--- {"type":"list","title":"Umberto Eco Book List","listId":2997,"canonicalUrl":"https://listium.com/@thomasdavis/2997/umberto-eco-book-list","visibleItemTotal":11,"creator":{"id":"thomasdavis","name":"Thomas Davis","url":"https://listium.com/@thomasdavis"},"stats":{"views":563,"likes":4},"category":"books & literature","publishedAt":"2016-05-22T04:06:15.453Z","updatedAt":"2017-07-12T00:46:20.462Z","fields":[{"id":0,"name":"Title","type":"PrimaryText"},{"id":3,"name":"Summary","type":"Text","format":"long"},{"id":1,"name":"Published","type":"Text","format":"short"},{"id":2,"name":"Cover","type":"Image"},{"id":4,"name":"Read","type":"Symbols","format":"checkbox"},{"id":5,"name":"Google","type":"Calculated","format":"search_link"}]} --- # Umberto Eco Book List By [Thomas Davis (@thomasdavis)](https://listium.com/@thomasdavis) 563 views · 4 likes Published 22 May 2016 · Updated 12 July 2017 Category: books & literature "We have a limit, a very discouraging, humiliating limit: death. That's why we like all the things that we assume have no limits and, therefore, no end. It's a way of escaping thoughts about death. We like lists because we don't want to die." ## Items ### 1. [The Name of the Rose](https://listium.com/@thomasdavis/2997/umberto-eco-book-list/0/the-name-of-the-rose) Item ID: `0` - Summary: The year is 1327. Franciscans in a wealthy Italian abbey are suspected of heresy, and Brother William of Baskerville arrives to investigate. When his delicate mission is suddenly overshadowed by seven bizarre deaths, Brother William turns detective. His tools are the logic of Aristotle, the theology of Aquinas, the empirical insights of Roger Bacon - all sharpened to a glistening edge by wry humor and a ferocious curiosity. He collects evidence, deciphers secret symbols and coded manuscripts, and digs into the eerie labyrinth of the abbey, where "the most interesting things happen at night." - Published: 1980 - Cover: ![Cover](https://img.listium.com/images/width=800,height=800,fit=scale-down,format=webp/l/ua8pmyeihjdxv2zliovo.png) - Read: false - Google: [Search](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=!google%20The+Name+of+the+Rose+Umberto+Eco+Book) ### 2. [Foucault's Pendulum](https://listium.com/@thomasdavis/2997/umberto-eco-book-list/1/foucaults-pendulum) Item ID: `1` - Summary: Foucault's Pendulum is divided into ten segments represented by the ten Sefiroth. The novel is full of esoteric references to the Kabbalah. The title of the book refers to an actual pendulum designed by the French physicist Léon Foucault to demonstrate the rotation of the earth, which has symbolic significance within the novel. Bored with their work, and after reading too many manuscripts about occult conspiracy theories, three vanity publisher employees (Belbo, Diotallevi and Casaubon) invent their own conspiracy for fun. They call this satirical intellectual game "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. - Published: 1988 - Cover: ![Cover](https://img.listium.com/images/width=800,height=800,fit=scale-down,format=webp/l/vgqoh6wurbjbsbx2rq2x.png) - Read: false - Google: [Search](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=!google%20Foucault+s+Pendulum+Umberto+Eco+Book) ### 3. [Travels in Hyperreality](https://listium.com/@thomasdavis/2997/umberto-eco-book-list/9/travels-in-hyperreality) Item ID: `9` - Summary: 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 - Published: 1990 - Cover: ![Cover](https://img.listium.com/images/width=800,height=800,fit=scale-down,format=webp/l/dvu7ywvhrifrr8fdx08w.png) - Read: false - Google: [Search](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=!google%20Travels+in+Hyperreality+Umberto+Eco+Book) ### 4. [How to Travel with a Salmon and Other Essays](https://listium.com/@thomasdavis/2997/umberto-eco-book-list/8/how-to-travel-with-a-salmon-and-other-essays) Item ID: `8` - Summary: Once a columnist for an Italian literary magazine, Eco now shares his acute and highly entertaining sense of the absurd in modern life in these essays about militarism, computerese, cowboy and Indian movies, art criticism, librarians, semiotics, and much more--including himself. - Published: 1992 - Cover: ![Cover](https://img.listium.com/images/width=800,height=800,fit=scale-down,format=webp/l/yp4sexubl8wauyegubbg.png) - Read: false - Google: [Search](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=!google%20How+to+Travel+with+a+Salmon+and+Other+Essays+Umberto+Eco+Book) ### 5. [Baudolino](https://listium.com/@thomasdavis/2997/umberto-eco-book-list/3/baudolino) Item ID: `3` - Summary: It is April 1204, and Constantinople, the splendid capital of the Byzantine Empire, is being sacked and burned by the knights of the Fourth Crusade. Amid the carnage and confusion, one Baudolino saves a historian and high court official from certain death at the hands of the crusading warriors and proceeds to tell his own fantastical story. - Published: 2003 - Cover: ![Cover](https://img.listium.com/images/width=800,height=800,fit=scale-down,format=webp/l/xshyqxtdfegf15b97qch.png) - Read: false - Google: [Search](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=!google%20Baudolino+Umberto+Eco+Book) ### 