Umberto Albarella's Books

The History of British Birds

By: Derek Yalden,Umberto Albarella

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An integration of ornithological and archaeological evidence on the history, composition and balance of the bird fauna of the British Isles. It provides essential background information for the debate on extinction, conservation and reintroduction.

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270

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Oxford University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0199217513

ISBN 13

9780199217519

Dragon Hall, King Street, Norwich

Excavation and Survey of a Late Medieval Merchant's Trading Complex

By: Andy Shelley

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Dragon Hall, King Street, Norwich

Excavation and Survey of a Late Medieval Merchant's Trading Complex

By: Andy Shelley

When a wealthy merchant built Dragon Hall in 1427 there had already been stone buildings on the site for 140 years, while the origins of settlement here lay in the period c. 9751025. Some of the buildings used by these first settlers were uncovered during the recent work at Dragon Hall, along with evidence for a small riverside community within an extra-mural Late Saxon suburb. Until the mid 13th century the site comprised three properties engaged in small-scale craft and industry, alongside horticulture and keeping livestock. At this time there appears to have been little interest in the commercial possibilities of the nearby river. By the early 1300s, however, the site had passed into the hands of the professional and ecclesiastical elite. The earliest known document relating to the site is a deed from 1289 which records a land transfer between the Abbey of Woburn and a Norwich clerk, John Page. Both used the site to build substantial stone houses. One reason for the abbeys interest in the property was probably its situation between a river flowing through the great medieval herring town of Yarmouth and a cardinal road through Norwich providing an ideal base from which to process fish and dispatch them inland. The early 14th-century remnants of Pages hall house survive today within Dragon Hall. The two holdings were conjoined during the second half of the 14th century, when the site was unified by the Midday or Clere families. In the late 1420s an ambitious construction programme commenced, probably by local merchant Robert Toppe, which resulted in Dragon Hall itself. The hall house was substantially rebuilt, and its service end embedded within the new trading hall. The first floor of the new hall provided the huge open space within which to store and display goods, and an office above the former service rooms from which to conduct business. The circulation of visitors was carefully regulated: divisions between public and private space are signalled by the quality of workmanship on show. A road which had linked the Midday/Clere complex to the street and river was now blocked by the warehouse and terminated beneath the first-floor showroom. After Toppes death the complex passed into the hands of local gentry until, in 1619, the great holding began to be sub-divided. Some of the buildings, including the abbey of Woburn's stone house, were demolished, and others rose in their place. A metalworking shop was eventually built on the site of one of the Woburn buildings and by the mid-18th century parts of the hall house were being used as an inn (The Three Merry Wherrymen, later the Old Barge Inn). By 1935 the site housed at least 34 individuals. As the population of the site rose so the quantity and variety of their discarded pottery increased. The collection of early modern ceramics from the site is currently without national parallel. Much of this came from the inns, as did four commemorative clay tobacco pipes stamped God Bless King George. Post-war King Street was briefly prosperous but the dwindling commercial use of the river initiated a decline in fortunes until by the early 1990s almost all commerce and industry had gone. Ongoing regeneration of the street reflects renewed interest in inner cities. At the point when Dragon Hall is once again looking forward to a sustainable future it is perhaps auspicious to be offering the definitive account of the sites first thousand years.

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206

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East Anglian Archaeology

Published Date

ISBN 10

0951787810

ISBN 13

9780951787816

Misreadings

By: Umberto Eco

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Misreadings

By: Umberto Eco

Playful parodies by the author of The Name of the Rose and Foucault's Pendulum. Here, Eco pokes fun at the oversophisticated, overacademic, and overintellectual, and along the way makes penetrating comments about our modern mass culture and the elitist avant-garde in art in criticism.

