The Prague Cemetery

Author : Umberto Eco
Publisher : HarperCollins
Page : 481 pages
File Size : 49,8 Mb
Release : 2011-11-08
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9780547577616

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The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco Pdf

The Prague Cemetery is the #1 international bestselling historical novel from the award-winning and New York Times bestselling author of The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco. Nineteenth-century Europe—from Turin to Prague to Paris—abounds with the ghastly and the mysterious. Jesuits plot against Freemasons. Italian republicans strangle priests with their own intestines. French criminals plan bombings by day and celebrate Black Masses at night. Every nation has its own secret service, perpetrating forgeries, plots, and massacres. Conspiracies rule history. From the unification of Italy to the Paris Commune to the Dreyfus Affair to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Europe is in tumult and everyone needs a scapegoat. But what if behind all of these conspiracies, both real and imagined, lay one lone man? “Choreographed by a truth that is itself so strange a novelist need hardly expand on it to produce a wondrous tale... Eco is to be applauded for bringing this stranger-than-fiction truth vividly to life.” —The New York Times

Author : Q.R. Markham
Publisher : Mulholland Books
Page : 196 pages
File Size : 47,7 Mb
Release : 2011-11-03
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9780316190589

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Assassin of Secrets by Q.R. Markham Pdf

An elite spy risks his biggest asset to defeat an insidious international organization hell-bent on selling the most sensitive state secrets to the highest bidder. Jonathan Chase, the CIA's top field agent, is sworn to protect and serve the United States at all costs. But after a brutal period of captivity during the Korean War, Chase developed an agenda of his own: to use his mastery of war to create peace. His new target: the Zero Directorate, a cabal of rogue assassins who have embarked on a campaign to systematically interrogate and kill seasoned secret agents from across the globe. But the Directorate has set an elaborate trap, and for Chase the whole mission involves an inescapable paradox. As the world's preeminent operative, the closer he gets to the cabal, the closer the cabal gets to their primary target.

Author : Umberto Eco
Publisher : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Page : 276 pages
File Size : 54,9 Mb
Release : 2012-09-04
Category : Literary Collections
ISBN : 9780547577609

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Inventing the Enemy by Umberto Eco Pdf

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 : Irène Cohen-Janca
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 50,6 Mb
Release : 2017
Category : Golem
ISBN : 1554518881

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The Golem of Prague by Irène Cohen-Janca Pdf

This retelling of an ancient Jewish legend will capture a new audience with its powerful illustrations and timeless text.

Author : Umberto Eco
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 337 pages
File Size : 45,6 Mb
Release : 2019-10-22
Category : Literary Collections
ISBN : 9780674242272

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On the Shoulders of Giants by Umberto Eco Pdf

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.

Author : Eli Valley
Publisher : Jason Aronson
Page : 568 pages
File Size : 55,6 Mb
Release : 1999
Category : History
ISBN : 0765760002

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The Great Jewish Cities of Central and Eastern Europe by Eli Valley Pdf

The Great Jewish Cities of Central and Eastern Europe: A Travel Guide and Resource Book to Prague, Warsaw, Cracow, and Budapest is the most comprehensive guidebook covering all aspects of Jewish history and contemporary life in Prague, Warsaw, Cracow, and Budapest. This remarkable book includes detailed histories of the Jews in these cities, walking tours of Jewish districts past and present, intensive descriptions of Jewish sites, fascinating accounts of local Jewish legend and lore, and practical information for Jewish travelers to the region.

Author : abbé Barruel (Augustin)
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 434 pages
File Size : 43,5 Mb
Release : 1798
Category : France
ISBN : NYPL:33433067405997

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Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobism by abbé Barruel (Augustin) Pdf

Author : Umberto Eco
Publisher : Columbia University Press
Page : 168 pages
File Size : 41,7 Mb
Release : 1998-10-06
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9780231500142

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Serendipities by Umberto Eco Pdf

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 : Douglass Merrell
Publisher : Springer
Page : 296 pages
File Size : 42,6 Mb
Release : 2017-06-05
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9783319547893

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Umberto Eco, The Da Vinci Code, and the Intellectual in the Age of Popular Culture by Douglass Merrell Pdf

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.

