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Library Journal Review

This smorgasbord of 26 pieces ultimately focuses on the boundaries of realism as exemplified by the``hyper reality'' of American phenomena like the Madonna Inn, wax museums, San Simeon, theme parks, etc. Though his tone is witty, Eco's purpose remains that of the semiologist. He is concerned about ``the systems of signs that we use to describe the world and tell it to one another,'' and aims both to expose the ``messages'' of political and economic power and of ``the entertainment industry and the revolution industry'' and to show us how to analyze and criticize them. Though these essays are generally entertaining, they lack the originality and punch of Barthes's Mythologies and seem unlikely to find the same popular success as Eco's own The Name of the Rose . Richard Kuczkowski, Dir., Continuing Education, Dominican Coll., Blauvelt, N.Y. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

By ``hyperreality'' Eco is alluding to the American ``frantic desire for the almost real,'' the yen for fakes to fill a cultural void. The trenchant title essay analyzes the American psyche as it hops from erotic laser holograms to the Lyndon B. Johnson Library and Disneyland. Eco, well known as a novelist (The Name of the Rose, is urbane, detached, elegant and sometimes obscure as an essayist. This uneven collection of newspaper and magazine pieces reflects the Italian scholar's love of the Middle Agesone essay compares American universities to monasteries, another focuses on Thomas Aquinasthough, for the most part, Eco relentlessly analyzes the present. He examines sport as a calculated waste of energy, presents a structuralist critique of Casablanca and offers commentaries on the Red Brigades, credit-card cheats, the religious revival and blue jeans as a latter-day version of knights' armor. (May 22) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Kirkus Book Review

From soccer's ""World Cup and Its Pomp"" to a revisionist biography of Thomas Aquinas, these essays by Italy's best-known semiologist offer eloquent testimony of an eclectic and searching intelligence. A giddier version of the late Roland Barthes (Eco travelled to the ""real"" New Orleans right after visiting Disneyland's fascimile, and for some reason was surprised to find a superior authenticity in the genuine article), Eco examines popular culture for its ""signs""--its unconscious expression of the submerged assumptions and unexamined ""verities"" which Barthes called ""myths"" and which Eco sees as ideologies. Eco often focuses on America--this volume opens with a brilliant application of Superman's ""Fortress of Solitude"" as a metaphor for such phenomena as the Hearst castle in San Simeon and the Ringling mansion in Sarasota. He makes some errors pardonable in a non-native--he tends to group California and Florida together, where an American semiotician would have little difficulty perceiving the vast differences; and he is quite unfortunate in using as his theoretical guide to Disneyland an influential but very silly essay by Louis Marin. Nonetheless, Eco also brings the freshness of viewpoint possible to an outsider to subjects ranging from Frank Frazetta's sweaty illustrations for the Conan series to American wax-museum replicas of Leonardo's Last Supper. Other essays suggest the same fascination with the Middle Ages that characterized Name of the Rose, his recent best-seller. In ""The Ten Little Middle Ages,"" Eco jokingly catalogues the various mythic assumptions about (and misreadings of) that period; and he cogently argues that medievalism persists in our own time. (He sees scholastic influence, for instance, in structuralism.) Although not as consistently accurate in his analyses as Barthes, Eco often argues with more force and passion, and overall, this is critical writing of a superb order. The range is wide (from terrorism to blue jeans, from the Madonna Inn to the Sistine Chapel) and the writing is provocative and exuberant. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.