Turning Back The Clock: Hot Wars and Media Populism

Description

Turning Back the Clock is a brilliant collection of essays by one of the leading intellectuals of our time. After the Cold War, the 'Hot War' has made its comeback in Afghanistan and Iraq. Exhuming Kipling's 'Great Game', we have gone back to the clash between Islam and Christianity. The ghost of the Yellow Peril has been resurrected, the nineteenth-century anti-Darwin debate has been reopened, right-wing governments predominate. It almost seems like history, tired of the big steps forward it has taken in the past two millennia, has gone into reverse. With his customary sharpness and wit, Eco proposes, not so much that we resume a forward march, but at the very least that we cease marching backwards.

Umberto Eco (1932-2016) wrote fiction, literary criticism and philosophy. His first novel, The Name of the Rose, was a major international bestseller. His other works include Foucault's Pendulum, The Island of the Day Before, Baudolino, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, The Prague Cemetery and Numero Zero along with many brilliant collections of essays.

Clever, fluent pieces...a human, sophisticated and wise book * Sunday Times * His lively, ironic intelligence dances on a global pincushion * The Times * Another collection of nimble, teasing, brilliant and infuriating little essays and essaylets * Guardian * For the sheer depth and clarity of his learning and wisdom, Eco has no living rival * Harpers and Queen * Eco's greatest virtue might be said to lie in his ability to clarify the exact nature of our present perplexities. Eco is, on the whole, lucid, logical and always firmly on the side of civilisation * Times Literary Supplement *