thickening for the past 30 years. Global fertility rates are falling dramatically, and with advanced technology, farmers are producing more food using fewer resources than ever before. Environmental pollution accounts for at most 2% of all cancer cases versus 30% caused by tobacco use. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, the world's forests covered 40.24 million square kilometres in 1950, and 43.04 million in 1994. 80% of the world's original rainforest is still intact. Sea levels in the region of the Pacific around the island nation of Tuvalu have been falling.
Some see all problems as supranational, requiring supranational solutions, worldwide action through intrusive international agreements like Kyoto, with cartoon cries to `save the world' through pre-emptive actions. They revive the anarchist slogan `No states, no borders' mirroring the capitalist agenda of `globalisation'.
Human innovation is the ultimate resource. Workers are wonderfully creative. The Greens, with their contempt for productive forces, line up with the anti-industry parson Malthus against the pro-industry Marx. The working class cannot conduct its present policy on the basis of scares about a possible future ice age in 50,000 years.
Book Description
It is the year 1327. Franciscans in an Italian abbey are suspected of heresy, but Brother William of Baskerville’s investigation is suddenly overshadowed by seven bizarre deaths. Translated by William Weaver. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book
Customer Reviews:
Esoteric and Enjoyable.......2007-09-16
Someone once told me that when The Name of the Rose was first published, it was the most-bought and least read book of its time. This I can believe. While The Name of the Rose is a spellbinding mystery, it is also dense and perhaps too pleased with its own erudition to make a big popular splash.
In the middle-ages, an elder monk and his young assistant journey to an Italian monastery to attend an important conference on church policy as the inquisition and concerns of heresy rage. The monastery, however, is shortly beset by a series of murders as a number of the monks turn up dead by means various and distressing. It is up to the elder monk and his assistant to discover the culprit and the root of the crimes - which seem to be linked to the monastery's well-appointed library.
Eco here creates a world that is believable and fascinating, and perfectly captures the middle-ages in his prose. However, to truly enjoy this book you must have at least a bit of a background in medieval history and the pressing issues of the day; if not, a lot of this book will go over the casual reader's head (unfortunately). Still, quite a ride, and recommended for the determined reader.
perseverance.......2007-06-09
Not being fluent in Italian I had to read this book in translation. I first got the english one (later it was also translated in Greek). What gave me a really hard time reading it, was the fact that the english translator had left the latin parts untranslated. Were they assuming that we all know Latin?. I know that there is now a book named the Key to the Name of the Rose which provides those translations but fifteen years ago when I first attempted to read this book it was unavailable. Does all that sound whiny and bitchy? Perhaps it is, but if I had let myself be discouraged by those difficulties I would have missed out on a truly superb book. This one has so many layers, so many levels on which it may be read that it could in my opinion be highly enjoyed by both the most profound lover of religious philosophy and the most avid fan of Sherlock Holmes-like "whodunits". Not to mention that the description of the library embodies every bibliophile's wet dream. And referring to some previous reviewers' comments that it supplies too much unnecessary information I will only mention that as Kavafy says sometimes the journey to a destination is more important to achieving the goal itself. So trust me and stick with this book to the end and you will not be disappointed. I most heartily commend it
Can be a difficult read.......2007-05-16
This book had a fantastic story and was rich in characterisation and setting however the book often used difficult and rare words, latin and introduced a vast array of characters which at times was hard to keep track of.
Medieval history in technicolor .......2007-05-06
This will be a difficult novel for anyone that does not have an academic background in the Middle Ages. Luckily, I have spent the past 3 years preparing with excellent surveys such as Norman Cantor (The Civilization of the Middle Ages), Joseph Strayer (The Middle Ages, 395-1500) and Morris Bishop (The Middle Ages). There is hardly a sentence that does not connect with a scholarly topic on the Middle Ages, which should come as no surprise as Eco was foremost a medieval scholar before he wrote this his first novel. The first 100 pages of the novel are like reading a medieval manuscript, trying to piece together what is known of Medieval history and figuring out what Eco is talking about, not unlike what happens with the characters in the novel. With that said, the novel can still be enjoyed by anyone without a medieval history background because of the excellent plot and Gothic atmosphere. The novel needs extensive annotations to fully appreciate (such as The Key to The Name of the Rose, although I found it lacking in many ways).
