An erudite and witty collection of Umberto Eco's essays on mass culture from the 1960s through the 1980s, including major pieces which have not been translated into English before. The discussion is framed by opposing characterizations of current intellectuals as apocalyptic and opposed to all mass culture, or as integrated intellectuals, so much a part of mass culture as to be unaware of serving it. Organized in four main parts, "Mass Culture: Apocalypse Postponed," "Mass Media and the Limits of Communication," "The Rise and Fall of Counter-Cultures," and "In Search of Italian Genius," Eco looks at a variety of topics and cultural productions, including the world of Charlie Brown, distinctions between highbrow and lowbrow, the future of literacy, Chinese comic strips, whether countercultures exist, Fellini's Ginger and Fred, and the Italian genius industry.

【炸彈與將軍】
壞將軍真壞心，一心只想打仗奪利，竟把原子做成了炸彈。想到自己即將摧毀媽媽、寶寶、鮮花、青草等美好的事物，悶悶不樂的原子們決定偷偷從彈殼裡溜走……
【三個太空人】
美、中、俄三名太空人奉命進行太空探險，三個人各講各的語言，一路上彼此互相討厭，沒想到卻遇到了有著六隻手的火星人！面對『異形』，三人決定要團結起來……
【『弩』星球的精靈】
地球上一個狂妄的統治者想宣揚自傲的文明，於是派出太空界的哥倫布——『小探』出外尋找小星球。結果，看似原始落後的小星球卻給了人類一個大大的教訓……
當代記號語言學大師艾可這次特別為了所有大朋友、小朋友，撰寫了三篇可愛的小故事，並由義大利著名現代畫家卡米繪圖，篇幅雖短，大師的智慧卻盡藏其中！

A posthumous collection of essays about the modern world from one of Europe’s greatest, and best-selling, literary figures
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 profound wisdom. He sees with fresh eyes the upheaval in ideological values, the crises in politics, and the unbridled individualism that have become the backdrop of our lives—a “liquid” society in which it’s not easy to find a polestar, though stars and starlets abound.
In these pieces, written for his regular column in L’Espresso magazine, Eco brings his dazzling erudition and keen sense of the everyday to bear on topics such as popular culture and politics, being seen, conspiracies, the old and the young, new technologies, mass media, racism, and good manners. It is a final gift to his reader—astute, witty, and illuminating.

How do we know a cat is a cat? And why do we call it a cat? How much of our perception of things is based on cognitive ability, and how much on linguistic resources? Here, 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.

In this collection of nine essays, Umberto Eco sets forth a dialectic between 'open' and 'closed' texts, between a work of art that actively involves the 'addressee' in its production and one that holds the 'addressee' at bay and seeks to evoke a limited and predetermined response. He investigates the contributions of contemporary semantics to the study of narrative, and connects the modalities of textual interpretation with the problem of possible worlds.

'Between a bottle of Epsom salts or one of twenty-year-old cognac, which would you choose? Would you rather spend your vacation with an eighty-year old leper or with Demi Moore? Do you prefer being sprinkled with ferocious red ants or sharing a sleeping compartment with Claudia Schiffer?' From the celebrated author of The Name of the Rose, here is a dazzling compendium of advice offering the correct answers to these and many other important questions. Tackling topics as diverse as the coffee pot from hell, eating on an aeroplane, how not to use a cellular phone and recognising porn movies, Umberto Eco guides us with all his customary wit and brilliance through the complexities of the modern world.

A fascinating illustrated tour of the fabled places in literature and folklore that have awed, troubled, and eluded us through the ages. From the epic poets of antiquity to contemporary writers of science fiction, from the authors of the Holy Scriptures to modern raconteurs of fairy tales, writers and storytellers through the ages have invented imaginary and mythical lands, projecting onto them all of our human dreams, ideals, and fears. In the tradition of his acclaimed History of Beauty, On Ugliness, and The Infinity of Lists, renowned writer and cultural critic Umberto Eco leads us on a beautifully illustrated journey through these lands of myth and invention, showing us their inhabitants, the passions that rule them, their heroes and antagonists, and, above all, the importance they hold for us. He explores this human urge to create such places, the utopias and dystopias where our imagination can confront things that are too incredible or challenging for our limited real world. Illuminated with more than 300 color images, The Book of Legendary Lands is both erudite and thoroughly enjoyable, bringing together disparate elements of our shared literary legacy in a way only Umberto Eco can. Homer’s poems and other ancient and medieval texts are presented side by side with Gulliver’s Travels and Alice in Wonderland; Tolkien shares space with Marco Polo’s Books of the Marvels of the World; films complement poems, and comics inform novels. Together, these stories have influenced the sensibilities and worldview of all of us.

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.”

《试刊号》是意大利作家翁贝托·埃科生前最后一部小说，通过一场阴谋重重的办报实验，对现代新闻业进行了深刻的剖析和批判。
一九九二年的米兰，几名记者加入一份正在筹备的日报，《明日报》，雄心勃勃地要在新的职位上大显身手。在电视和广播兴盛的时代，报纸的滞后性不言而喻，因此，《明日报》立志讲述“明日即将发生的事件”，通过深入调查，在新闻领域拥有某种“预见性”。他们精心研究过去的新闻，试图编出编一份模拟的“创刊号”。而在调查过程中，种种现实却不容置疑地跃入眼前。“人们都以为墨索里尼已经死了，而自1945年以来，意大利发生的每一件大事背后，都飘荡着他的幽灵......”一名记者突然提出这样的假设，正当人们怀疑他走火入魔时，一天早晨，他惨遭杀害。
此时，记者们才发现，这份报纸不过是一个诽谤和勒索的工具......是身为传媒巨头的幕后老板打入政治核心的垫脚石......