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196

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Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published Date

ISBN 10

0156607522

ISBN 13

9780156607520

Turning Back the Clock

Hot Wars and Media Populism

By: Umberto Eco

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Turning Back the Clock

Hot Wars and Media Populism

By: Umberto Eco

The time: 2000 to 2005, the years of neoconservatism, terrorism, the twenty-four-hour news cycle, the ascension of Bush, Blair, and Berlusconi, and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Umberto Eco's response is a provocative, passionate, and witty series of essays--which originally appeared in the Italian newspapers La Repubblica and L'Espresso--that leaves no slogan unexamined, no innovation unexposed. What led us into this age of hot wars and media populism, and how was it sold to us as progress? Eco discusses such topics as racism, mythology, the European Union, rhetoric, the Middle East, technology, September 11, medieval Latin, television ads, globalization, Harry Potter, anti-Semitism, logic, the Tower of Babel, intelligent design, Italian street demonstrations, fundamentalism, The Da Vinci Code, and magic and magical thinking.The famous author and respected scholar shows his practical, engaged side: an intellectual involved in events both local and global, a man concerned about taste, politics, education, ethics, and where our troubled world is headed.

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396

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Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published Date

ISBN 10

0151013519

ISBN 13

9780151013517

West Cotton, Raunds

A Study of Medieval Settlement Dynamics, AD 450-1450 : Excavation of a Deserted Medieval Hamlet in Northamptonshire, 1985-89

By: Andy Chapman,Marion Archibald

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West Cotton, Raunds

A Study of Medieval Settlement Dynamics, AD 450-1450 : Excavation of a Deserted Medieval Hamlet in Northamptonshire, 1985-89

By: Andy Chapman,Marion Archibald

The open area excavation of nearly a half of the small deserted medieval hamlet of West Cotton, Raunds, Northamptonshire has revealed the dynamic processes of constant development in a way that has rarely been achieved on other comparable sites in England. Its origins have been seen to lie in the mid tenth-century plantation of a planned settlement based on regular one-acre plots, which occurred within the political context of the reconquest of eastern England by the Saxon kings and the subsequent reorganisation of settlement and society within the Danelaw. The settlement contained a major holding comprising a timber hall with ancillary buildings and an adjacent watermill, with perhaps a second similar holding and dependent peasants nearby. It was established on the edge of the floodplain at the confluence of a tributary stream with the River Nene, on a major valley-bottom route way. The processes of redevelopment which led to the rebuilding in stone in the twelfth century, as a small Norman manor house; the probable relocation of the manor buildings in the thirteenth century; and its final form in the fourteenth to mid-fifteenth century as a hamlet of peasant tenements have been well documented by the archaeological evidence. In particular, it has been vividly shown how the final form of the settlement, preserved in earthwork, was merely a fairly brief episode at the end of this extended process of development, while the historic evidence provides no hint of the higher-status elements that had formed an integral part of the settlement until the final century of its occupation. Desertion appears to have been a gradual process, with the tenements abandoned one-by-one through a century of economic and social disasters, of which the Black Death was the most notable, as families presumably moved to better quality land then readily available elsewhere. The role of the local environment in the processes of change has also been well documented, with the abandonment of the watermill in the twelfth century resulting from a disruption of the water supply caused by a period of intense flooding and alluviation, when the very survival of the settlement was only ensured by the construction of a protective flood bank. The excavated structural evidence is of high quality, and has provided numerous complete building plans ranging from the timber halls of the tenth and eleventh centuries, through the manor house of the twelfth to thirteenth centuries, to the well-preserved tenements of the fourteenth century. This is complemented by substantial artefact assemblages, and the consideration of the local economy and environment is largely dependent on the analysis of the faunal evidence and the environmental evidence derived from an extensive programme of soil sampling.

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254

Publisher

Oxbow Books Limited

Published Date

ISBN 10

1842173898

ISBN 13

9781842173893

Belief Or Non-Belief?

A Confrontation

By: Umberto Eco,Carlo Maria Martini

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Belief Or Non-Belief?

A Confrontation

By: Umberto Eco,Carlo Maria Martini

The two great men, who stand on opposite sides of the church door, discuss some of the controversial issues of the day. One is the prince of the Church, a respected scholar and one of the pre-eminent ecumenical churchmen of Europe; and the other the world famous author of The Name of the Rose, a scholar, philosopher and self-declared secularist.