'Rose' works on many layers and can be approached from many perspectives. It's impossible to cover all the permutations in a single reading, indeed I have read it only once primarily a "reading for the plot" to understand the sequence of events. The movie helps in this regard, although it has some substantial "Hollywood" changes at the end and is much less subtle and interesting - recommend reading the novel first.
Most valuable for me was Eco brought to life the Guelphs vs Ghibellines dispute in color, shape and form that only fiction can achieve. It's the difference between intellectually understanding history versus emotionally experiencing, and for this alone the novel is priceless, the best of what historical fiction can achieve.
difficil but enjoyable.......2007-03-29
I am not going to include the plot and story of the novel, since it has already been done by many reviewers, quiet eloquently.
I finished this book in a grand total of 5 days which i unfortunately did not have. I say this not ostentatiously, nor do i mean that i skipped many parts. I read every thing. But to read this book, and to thoroughly enjoy it, one needs ample time. Again, as already stated before in other reviews, it is a difficult read especially if the reader is a "novice". 1. because i openly admit that i needed a dictionary( which i loved) and 2. because a reader has to distinguish between important passages that actually contribute to the story, and some passages that are merely there to dissuade the reader from attempting to brave this epic book.
The book is great, and is highly recommendable but i also had certain reservations. I did not understand why Mr. Umberto insisted on repeating many things in the novel. I can see why he would go over certain things to accentuate their importance,but certain times, i found it annoying as the same topic was expressed, only in different ways.
I dare say this is a pseudo mystery book. As Umberto himself says, the mystery in the book is only half , if even, as important to the actual story. The mystery, though, also plays an important part in giving this novel an actual shape.
Over all, excellent read. Read and revel in your intellectual glory.
Book Description
Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose is a brilliant mystery set in a fictitious medieval monastery. The text is rich with literary, historical, and theoretical references that make it eminently re-readable. The Key makes each reading fuller and more meaningful by helping the interested reader not merely to read but also to understand Eco's masterful work. Inspired by pleas from friends and strangers, the authors, each trained in Classics, undertook to translate and explain the Latin phrases that pepper the story. They have produced an approachable, informative guide to the book and its setting--the middle ages. The Key includes an introduction to the book, the middle ages, Umberto Eco, and philosophical and literary theories; a useful chronology; and reference notes to historical people and events.
The clear explanations of the historical setting and players will be useful to anyone interested in a general introduction to medieval history.
Adele J. Haft is Associate Professor of Classics, Hunter College, City University of New York. Jane G. White is chair of the Department of Languages, Dwight Englewood School. Robert J. White is Professor of Classics and Oriental Studies, Hunter College, City University of New York.
For more information on Umberto Eco's work, please visit Libyrinth's web site at http://www.libyrinth.com/eco http://www.libyrinth.com/eco"
Customer Reviews:
The Key to the Name of the Rose.......2003-06-18
After reading The Name of the Rose with few helps, discovering this book was quite wonderful. It goes into adaquate detail with the historical background, and I found the translations to be good and very helpful. A must for those trying the novel for the first time or for those who felt the lack of endnotes frustrating. A wonderful suppplement.
The Key to "The Name of the Rose".......2002-09-12
The Key to "The Name of the Rose" by Adele J. Haft, Jane G. White, and Robert J. White is a wonderful little book. When was the last time you used your Latin that you had in High School? You say, you never had Latin... well how do you expect to solve the clues that Brother William of Baskerville in "The Name of the Rose" gets.
