畅销书作家和哲学家Umberto Eco(安伯托·艾柯)目前居民在卢浮宫,他选择研究的主题是“令人眩晕的清单”。关于反思人类巨大宝库的成就, 在他的抒情理智的风格他已经开始着手调查图书编目和收集的现象。这本书,呈现了卢浮宫奢华艺术品的复制品和其他世界闻名的藏品，这是哲学和艺术的续集，也是艾柯最近广受好评的书，在“美和丑的历史”这一书中他钻研心理学,人类哲学、历史、和艺术的形式。艾柯是一个现代狄德罗,在这里,他探讨了西方思想对清单的制定和百科全书式的偏爱。他的中心论点是,在西方文化中积累的激情会再次发生：圣人清单、植物清单、艺术收藏。这种推动力重现古往今来从音乐到文学再到艺术。艾柯指这个困扰本身就是一个“轻率的列表”，但显示右手可以是一个“诗学目录”。从中世纪的圣物箱再到安迪·沃霍尔的强迫性收藏品，安伯托·艾柯反映了他独特的激励方式和这样的清单反射了他们的时代精神。

Best-sellingauthor and philosopher Umberto Eco iscurrently resident at the Louvre, and his chosen theme of study is "the vertigo of lists." Reflecting on this enormous trove of human achievements, in his lyrical intellectual style he has embarked on aninvestigation of the phenomenon of cataloging and collecting. This book,featuring lavish reproductions of artworks from the Louvre and otherworld-famous collections, is a philosophical and artistic sequel to Eco’srecent acclaimed books,History ofBeauty and On Ugliness, books in which hedelved into the psychology, philosophy, history, and art of human forms. Eco isa modern-day Diderot, and here he examines the Western mind’s predilection forlist-making and the encyclopedic. His central thesis is that in Western culturea passion for accumulation is recurring: lists of saints, catalogues of plants,collections of art. This impulse has recurred through the ages from music toliterature to art. Eco refers to this obsession itself as a "giddiness oflists" but shows how in the right hands it can be a "poetics ofcatalogues." From medieval reliquaries to Andy Warhol’s compulsivecollecting, Umberto Eco reflects in his inimitably inspiring way on how suchcatalogues mirror the spirit of their times.