6. [History of Beauty](https://listium.com/@thomasdavis/2997/umberto-eco-book-list/2/history-of-beauty) Item ID: `2` - Summary: Now in paperback, Umberto Eco’s groundbreaking and much-acclaimed first illustrated book has been a critical success since its first publication in 2004. What is beauty? Umberto Eco, among Italy’s finest and most important contemporary thinkers, explores the nature, the meaning, and the very history of the idea of beauty in Western culture. The profound and subtle text is lavishly illustrated with abundant examples of sublime painting and sculpture and lengthy quotations from writers and philosophers. This is the first paperback edition of History of Beauty, making this intellectual and philosophical journey with one of the world’s most acclaimed thinkers available in a more compact and affordable format. - Published: 2004 - Cover: ![Cover](https://img.listium.com/images/width=800,height=800,fit=scale-down,format=webp/l/arpr9hhyefss0ypctddy.png) - Read: false - Google: [Search](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=!google%20History+of+Beauty+Umberto+Eco+Book) ### 7. [The Island of the Day Before](https://listium.com/@thomasdavis/2997/umberto-eco-book-list/6/the-island-of-the-day-before) Item ID: `6` - Summary: After a violent storm in the South Pacific in the year 1643, Roberto della Griva finds himself shipwrecked-on a ship. Swept from the Amaryllis, he has managed to pull himself aboard the Daphne, anchored in the bay of a beautiful island. The ship is fully provisioned, he discovers, but the crew is missing. - Published: 2006 - Cover: ![Cover](https://img.listium.com/images/width=800,height=800,fit=scale-down,format=webp/l/niuzoi47qroqd5uz3wgw.png) - Read: false - Google: [Search](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=!google%20The+Island+of+the+Day+Before+Umberto+Eco+Book) ### 8. [The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana](https://listium.com/@thomasdavis/2997/umberto-eco-book-list/7/the-mysterious-flame-of-queen-loana) Item ID: `7` - Summary: 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. - Published: 2006 - Cover: ![Cover](https://img.listium.com/images/width=800,height=800,fit=scale-down,format=webp/l/altvztwczldzdnhaxf6l.png) - Read: false - Google: [Search](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=!google%20The+Mysterious+Flame+of+Queen+Loana+Umberto+Eco+Book) ### 9. [On Ugliness](https://listium.com/@thomasdavis/2997/umberto-eco-book-list/4/on-ugliness) Item ID: `4` - Summary: In the mold of his acclaimed History of Beauty, renowned cultural critic Umberto Eco’s On Ugliness is an exploration of the monstrous and the repellant in visual culture and the arts. What is the voyeuristic impulse behind our attraction to the gruesome and the horrible? Where does the magnetic appeal of the sordid and the scandalous come from? Is ugliness also in the eye of the beholder? Eco’s encyclopedic knowledge and captivating storytelling skills combine in this ingenious study of the Ugly, revealing that what we often shield ourselves from and shun in everyday life is what we’re most attracted to subliminally. Topics range from Milton’s Satan to Goethe’s Mephistopheles; from witchcraft and medieval torture tactics to martyrs, hermits, and penitents; from lunar births and disemboweled corpses to mythic monsters and sideshow freaks; and from Decadentism and picturesque ugliness to the tacky, kitsch, and camp, and the aesthetics of excess and vice. With abundant examples of painting and sculpture ranging from ancient Greek amphorae to Bosch, Brueghel, and Goya among others, and with quotations from the most celebrated writers and philosophers of each age, this provocative discussion explores in-depth the concepts of evil, depravity, and darkness in art and literature. - Published: 2007 - Cover: ![Cover](https://img.listium.com/images/width=800,height=800,fit=scale-down,format=webp/l/orwselkwoaqbeuowurm2.png) - Read: false - Google: [Search](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=!google%20On+Ugliness+Umberto+Eco+Book) ### 10. [The Prague Cemetery](https://listium.com/@thomasdavis/2997/umberto-eco-book-list/5/the-prague-cemetery) Item ID: `5` - Summary: 19th-century Europe—from Turin to Prague to Paris—abounds with the ghastly and the mysterious. Conspiracies rule history. 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. 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? What if that evil genius created its most infamous document? - Published: 2011 - Cover: ![Cover](https://img.listium.com/images/width=800,height=800,fit=scale-down,format=webp/l/bvehdpwwvykvckaug9ma.png) - Read: false - Google: [Search](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=!google%20The+Prague+Cemetery+Umberto+Eco+Book) ### 11. [Travels in Hyperrealitya](https://listium.com/@thomasdavis/2997/umberto-eco-book-list/10/travels-in-hyperrealitya) Item ID: `10` - Summary: - - Published: - - Cover: - - Read: false - Google: [Search](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=!google%20Travels+in+Hyperrealitya+Umberto+Eco+Book)