Well, the answer is in this little tome as it includes translations of all of the Non-English passages making you as "smart" as Brother William. This book furthers your experience when reading "The Name of the Rose" as you now can decode the juicy clues. Umberto Eco's "The Name of the Rose" is about crimes in a medieval abbey and the obsession of it monks with heresies, apocalyptic visions, and forbidden knowledge.
This "Key" is a delightful guide to the phrases and bizarre characters and has mirthful anecdotes that you're sure to enjoy and you'll solve the mystery of the seven deaths as fast as Brother William and enjoy the intrigue in doing so.
excellent resource for artists.......2002-03-20
i am hoping to do an intricate performance art piece based on the novel "the name of the rose;" however, many of the lush details and layers were lost on me, because i am not a historian or a scholar well-versed in semiotics... the task is still daunting, but i feel more confident having this "hint book" to fill me in on the background information. it renders the novel much more accessible to a lay person, and makes the story even MORE fascinating than it already is. i suggest that anyone reading "the name of the rose" should have a copy of this to help them along... also, there is a text that does this same task for dante's "divine comedy" (dante has a large influence on the novel, so reading dante will help the reader to understand the apocolyptic attitudes of the characters). joseph gallagher wrote "a modern reader's guide to dante's 'the divine comedy'" which you may also find helpful.
A must-have for Name of the Rose neophytes.......2001-08-06
I'm enjoying Umberto Eco's NAME OF THE ROSE, but I don't understand so much as a tenth of the Latin. Before I reached page 200, I came to the sinking conclusion that I was missing out on something. I checked KEY TO NAME OF THE ROSE out at my local library, but soon realized that I needed to own my own copy to keep beside my copy of NAME OF THE ROSE. This book is a God-send for those NAME OF THE ROSE fans like me who lack a reading knowledge of Latin. Having other scholars' comments at hand really helps. If you're intrigued by NAME OF THE ROSE, but just don't get it, buy this book!
A very helpful companion volume.......1999-11-10
This is a very good guide to The Name of the Rose. Not perfect, but good. The non-English translations are very helpful, and beat sitting next to a Latin dictionary. The biographical information for historical characters is very good too. My only beef about this is that it doesn't address the historical backdrop of the novel well enough: the Renaissance of the previous century, the conflicts in the Church at the time, and the looming disasters of the 14th century between the time the novel takes place and the time the narrator lays the tale down. Get this volume if you're going to read the book. But don't rely strictly on this.
Book Description
Bored with their work, three Milanese editors cook up "the Plan," a hoax that connects the medieval Knights Templar with other occult groups from ancient to modern times. This produces a map indicating the geographical point from which all the powers of the earth can be controlled—a point located in Paris, France, at Foucault’s Pendulum. But in a fateful turn the joke becomes all too real, and when occult groups, including Satanists, get wind of the Plan, they go so far as to kill one of the editors in their quest to gain control of the earth.
Orchestrating these and other diverse characters into his multilayered semiotic adventure, Eco has created a superb cerebral entertainment.
Customer Reviews:
Not everything needs to be tied up in a neat little package, okay!?.......2007-10-14
I liked this book a lot. I think that Eco touches on some intriguing themes and has a lot of insight into psychology, history, and culture.
Did I understand all of it? No. But that's not a problem for me, because I don't think that you're supposed to understand all of it. Unless you've done all of the research Eco has, there's no way that you could. This book covers a LOT of ground.
I think that the goal of this sort of writing is to leave you wanting more. The subject matter itself is amorphous and abstract. If you can't form a clear idea after reading the book, that's because there is none to be formed. Eco introduces a number of modes of thinking, and by placing yourself into these modes of thinking along with the characters, you're experiencing the book and its mysteries. Books like this create an atmosphere instead of telling a story, and if you don't find yourself caught up in the atmosphere, you just aren't going to enjoy it.
