Faith in Fakes. Essays

Umberto Eco, author of the bestselling the name of the rose, is an academic, a semiologist by profession, but that narrow description fails to do justice to a mind of omnivorous curiosity.
This effervescent collection of essays deals with a menagerie of topics that could be contained under no other roof. Disneyland, holography, museums, the bishop of hippo, superman, the need to define the Middle Ages these are just a handful of the items that catch this roving and erudite eye.
Eco touches with equal authority on the constricting influence of denim jeans, the relation between language and power, the value of stylistic analysis in assessing the virtues of the Iliad or Bo Derek, the impact of the computer and the role of the urban guerilla.
Probing, provocative, scholarly and irreverent, Eco combines the disciplines of a polymath with the prodding curiosity of the man behind you in the queue for the fairground. The ride may occasionally be vertiginous, but is always intensely stimulating.