Umberto Eco wrote The Name of the Rose

Umberto Eco

It is the birthday of Italian writer Umberto Eco (1932), who may be best remembered for his handful of bestselling novels, beginning with The Name of the Rose (1980), though he is well respected in academia for his work in the study of medieval philosophy and his development of the discipline of semiotics or the study of signs and signification in various cultures. His family name came from his grandfather, who was an abandoned child, and was given the name by an official. It is an acronym of the Latin phrase ex caelis oblates, meaning a gift from the heavens.

Eco grew up in a small town in the mountains in northern Italy and was educated in a Roman Catholic school for boys. Though his father wanted him to become a lawyer, Eco studied medieval philosophy and literature at the University of Turin. He wrote a thesis on St. Thomas Aquinas. While he was in school, Eco left the Catholic Church and stopped believing in God.

Eco worked as the cultural editor for an Italian state radio station, and began a career of lecturing. Later, he taught at Harvard University, and received an honorary degree from Indiana University at Bloomington for his work with the school's Research Center for Language and Semiotic Studies. He also has received honorary degrees from Rutgers University and University of Belgrade. Eco's first non-fiction book, The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas (1956), was an extension of his thesis. Eco has a massive collection of more than 50,000 books.

The Name of the Rose takes place in an Italian monastery in 1327. It deals with a Franciscan friar's investigation of a series murders. The bestseller is full of literary and historical references. The friar, for instance, is William of Baskerville, who is described in terms reminiscent of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. The friar's name is a reference to the Holmes mystery Hound of the Baskervilles. There is a blind monk whose name, Jorge of Burgos, is a reference to Argentine short-story writer Jorge Luis Borges, whom Eco counts as a major influence on his work. The book was adapted as a 1986 film starring Sean Connery and F. Murray Abraham.

Eco also wrote Foucault's Pendulum (1988), a thriller about three idle book editors who make up a conspiracy theory about the Knights Templar and spur a modern-day quest for lost treasure; The Island of the Day Before (1994), about a man marooned on a ship in the 17th century; Baudolino (2000), about a heroic knight who saved a Byzantine historian during the Fourth Crusade and later, recounting his exploits, reveals himself to be a gifted teller of tall tales, raising the question about how much he told was true; and The Prague Cemetery (2010), about 19th century hoaxes that have contributed to present-day antisemitism.

Max Eastman was left before he was right

Max Eastman

It is the birthday of writer Max Eastman (1883), who was a prominent political activist, first for left-wing causes, then later for right-wing, anti-Communist movements. In later life, he described himself as a radical conservative. He was an avid supporter of the Harlem Renaissance. When he was 30, Eastman became editor of the socialist magazine The Masses. In his late 50s, he became a roving editor for Reader's Digest. In his 70s, he was a contributing editor to the conservative National Review.

Eastman was born in upstate New York to parents who were protestant ministers. He graduated from Williams College in Massachusetts in 1915 and pursued a doctorate in philosophy at Columbia University but withdrew before accepting it. He studied under pragmatic philosopher John Dewey. Eastman lived in Greenwich Village with his sister and became active in the women's suffrage movement.

As editor of The Masses, he published the work of novelist Sherwood Anderson, Marxist Louise Bryant, poets Amy Lowell and Carl Sandburg, and Taos arts patron Mabel Dodge Luhan. He advocated free love and birth control, denounced America's participation in World War I, and supported socialist Jack Reed's trip to Russia to report on the Bolshevik Revolution. He created, with his sister, The Liberator magazine and published the work of Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, E.E. Cummings, and Helen Keller. He lived for almost two years in the Soviet Union and watched the power plays between Joseph Stalin and Leon Trotsky. He became Trotsky's friend. But his views of socialism began to change after his visit to Soviet Russia.

During the Depression, Eastman became critical of such socialist thinkers Karl Marx and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. He became friends with British economist Friedrich Hayek and arranged for his book The Road to Serfdom (1943) to be serialized in Reader's Digest. At first, he supported Sen. Joseph McCarthy's anti-Communist activism, but later criticized him as being too reactionary. Nevertheless, he grew to believe the Bolshevik Revolution had produced tyranny instead of freedom. Eastman was among the first contributing editors for the National Review and served on its Board of Associates but he eventually resigned because the magazine's pro-Christian leanings didn't jibe with his atheism. Eastman opposed the Vietnam War.

Among his books and articles are Enjoyment of Poetry (1913), The Sense of Humor (1921), Leon Trotsky: The Portrait of a Youth (1925), Since Lenin Died (1925), Marx and Lenin: The Science of Revolution (1927), Enjoyment of Laughter (1936), Reflections on the Failure of Socialism (1955), and Seven Kinds of Goodness (1967).

Cicero's ideas influenced Europe, America

It is the birthday of the Roman philosopher Cicero (106 BC), one of ancient Rome's greatest writers and orators. He had a profound influence on European literature and thinking as well as the writings that lead to the French Revolution and American Revolution. His work is considered a primary source for the study of the last days of the Roman Empire. He excelled as a lawyer and an orator but he considered his political career to be his greatest achievement. He put down a plot to overthrow the government and had five of the perpetrators executed without a trial.