I will admit that Foucault's Pendulum has its flaws. There are about 100 pages or so in the middle of the book that read like complete gibberish. This is the part where they finally outline "The Plan." Now, I understand that Eco is trying to illustrate a mode of thinking here and play a sort of intellectual game with us. But it really just gets rather tiresome. Who are the Baconians again? What do they have to do with the Neo-Templars? Are the Masons the good guys or the bad guys? This flaw is compounded by the fact that Eco assumes that you already know a lot about these various parties. (Pynchon does the same thing, but it doesn't bother me because most of his obscure references are meant as in-jokes)
This is where I think a lot of people get frustrated and huffy and throw the book down and run to their computer terminal where they get on Amazon.com and decry Eco as being puffed-up and pretentious. I don't know why people feel the need to be so defensive. Could it be that maybe this is just the way that he writes? I just assumed that historical conspiracy theories were sort of a hobby of his, and he included an enormous amount of detail because he thought we would enjoy it. Fortunately, you can pretty much skip a lot of these parts. I think the important thing is to understand the whole mode of thinking that Eco's characters were operating in when they formulated "The Plan."
**SPOILER AHEAD**
Finally, the felt that ending is a bit unsatisfying, but only because it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. In the final chapters, Casaubon is being remarkably lucid. What makes him go from zero to paranoid in less than 60 seconds, assuming in the end that the TRES are about to capture him? I mean, putting aside my typically American desire for a happy ending, this just does not make sense. Perhaps Eco really does intend the book to be a cautionary tale - that by engaging in conspiracy theories, we tread dangerously close to insanity. It's a good point, but he could have made it better.
Verbosity to the Nth Degree.......2007-08-28
Umberto Eco has obviously never met a word he didn't like. If an idea could be expressed in 20 words, he used 200. Unfortunately, I wasted the time to read it through twice and was no more impressed the second time. I'm not stupid, I understood the plot, I didn't need a dictionary or thesaurus, and I was absolutely bored out of my mind. He probably wrote this book in the same manner in which Jacopo Belbo wrote his Plan, by entering it into the word processor without ever looking back. If you enjoy having a thousand ridiculous conspiracy theories thrown against a wall in a hopeless mishmash, then this book is for you.
This one is a head Trip and a Half.......2007-08-20
This book blow the hinges off the door. Any fan of the X-flies, Twilight Zone, will greatly appreciate this book. As a matter of fact Casubon has the narrative styling of a Fox Mulder, actually it should be vice versa since this was written in 1988. It's really interesting to see how three very intelligent men got caught up in an search for truth that ultimately became a deadly game of cat and mouse. The quotes from the various mysteries are poignant and insightful in relation to the unfolding story. I would have given this work five stars, but I felt the ending was a bit of a cop out; considering the many allusions to the the realness of metaphysical forces throughout the book.
Both the 1-Star and the 5-star reviews are correct.......2007-08-20
This book is not for everyone, which is why I agree with the majority of both the 1-star and 5-star reviews. If you have a limited vocabulary and don't also speak French, Italian, Latin, Hebrew, etc., then this is a very frustrating book. Likewise, if you're not up on history - especially as pertains to arcane secret societies - this book will quite likely be incomprehensible. To those with a limited education, or at least a limited knowledge base, this book almost dares you to read it.
That said, I really liked Foucault's Pendulum, in part because I happen to be keen on much of the subject matter. Two of my favorite books are "The Illuminatus Trilogy" and "The Crying of Lot 49" so I was in familiar territory here. Eco has certainly done his homework. Probably the greatest charm of all this is his tying together of pretty much EVERY conspiracy and secret society in the past 1,000 years into a vast Unified Field Theory that by its definition is deliberately a hoax, or at least a joke.
Unfortunately, the book is very uneven: it starts and ends weakly. It's 650 pages long, about 400 of which are actually interesting. Still, it held my attention, plus I learned a lot along the way.