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107

Publisher

A&C Black

Published Date

ISBN 10

0826480993

ISBN 13

9780826480996

Inventing the Enemy

Essays

By: Umberto Eco

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Inventing the Enemy

Essays

By: Umberto Eco

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

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276

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Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published Date

ISBN 10

0547577605

ISBN 13

9780547577609

The Search for the Perfect Language

By: Umberto Eco

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The Search for the Perfect Language

By: Umberto Eco

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.

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406

Publisher

John Wiley & Sons

Published Date

ISBN 10

0631205101

ISBN 13

9780631205104

Serendipities

Language & Lunacy

By: Umberto Eco

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Serendipities

Language & Lunacy

By: Umberto Eco

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148

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Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published Date

ISBN 10

0156007517

ISBN 13

9780156007511

Chronicles of a Liquid Society

By: Umberto Eco

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Chronicles of a Liquid Society

By: Umberto Eco

The acclaimed author examines our contemporary world—from technology to politics and pop culture—in this collection of essays written for L’Espresso. 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 philosophical insight. He illuminates the contemporary upheaval in ideological values, the crises in politics, and the unbridled individualism that have become the backdrop of our lives—creating a “liquid” society that defies any organizing principle. In these pieces, written for his regular column in the Italian magazine L’Espresso, Eco brings his dazzling erudition and keen sense of the everyday to bear on topics such as being seen, conspiracies, the old and the young, mass media, racism, and good manners. It is “a swan song from one of Europe’s great intellectuals…[Eco] entertains with his intellect, humor, and insatiable curiosity” (Kirkus Reviews). “An intelligent, intriguing, and often hilariously incisive set of observations on contemporary follies and changing mores.” —Publishers Weekly

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345

Publisher

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published Date

ISBN 10

0544974573

ISBN 13

9780544974579

From the Tree to the Labyrinth

By: Umberto Eco

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From the Tree to the Labyrinth

By: Umberto Eco

How we create and organize knowledge is the theme of this major achievement by Umberto Eco. Demonstrating once again his inimitable ability to bridge ancient, medieval, and modern modes of thought, he offers here a brilliant illustration of his longstanding argument that problems of interpretation can be solved only in historical context.

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640

Publisher

Harvard University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0674728165

ISBN 13

9780674728165

The Open Work

By: Umberto Eco

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The Open Work

By: Umberto Eco

This book is significant for its concept of "openness"--the artist's decision to leave arrangements of some constituents of a work to the public or to chance--and for its anticipation of two themes of literary theory: the element of multiplicity and plurality in art, and the insistence on literary response as an interaction between reader and text.

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324

Publisher

Harvard University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0674639766

ISBN 13

9780674639768

Five Moral Pieces

By: Umberto Eco

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Five Moral Pieces

By: Umberto Eco

In this prescient essay collection, the acclaimed author of Foucault’s Pendulum examines the cultural trends and perils at the dawn of the 21st century. In the last decade of the 20th century, Umberto Eco saw an urgent need to embrace tolerance and multiculturalism in the face of our world’s ever-increasing interconnectivity. At a talk delivered during the first Gulf War, he points out the absurdity of armed conflict in a globalized economy where the flow of information is unstoppable and the enemy is always behind the lines. Elsewhere, he questions the influence of the news media and identifies its contribution to our collective disillusionment with politics. In a deeply personal essay, Eco recalls his boyhood experience of Italy’s liberation from fascism. He then analyzes the universal elements of fascism, including the “cult of tradition” and a “suspicion of intellectual life.” And finally, in an open letter to an Italian cardinal, Eco reflects on a question underlying all the reflections in the book: What does it mean to be moral or ethical when one doesn't believe in God? “At just 111 pages, Five Moral Pieces packs a philosophical wallop surprising in such a slender book. Or maybe not so surprising. Eco's prose here is beautiful.”—January Magazine

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131

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Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published Date

ISBN 10

0547564058

ISBN 13

9780547564050

Travels in Hyperreality

By: Umberto Eco

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Travels in Hyperreality

By: Umberto Eco

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 are not only words, or images; they can also be forms of social behavior, political acts, artificial landscapes.” From Disneyland to holography and wax museums, Eco explores America’s obsession with artificial reality, suggesting that the craft of forgery has in certain cases exceeded reality itself. He examines Western culture’s enduring fascination with the middle ages, proposing that our most pressing modern concerns began in that time. He delves into an array of topics, from sports to media to what he calls the crisis of reason. Throughout these travels—both physical and mental—Eco displays the same wit, learning, and lively intelligence that delighted readers of The Name of the Rose and Foucault’s Pendulum. Translated by William Weaver

