"19th-century Europe--from Turin to Prague to Paris--abounds with the ghastly and the mysterious. Jesuits plot against Freemasons. In Italy, republicans strangle priests with their own intestines. In France, during the Paris Commune, people eat mice, plan bombings and rebellions in the streets, and celebrate Black Masses. Every nation has its own secret service, perpetrating conspiracies and even massacres. There are false beards, false lawyers, false...

Brother William's search for heresy in a 14th-century Italian abbey is interrupted by seven bizarre deaths in seven terrifying days.

Collected here are some of Umberto Eco's finest popular essays, recording the incisive and surprisingly entertaining observations of his restless intellectual mind. As the author puts it in the preface to the second edition: "In these pages, I try to interpret and to help others interpret some 'signs.' These signs are not only words, or images; they can also be forms of social behavior, political acts, artificial landscapes." From Disneyland to...

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...

Inventing the Enemy covers a wide range of topics on which Eco has written and lectured over the past ten years: from a disquisition on the theme that runs through his recent novel The Prague Cemetery - every country needs an enemy, and if it doesn't have one, must invent it - to a discussion of ideas that have inspired his earlier novels (and in the process he takes us on an exploration of lost islands, mythical realms, and the medieval world); from...

Eco's treatment demonstrates his mastery of the field of semiotics. It focuses on the twin problems of the doctrine of signs-communication and signification-and offers a highly original theory of sign production, including a carefully wrought typology of signs and modes of production.

At its height, the Order of the Knights Templar rivaled the kingdoms of Europe in military might, economic power, and political influence. For 700 years the tragic demise of this society of warrior-monks amid accusations of heresy has been plagued by controversy, in part because the transcript of their trial by the Inquisition--which held the key to the truth--had vanished. Templar historian Barbara Frale happened to be studying a document at the...

Internationally best-selling author Umberto Eco is a master stylist whose books, including Baudolino, have been savored by millions around the world. Now, with The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, he crafts another ambitious and breathtaking novel. When book dealer Yambo suffers amnesia, his only remaining memories are books, poems, songs, and movies. Steeped in nostalgia and filled with vivid imagery, this work is a magnificent addition to Eco's...

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...

"Infused with history and crackling suspense, Umberto Eco's celebrated international bestseller--a cerebral classic, prescient of our own times, about a literary joke that goes terribly awry, unexpectedly plunging its creators into mortal danger. A man named Colonel Ardenti tells three cynical book editors that he has discovered a coded message about a centuries-old Knights Templar plan to tap a mystic source of power greater than atomic energy. The...