I plan to go back and read this in a few years, and I suspect I will get a lot more out of it.
Irrelevant, Impertinent, Intolerable.......2007-08-12
This book could have been used to torture the Knights Templar! They'd have been bored to death! I found it to be a waste of valuable reading time.
Book Description
For almost 30 years Candida Höfer has photographed interiors, mostly representational spaces accessible to the public, such as staircases, lobbies, reading halls or exhibition spaces. Rather than staging them, she takes their picture in the state she finds them, with great discreetness and a touch of humour.
Libraries are a book producer's dream. Since nobody photographs libraries as beautifully as Höfer, it seemed only natural for Schirmer/Mosel to dedicate her next publication to the splendid and intimate cathedrals of knowledge across Europe and the US: the Escorial in Spain, the Whitney Museum in New York, Villa Medici in Rome, the Hamburg University library, the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris, the Museo Archeologico in Madrid, and Pierpont Morgan Library in New York, to name just a few. Almost completely devoid of people, as is Candida Höfer's trademark, these pictures radiate a comforting serenity that is exceptional in contemporary photography.
Customer Reviews:
The snapshot images speak for themselves in this captivating compilation.......2006-08-06
137 color plates distinguish Candida Hofer Libraries, beautifully capturing seats of knowledge around the world from the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York to the Bibliotheque nationale de France in Paris, the Villa Medici in Rome and others. Aside from a brief introduction, no essays intersperse the eye-catching plates, each of which takes up a whole page with a blank page opposite in a two-page spread. The snapshot images speak for themselves in this captivating compilation highly recommended for bibliophile's coffee tables and photography shelves.
Book Description
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
Customer Reviews:
Interesting collection of essays.......2004-01-23
Many readers will probably be attracted to books like these after reading and enjoying Eco's novels, especially The Name of the Rose and Foucalt's Pendulum. If so, be warned. As I discovered, the Eco of the essay is NOT the Eco of the novels. Both Ecos are eccentric, clever and witty. However, the Eco of essays is a more radical and postmodern thinker. His topics can be seen by some as mundane. He's interested in pop culture and some of his theories are a tad obscure.
This collection is a series of loosely connected essays by Eco. It's an interesting book to read not cover-to-cover but to read an essay once in a while until the book is finished. That way the attitudes can sink in. The biggest fault I found with the book is certain essays to do with semiotics have arguments that are complex and hard to follow. This is understandable as they're taken from more specialised publications whereas in the novels, he strives to bring his ideas to the general public.
The essays I found to be most likeable are Travels in Hyperreality (about the proliferation of wax museums in the US and the general obsession with replicas in society), Reports from the Global Village (a series of essays on media), an analysis of Casablanca and In Praise of St Thomas (Eco's PhD was on Thomas so his views can be seen as fairly authoritative).
A good read but not brilliant.
Reader from Israel.......2003-08-08
Well this was my third book by Mr. Eco and dthe continue to get worse. The Rose was excellent and made me hungry for more but after the Pendulum and this Hyper-Realty bit I'm going to have to call it quits. The author has the ability t oput together a great novel such as the Rose, I wish it were mine, but the other stuff is just not happening.
Amorphous Lump o' Eco.......2003-03-17
Umberto Eco is clearly a genius - his fictional works testify to that. I assume his reputation as a semiologist is well earned (since I know little about the subject beyond what Walker Percy digested).
Unfortunately, I found "Travels in Hyperreality" to be a hastily pasted collection of observations and commentary that is not really worthy of Eco's growing portfolio. The book was sometimes interesting, but dry and tasteless. I thought the whole lot of it could be encapsulated in Eco's strange observations concerning "the wearing of blue jeans." That is, if you're really, really, really into Eco and want to soak up everything he says, then this book will not disappoint. If, on the other hand, you have limited time on your hands, then Eco's fictional works, or "Search for the Perfect Language," are far better temporal investments.