Author : Dan Geddes
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 192 pages
File Size : 40,9 Mb
Release : 2012-12-02
Category : American wit and humor
ISBN : 9081999702

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The Satirist by Dan Geddes Pdf

"Enjoy this hilarious collection of satires, reviews, news, poems, and short stories from The Satirist: America's Most Critical Journal."--P. [4] of cover.

Author : Ken Worpole
Publisher : Reaktion Books
Page : 236 pages
File Size : 46,8 Mb
Release : 2004-10-03
Category : Architecture
ISBN : 9781861895394

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Last Landscapes by Ken Worpole Pdf

Last Landscapes is an exploration of the cult and celebration of death, loss and memory. It traces the history and design of burial places throughout Europe and the USA, ranging from the picturesque tradition of the village churchyard to tightly packed "cities of the dead", such as the Jewish Cemetery in Prague and Père Lachaise in Paris. Other landscapes that feature in this book include the war cemeteries of northern France, Viking burial islands in central Sweden, Etruscan tombs and early Christian catacombs in Italy, the 17th-century Portuguese–Jewish cemetery "Beth Haim" at Ouderkerk in the Netherlands, Forest Lawns in California, Derek Jarman’s garden in Kent and the Stockholm Woodland Cemetery. It is a fact that architecture "began with the tomb", yet, as Ken Worpole shows us in Last Landscapes, many historic cemeteries have been demolished or abandoned in recent times (notably the case with Jewish cemeteries in Eastern Europe), and there has been an increasing loss of inscription and memorialization in the modern urban cemetery. Too often cemeteries today are both poorly designed and physically and culturally marginalized. Worse, cremation denies a full architectural response to the mystery and solemnity of death. The author explores how modes of disposal – burial, cremation, inhumation in mausoleums and wall tombs – vary across Europe and North America, according to religious and other cultural influences. And Last Landscapes raises profound questions as to how, in an age of mass cremation, architects and landscape designers might create meaningful structures and settings in the absence of a body, since for most of history the human body itself has provided the fundamental structural scale. This evocative book also contemplates other forms of memorialization within modern societies, from sculptures to parks, most notably the extraordinary Duisberg Park, set in a former giant steelworks in Germany’s Ruhr Valley.

Author : Maria Stepanova
Publisher : Columbia University Press
Page : 392 pages
File Size : 41,6 Mb
Release : 2021-05-18
Category : Literary Collections
ISBN : 9780231551687

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The Voice Over by Maria Stepanova Pdf

Maria Stepanova is one of the most powerful and distinctive voices of Russia’s first post-Soviet literary generation. An award-winning poet and prose writer, she has also founded a major platform for independent journalism. Her verse blends formal mastery with a keen ear for the evolution of spoken language. As Russia’s political climate has turned increasingly repressive, Stepanova has responded with engaged writing that grapples with the persistence of violence in her country’s past and present. Some of her most remarkable recent work as a poet and essayist considers the conflict in Ukraine and the debasement of language that has always accompanied war. The Voice Over brings together two decades of Stepanova’s work, showcasing her range, virtuosity, and creative evolution. Stepanova’s poetic voice constantly sets out in search of new bodies to inhabit, taking established forms and styles and rendering them into something unexpected and strange. Recognizable patterns of ballads, elegies, and war songs are transposed into a new key, infused with foreign strains, and juxtaposed with unlikely neighbors. As an essayist, Stepanova engages deeply with writers who bore witness to devastation and dramatic social change, as seen in searching pieces on W. G. Sebald, Marina Tsvetaeva, and Susan Sontag. Including contributions from ten translators, The Voice Over shows English-speaking readers why Stepanova is one of Russia’s most acclaimed contemporary writers.

Author : Umberto Eco
Publisher : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Page : 352 pages
File Size : 40,7 Mb
Release : 2004
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 0151008124

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On Literature by Umberto Eco Pdf

Publisher Description

Author : Umberto Eco
Publisher : Random House
Page : 656 pages
File Size : 44,9 Mb
Release : 2014-08-29
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9781448181988

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Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco Pdf

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

Author : Jan Kruta
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 36 pages
File Size : 46,9 Mb
Release : 2001
Category : Golem
ISBN : 8023882732

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Golem by Jan Kruta Pdf

Prague is a city made for fairy tales. And some fairy tales could never exist anywhere else. -- Publisher description