Nineteenth-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 notorious forgery 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? And what if that evil genius created the most infamous document of all? Eco takes his readers on an unforgettable journey through the underbelly of world-shattering events. "The Prague Cemetery" is Umberto Eco at his most exciting, a novel immediately hailed as his masterpiece.

The idea that there once existed a language which perfectly and unambiguously expressed the essence of all possible things and concepts has occupied the minds of philosophers, theologians, mystics and others for at least two millennia. This is an investigation into the history of that idea and of its profound influence on European thought, culture and history. From the early Dark Ages to the Renaissance it was widely believed that the language spoken in the Garden of Eden was just such a language, and that all current languages were its decadent descendants from the catastrophe of the Fall and at Babel. The recovery of that language would, for theologians, express the nature of divinity, for cabbalists allow access to hidden knowledge and power, and for philosophers reveal the nature of truth. Versions of these ideas remained current in the Enlightenment, and have recently received fresh impetus in attempts to create a natural language for artificial intelligence. The story that Umberto Eco tells ranges widely from the writings of Augustine, Dante, Descartes and Rousseau, arcane treatises on cabbalism and magic, to the history of the study of language and its origins. He demonstrates the initimate relation between language and identity and describes, for example, how and why the Irish, English, Germans and Swedes - one of whom presented God talking in Swedish to Adam, who replied in Danish, while the serpent tempted Eve in French - have variously claimed their language as closest to the original. He also shows how the late eighteenth-century discovery of a proto-language (Indo-European) for the Aryan peoples was perverted to support notions of racial superiority. To this subtle exposition of a history of extraordinary complexity, Umberto Eco links the associated history of the manner in which the sounds of language and concepts have been written and symbolized. Lucidly and wittily written, the book is, in sum, a tour de force of scholarly detection and cultural interpretation, providing a series of original perspectives on two thousand years of European History. The paperback edition of this book is not available through Blackwell outside of North America.

Il libro nasce da una serie di conferenze e seminari sulla traduzione tenuti da Umberto Eco a Toronto, a Oxford e all'Università di Bologna negli ultimi anni e dell'intervento orale cerca di mantenere il tono di conversazione. I testi si propongono di agitare problemi teorici partendo da esperienze pratiche, quelle che l'autore ha fatto nel corso degli anni come correttore di traduzioni altrui, come traduttore in proprio e come autore tradotto che ha collaborato con i propri traduttori. La questione centrale è naturalmente che cosa voglia dire tradurre, e la risposta - ovvero la domanda di partenza - è che significhi "dire quasi la stessa cosa". A prima vista sembra che il problema stia tutto in quel "quasi" ma, in effetti, molti sono gli interrogativi anche rispetto al "dire", rispetto allo "stessa" e sosprattutto rispetto alla "cosa". Dato un testo, che cosa di quel testo deve rendere il traduttore? La semplice superficie lessicale e sintattica? Troppo facile, ovvero troppo difficile, come si vedrà.

作者：安伯托‧艾可（Umberto Eco）
全球知名小說家、哲學家、歷史學家、文學評論家、美學家、記號語言學權威
《美的歷史》、《醜的歷史》、《無盡的名單》、《玫瑰的名字》等書作者
安伯托‧艾可（Umberto Eco），留給全世界讀者的最後人文藝術巨作
集知識、藝術、美學、想像於一書的經典作品
從遠古到現代‧人類想像力的藝術史
地平說、烏龜說、對蹠點
所羅門王聖殿、示巴女王之國
無頭人、大腳人、半獸人
亞特蘭提斯之謎與姆大陸
聖杯傳奇、尤利西斯歸國記
安伯托‧艾可透過《異境之書》
引領讀者進入一則又一則的神話傳說、傳奇幻境！
人類對這世界充滿了好奇心和理想性，總想前往未知的地方一探究竟；如果是雙腳難以抵達或者根本無法抵達之處，就交給無拘無束的心智想像去冒險，填補地圖上的空白，也為這世界灌注熱情和理想。
從遠古到近代，不論是文字記載或口述傳說，都充滿無數關於奇境、異域、理想國、失落的大陸、奇人異獸與遠方族群的傳說，歷代藝術家也盡情發揮想像力，將這些傳說的境域繪成圖像，滿足人們的好奇心。
義大利中世紀藝術史大師安伯托‧艾可蒐羅數百幅關於虛構之地與神話世界的圖像，將它們的傳說與故事娓娓道來，呈現人類想像力和世界觀的變化歷程，兼具趣味性、藝術性及知識性。

A work more disturbing than fiction from "the father of graphic novels" (New York Times).
Will Eisner, the great American master of comics, has undertaken what he regards as his most powerful work yet. The Plot examines the outrageous fabrication of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which purports to be the actual blueprint by Jewish leaders to take over the world. Hatched as an anti-Semitic plot by the tsar's secret police to deflect widespread criticism of the government, the Protocols, first published in 1905, succeeded beyond the propagandistic ambitions of its originators; the lie became an internationally accepted truth. Presenting a pageant of historical figures including Tsar Nicholas II, Henry Ford, and Adolf Hitler, Eisner exposes the twisted history of the Protocols from nineteenth-century Russia to modern-day Klan members to Islamic fundamentalists. The Plot unravels one of the most devastating hoaxes of the twentieth century.