Perhaps I didn't get it, or perhaps it was a mistake reading much of it in a bar in Santa Clara, but I would assert that this is only a book for the Eco purist.
Does Disney Own The Planet?.......2003-02-01
A deliriously funny trip through the mad places the earth's inhabitants call home. Eco skewers like "kitsch-ka-bob" the artificial pseudo paradises we have created with all our so-called modern conveniences. What have we turned our cities into, by the way? Do we really understand art?
If you've ever driven through rural Arkansas or Texas and wanted to capture with words the seemingly inexplicable, paradoxical sights along the way, it's been done for you and can be enjoyed in these side-splitting pages.
Lots of fun.
on travels in hyperreality.......2001-04-20
i got this book because of the essay by which it is entitled. it is a great work, and a basic reading for those interested on the topics of hyperreality, simulated or thematized environments, and the like. quite contemporary tho Eco's work is Baudrillard's la precession des simulacres. so they are from the 70's and much more has been written on the topic, but these texts are, as i said, basic to understand all the rest. eco's work is quite openning ranging from xanaduswax museums, the theming of nature, etc. it is worthy.
Amazon.com
The premise of Umberto Eco's The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, may strike some readers as laughably unpromising, and others as breathtakingly rich. A sixty-ish Milanese antiquarian bookseller nicknamed Yambo suffers a stroke and loses his memory of everything but the words he has read: poems, scenes from novels, miscellaneous quotations. His wife Paola fills in the bare essentials of his family history, but in order to trigger original memories, Yambo retreats alone to his ancestral home at Solara, a large country house with an improbably intact collection of family papers, books, gramophone records, and photographs. The house is a museum of Yambo's childhood, conventiently empty of people, except of course for one old family servant with a long memory--an apt metaphor for the mind. Yambo submerges himself in these artifacts, rereading almost everything he read as a school boy, blazing a meandering, sometimes misguided, often enchanting trail of words. Flares of recognition do come, like "mysterious flames," but these only signal that Yambo remembers something; they do not return that memory to him. It is like being handed a wrapped package, the contents of which he can only guess.
Within the limitations of Yambo's handicap and quest, Eco creates wondrous variety, wringing surprise and delight from such shamelessly hackneyed plot twists as the discovery of a hidden room. Illustrated with the cartoons, sheet music covers, and book jackets that Yambo uncovers in his search, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana can be read as a love letter to literature, a layered excavation of an Italian boyhood of the 1940s, and a sly meditation on human consciousness. Both playful and reverent, it stands with The Name of the Rose and The Island of the Day Before as among Eco's most successful novels. --Regina Marler
Book Description
Yambo, a sixtyish rare-book dealer who lives in Milan, has suffered a loss of memory-he can remember the plot of every book he has ever read, every line of poetry, but he no longer knows his own name, doesn't recognize his wife or his daughters, and remembers nothing about his parents or his childhood. In an effort to retrieve his past, he withdraws to the family home somewhere in the hills between Milan and Turin.There, in the sprawling attic, he searches through boxes of old newspapers, comics, records, photo albums, and adolescent diaries. And so Yambo relives the story of his generation: Mussolini, Catholic education and guilt, Josephine Baker, Flash Gordon, Fred Astaire. His memories run wild, and the life racing before his eyes takes the form of a graphic novel. Yambo struggles through the frames to capture one simple, innocent image: that of his first love.
A fascinating, abundant new novel-wide-ranging, nostalgic, funny, full of heart-from the incomparable Eco.
Customer Reviews:
Great but not easy.......2007-09-29
Umberto Eco's writing is great but not easy. This will stimulate your imagination and thinking, but an easy romp it is not. If you want to stimulate your imagination and thinking this is for you. If you just want a mystery this may be too much for you. This is probably not the best book to introduce you to Umberto Eco's writing, but If you already like his other books you will like this.