A talented student, Cicero translated Greek philosophical tracts into Latin, thus attracting attention of Rome's elite. He studied to become a lawyer. Cicero was a great admirer of the Greek philosopher Plato, and studied under the head of Plato's school who visited Rome. A fellow student, Pomponius (nicknamed Atticus) became a lifelong friend. Cicero's letters to Atticus are among the most studied documents of ancient Rome. Cicero was a fearless young lawyer. In his first case, he defended a man accused of killing his father. Cicero risked being murdered by accusing an ally of the then-dictator of Rome of the crime. Nevertheless, Cicero's client was acquitted. However, Cicero subsequently went on an extended trip abroad, possibly to avoid retribution.

Later, in a series of dramatic trials, Cicero successfully prosecuted the governor of Sicily for plundering, and in the process became admired as the greatest orator in Rome. He was a staunch defender of the Roman Republic and even resisted an offer from Julius Caesar to form a triumvirate to rule the empire. In 63 BC, Cicero was elected to Consul, Rome's highest elected office.

During his one-year term, Cicero foiled a conspiracy to murder him and overthrow the republic. His vociferous speeches before the Roman Senate led to the hasty exodus from the city by a rival politician who was behind the conspiracy. The politician's allies were detained, and Cicero argued for a decree from the Senate declaring martial law, which he was granted. Under martial law, Cicero had the conspirators strangled. Five years later, another rival successfully sponsored a law threatening to exile anyone who had killed a Roman citizen without due process. Cicero knew the law was aimed at him and he left Rome, exiling himself in Greece. While he was in exile, he wrote to his friend Atticus about his ordeal.

Upon is return to Rome, Cicero became a popular leader in the Senate once again, but eventually made a bitter rival of Mark Antony, who argued to have him declared an enemy of the state. Cicero was hunted down as he tried to escape to Macedonia, and murdered. His head and hands were cut off and displayed in the Roman Forum. Mark Antony's wife is said to have pulled Cicero's tongue out of his severed head and jabbed it with a hairpin to revile his talent as an orator.

Cicero's speeches, writing in rhetoric and philosophy, and letters to friends and relatives have been preserved. Among the best known are On the Commonwealth (six books published between 54 and 51 BC), On The Laws (publication year unknown), On Duties (44 BC), and letters to Atticus (68-43 BC). Cicero was admired during the Dark Ages by Medieval philosophers, and his ideas led to the Renaissance. His On Duties was the second books (after Gutenberg's Bible) to be published after the invention of the printing press. John Adams wrote of him: "As all the ages of the world have not produced a greater statesman and philosopher united than Cicero, his authority should have great weight."

Philip Freneau edited Jefferson's newspaper

Philip Freneau

It is the birthday of early American poet and newspaper editor Philip Freneau (1752), who was known as the poet of the American Revolution. He wrote poems and essays critical of the British rulers before the Revolutionary War. He served on an American privateer that attacked British ships. At the request of Thomas Jefferson, Freneau served as editor of the National Gazette, a partisan newspaper aimed at Alexander Hamilton's Federalists.

Freneau's father was a French Huguenot wine merchant, whose family settled in America after fleeing religious persecution in France. His mother was Scottish. Freneau was born in New York City and grew up in New Jersey. He graduated from College of New Jersey (later Princeton College) in 1771. He was a friend and classmate of James Madison, who was an unsuccessful suitor to his sister Mary. Aaron Burr was another classmate.

While he was a student, Freneau cowrote with Hugh Henry Brackenridge (later to become a justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court), Father Bombo's Pilgrimage to Mecca, a satire about a clergy who is commanded by an apparition to go to Mecca after plagiarizing the work of Lucian, the Assyrian satirist who wrote in ancient Rome and Greece. The book was said to be a novel about actual events and was one of the first novels published in America. As graduating seniors, he and Brackenridge also wrote A Poem, On the Rising Glory of America for their Commencement Day. (Freneau published his own version in 1786).

In 1776, Freneau went to the West Indies (where he wrote the poems The Beauties of Santa Cruz and The House of Night), but returned within two years and acquired ownership of a privateering ship, Aurora. He served on its crew, and when a British man-of-war captured the Aurora, Freneau was held on a British prison ship for six weeks. His poem The British Prison-Ship (1780) details the harsh treatment he received aboard the ship.

Ten years later, Freneau became assistant editor of a newspaper in New York. By then, Thomas Jefferson was Secretary of State and James Madison was active in national politics. They persuaded Freneau to become editor of a weekly Democratic-Republican newspaper they were creating to counter the views of The Gazette of the United States that carried the Federalist writing of Alexander Hamilton, George Washington, and John Adams. Jefferson and Madison's National Gazette regularly lambasted the Washington administration.

Freneau's first two collections of poems were Poetry (1786) and Miscellaneous Works (1788). He also produced collections published in 1795, 1809, and 1815. He wrote such poems as The Wild Honey Suckle (1786) and The Indian Burying Ground (1787).