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Page Count

322

Publisher

HMH

Published Date

ISBN 10

0547545967

ISBN 13

9780547545967

Foucault's Pendulum

By: Umberto Eco

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Foucault's Pendulum

By: Umberto Eco

A literary prank leads to deadly danger in this “endlessly diverting” intellectual thriller by the author of The Name of the Rose (Time). Bored with their work, three Milanese book editors cook up an elaborate hoax that connects the medieval Knights Templar with occult groups across the centuries. Becoming obsessed with their own creation, they produce 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. When occult groups, including Satanists, get wind of the Plan, they go so far as to kill one of the editors in their quest to gain control of the earth. Orchestrating these and other diverse characters into his multilayered semiotic adventure, Umberto Eco has created a superb cerebral entertainment. "An intellectual adventure story…sensational, thrilling, and packed with arcana."—The Washington Post Book World

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788

Publisher

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published Date

ISBN 10

0547539681

ISBN 13

9780547539683

The Three Astronauts

By: Umberto Eco,Eugenio Carmi

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The Three Astronauts

By: Umberto Eco,Eugenio Carmi

Each wants to be the first on Mars, but they all land at the same time.

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Harvill Secker

Published Date

ISBN 10

0436140942

ISBN 13

9780436140945

Encounter

By: Umberto Eco,Istituto italiano di cultura (Toronto, Ont.)

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Encounter

By: Umberto Eco,Istituto italiano di cultura (Toronto, Ont.)

It is impossible to think about the present or the future of universities without taking into account the fact that universities live in a world dominated by mass media." - U Eco. Eco wrote this short essay when he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in letters by Laurentian University (Canada). The essay appears in English, French, and Italian.

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Guernica Editions

Published Date

ISBN 10

155071063X

ISBN 13

9781550710632

Belief Or Nonbelief?

A Confrontation

By: Umberto Eco,Carlo Maria Martini

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Belief Or Nonbelief?

A Confrontation

By: Umberto Eco,Carlo Maria Martini

One is a cardinal, and a respected New Testament scholar; the other is the world-famous author of The Name of the Rose, a scholar, philosopher, and self-declared secularist.In this intellectually stimulating dialogue, often adversarial but always amicable, these two great men, who stand on opposite sides of the church door, discuss the controversies of our day, including: ethics, women in the church, abortion and the apocalypse.

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112

Publisher

Burns & Oates

Published Date

ISBN 10

0826466818

ISBN 13

9780826466815

The Name of the Rose

By: Umberto Eco

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The Name of the Rose

By: Umberto Eco

It is the year 1327. Franciscans in an Italian abbey are suspected of heresy, but Brother William of Baskerville's investigation is suddenly overshadowed by seven bizarre deaths. Translated by William Weaver. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book

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724

Published Date

ISBN 10

086220108X

ISBN 13

9780862201081

On the Shoulders of Giants

By: Umberto Eco

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On the Shoulders of Giants

By: Umberto Eco

The final collection from the internationally acclaimed and bestselling author of The Name of the Rose and The Prague Cemetery, on the subjects of art and culture. In this collection of essays we find Umberto Eco’s perennial areas of interest explored in a lively and engaging style, accompanied by beautiful reproductions of the art he discusses. In these wide-ranging pieces he explores the roots of our civilization, changing ideas of beauty, our obsession with conspiracies and the emblematic heroes of the great narrative, amongst other fascinating topics. Umberto Eco was one of the most influential, and entertaining, intellectuals of the last century, as well as being a critically acclaimed and bestselling writer of both fiction and non-fiction.

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350

Publisher

Random House

Published Date

ISBN 10

1473565553

ISBN 13

9781473565555

The Prague Cemetery

By: Umberto Eco

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The Prague Cemetery

By: Umberto Eco

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

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