Didn't finish the book..........2007-09-25
I made it to page 150 before I decided to give up on "The Mysterious Flame." I thought the book had a lot of potential as a mystery novel without all the cliche and overwrought plot. Instead what I got was a mumbling main character who never remembers anything of importance and asks himself the same questions over and over: Was this from my childhood? Did I make this memory up? Am I imagining a past for myself?
Interspersed between the redundant self-doubt were descriptions of various toys, books, and pieces of art, most of which have pictures in the novel. Nothing much interesting about the descriptions; I could have just looked up the art on the internet if I were interested.
Nothing wrong with the prose--Eco knows his words. Just a boring, boring story.
Rather disapointing.......2007-08-19
Although it wasn't 100% uninteresting, I found it, on the whole, very boring. Picture this: a 60 year old intellectual wakes up from a coma with no memories of his past. In order to retrieve this memories, he goes into an excruciatingly detailed account of every book, magazine and comic strip he ever read in his life.
Compensated by one moving episode from his childhood, I found the setting, the subject and the personality of the main character irrelevant and definetly lacking in the excitement and the depth of the other Umberto Eco's books I have read.
--Written By Mary Camarena
Five Stars for the Journey, One for the Destination .......2007-08-12
For me, the best part of the book was the view of everyday Italian life during World War II. This is a perspective that I hven't encountered often, and Eco does a brilliant job painting a small town that has gone "schizophrenic" in the eyes of the young Yambo.
Eco creates such a wealth of characters and builds such intensity around a rather simple idea -- remembering the face of a first love. Unfortunately, I felt the ending was rather weak. Without giving away too much, I'll just say that I felt let down. The resolution was hinted at throughout the book, especially if for readers familiar with other Eco books.
Still, I have to recommend this book because the journey through a person's memories, whether real or imagined, is so intriguing and well-executed. There is a lot to think about with this book. I only wish Eco had devised a more clever finale.
Boring and disapointing.......2007-07-01
Like many other Eco fans I keep looking for books of at least the same quality as the Name of the Rose.
The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana is rather disapointing, except the first third which is well written and promising.
Unless you are a fan of Ialian interbellic media you will find a lot of boring information and the rest is not so satisfying either.
Average customer rating:
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Eco-Efficiency, Regulation and Sustainable Business: Towards a Governance Structure for Sustainable Development (Esri Studies Series on the Environment)
Manufacturer: Edward Elgar Publishing
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Book Description
This book presents important new research on applied eco-efficiency concepts throughout Europe. The aim of eco-efficiency is to achieve market-based measures of environmental protection, in order to enhance the prospects for sustainable development and achieve positive economic and ecological benefits.
The distinguished authors discuss a number of themes surrounding eco-efficiency including the necessary conditions for technological dissemination and ecological modernization, and the role of government in enabling businesses and society to participate actively in this process. In particular, they highlight the application of existing European-based policies concerning material flows and energy. The authors also investigate some new concepts of sustainable development and provide a useful introduction to material flows analysis. In further chapters they study the emerging regulatory policies for eco-efficiency, and examine the issues of sustainable business and consumption strategies.
Environmental and ecological economists, policymakers and political scientists will welcome this original and insightful book which translates the theory of sustainable development into practical policy and business-related solutions.
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- Journal: A Mother and Daughter¿s Recovery from Breast Cancer
- Kierkegaard for Beginners (Writers and Readers Documentary Comic Book)
- Le Petit Prince (French Language Edition)
- Letter & Spirit, Vol. 2: The Authority of Mystery: The Word of God and the People of God (A Journal of Catholic Biblical Theology)
- Letters : 1925-1975
- Letters to My Son: A Father's Wisdom on Manhood, Life, and Love
- Man and His Symbols
- Mechanics of Materials
- Michel Foucault (Core Cultural Theorists series)
- Minds behind the Brain: A History of the Pioneers and Their Discoveries
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