Foucault's Pendulum

by Umberto Eco

Book Overview

International bestselling and award-winning author Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum is "an intellectual adventure story, as sensational, thrilling, and packed with arcana as Raiders of the Lost Ark or The Count of Monte Cristo" (The Washington Post Book World).Bored with their work, three Milanese editors cook up "the Plan," a hoax that connects the medieval Knights Templar with other occult groups from ancient to modern times. This produces a...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0151327653
• ISBN13: 9780151327652
• Release Date: November 1989
• Publisher: Harpervia
• Length: 656 Pages
• Weight: 2.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.8" x 6.1" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Una Storia Complessa-A Complex Story

Questo libro presenta una trama con un grande assortimento di teorias che si chiama "cospirazione." Al centro di questas teorias sono gli Templares Cavalieres. Secondo il libro gli Templares Cavaliers sono ancora attivos con un progetto per controllo del mondo. Gli personaggios pricipales creano una conspirazione falsa. Quesa teoria crea molta contrarietas e pericolos. Complessivamente mi piace questo libro. This book presents a large assortment of conspiracy theories. At the heart of these are the Knights Templar who supposedly were not destroyed but went underground and now have a plan to control the world. The central characters invent their own conspiracy theory and plot that lands them in a lot of trouble. The book is interesting and complex. The Griffon Trilogy

the best, warning 100 first pages are boring

I've read all of eco's books. He really makes research. Foucaults pendulum in his native language is just amazing. He touches every sense from the ocultism to the reality going through jacobd=s de molat and the templars, the rosicrucians, astrology , brazil and bleck magic...Of course everything vs scientific methods and reaL life. Also the picture of differtent cities is great.For me he gives thhe best description of the count of st germain.. the first 100 pages are not worth it but the whole explains it all

Great book, but may not be what you think it is

The trouble with the reviews that either praise the book as the best ever, or dismiss it as worthless, is that they didn't help me figure out if it's the kind of book I'd like to read. About half-way into it, I thought, "I wasn't looking for another detective story with a puzzle to solve," but after finishing it, the overall picture, I think, redeemed the effort. The big words, the pomposity, the big lump of detailed nonsense in the middle, and then the corny end of the chase are fitting. It inflates and then pops the cork. Even with all the detail, I found the book hard to put down and a quick read. The only way I can see the book being hard to read would be if someone thought they had to keep track of the detail to understand the ending.The narration itself seems to mock the book from the beginning, and Eco's digressions and witty (but still ambiguous) comments, seem to me the treasure of this book, even more than the pensive summary at the end. It keeps to its message through-and-through. It puts positivists in their place, dethrones scientists from their crusade of saving the world, deflates mystics who search for proof, and leaves an onion where Rilke might have put a rose. I'm not in that "business," but I think Eco the semiotician attempts to show us laymen how meaning is created, its slippery delusional character, and its endemic presence. I think he succeeds, even though I don't understand it on a cerebral level (the conspiracy wins, after all).I have two minor complaints. First, Eco seems to struggle sometimes while attempting to keep the characters interesting, and to avoid turning the whole book into a treatise, though I guess it's not surprising that a postmodernist text doesn't read like a Dostoevsky novel. Second, I either didn't see all that Eco offers in the windup of the book, or the "explanation" he ends with is no more than a "traditionally" postmodernist message, however human and down to earth. Or maybe, the ending just means to discredit itself, and claim its power elsewhere.