In these vivid essays written between 1973 and 1976, Umberto Eco explores American culture—its key features and how it influences both the cultures of nearby countries and the European cultural matrix. Museums and art galleries, ghost towns and amusement parks, mystical prophecies and medieval knowledge, the space of advertising and cinema, religions and politics, psychology and sociology. Using allusions, symbols, myths, and images of mass culture as surgical tools, Eco skillfully dissects the reality of his time to uncover the laws and mechanisms that still drive today’s world.