Now available in a deluxe edition featuring never-before-seen illustrations by the author: the beloved internationally bestselling historical mystery about a brilliant monk called upon to solve a series of baffling murders in a fourteenth-century Italian abbey“Explodes with pyrotechnic inventions, literally as well as figuratively. Hold on till the end.” —New York Times“Whether you're into Sherlock Holmes, Montaillou, Borge...

A "scintillating collection" of essays on Disneyland, medieval times, and much more, from the author of Foucault's Pendulum (Los Angeles Times).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 ...

Love & Profanity features more than forty brief, brilliant, and unforgettable true stories from writers both renowned and on the rise. Discover strange and surprising scenes of people coming of age amidst the everyday intensity of teenage life. Witness transformative moments arising from the mundane. Behold the young adult in full splendor and horror, bursting with love and profanity.

Long hailed as a seminal work of modernism in the tradition of Joyce and Kafka, and now available in a supple new English translation, Italo Svevo’s charming and splendidly idiosyncratic novel conducts readers deep into one hilariously hyperactive and endlessly self-deluding mind. The mind in question belongs to Zeno Cosini, a neurotic Italian businessman who is writing his confessions at the behest of his psychiatrist. Here are Zeno’s interminable attempts to quit smoking, his courtship o...

Part whodunit, part satire of Turin’s ruling class, this lively and incisive detective novel by a beloved Italian literary duo navigates through the many layers of Turinese society, from the high to the low to the dubious.Carlo Fruttero and Franco Lucentini were a pair of legendary Italian writers widely celebrated as pioneers of modern crime fiction. The Sunday Woman was the first detective novel they collaborated on together, and also the first to featur...

The novels that the great Italian writer Alberto Moravia wrote in the years following World War II represent an extraordinary survey of the range of human behavior in a fragmented modern society. Boredom, the story of a failed artist and pampered son of a rich family who becomes dangerously attached to a young model, examines the complex relations between money, sex, and imperiled masculinity. This powerful and disturbing study in the pathology of modern life is one of the masterw...

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 fort...

Matrix analysis of structures is a vital subject to every structural analyst, whether working in aero-astro, civil, or mechanical engineering. It provides a comprehensive approach to the analysis of a wide variety of structural types, and therefore offers a major advantage over traditional metho~ which often differ for each type of structure. The matrix approach also provides an efficient means of describing various steps in the analysis and is easily programmed for digital computers. Use ...

"You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel … Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade."—from If on a Winter's Night a TravelerItalo Calvino's stunning classic imagines a novel capable of endless possibilities in an intricately crafted, spellbinding story about writing and reading.If on a Winter's Night a Traveler is a feat of striking ingenuity and intelligence, exploring how our reading choices can shape and transform our...

The author of the international sensation The Name of the Rose returns to the Middle Ages in this beguiling tale of history, myth, and invention.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...

In the tumultuous aftermath of Caesar's assassination, Rome is torn apart by civil war. Pharsalia, an epic poem by Lucan, transports readers to the heart of this conflict, where the fate of the empire hangs in the balance. Follow the rise and fall of Pompey and Caesar, two legendary generals whose rivalry ignites a bloody struggle that will forever alter the course of history. Witness the horrors of war, the clash of armies, and the personal sacrifices that shape the destiny of a nation.

“Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.” — from Invisible CitiesIn a garden sit the aged Kublai Khan and the young Marco Polo — Mongol emperor and Venetian traveler. Kublai Khan has sensed the end of his empire coming soon. Marco Polo diverts his host with stories of the cities he has seen in his travel...