Then there is the Umberto Eco who is a professor of semiotics. In this capacity he has shown us that he knows more about languages than most of us and can reveal to us the deeper meanings of words and phrases. In this capacity I count him among my teachers on how to approach translation of various types, something that is an art few truly understand. Lastly, there is the Umberto Eco the philosopher who writes succinct essays on a wide range of topics, especially as they relate to his country, Italy.

It is in the latter guise that he appears in Turning Back The Clock - Hot Wars and Media Populism. The question may arise, why read Eco's essays about the affairs of state and the media in Italy? My response is, 'Why not?' There is a great deal to be learned from these essays addressed to his fellow citizens, yet he draws on the world to make his points. Even if one does not always agree with a stand taken or point made, or one finds a direct error in a statement, there is much to be enjoyed in his writings. Not that there are too many errors, but it would be a poor reviewer of this book who did not challenge Eco when he utters a definitely wrong statement: "But when the Second World War began, even the highly liberal Americans, albeit most humanely, put all their Italian and Japanese residents into concentration camps, even those born in the United States."

This appears on page 24 in his essay Reflections on War and Peace, which he gave as a talk at a conference held in Milan at the Communità di Sant'Edigio, July 2002. It is a good essay, and there are many aspects in it with which one wholly agrees with him. It comes therefore as a shock to read those lines. At the time the Americans entered WWII because of the attack on Pearl Harbor, there were about five million Italian Americans who had been born abroad. Of these, only about 600,000 had not obtained US citizenship. They were subsequently classified as enemy aliens and had restrictions placed on their movements. Of these, about 10,000 were forced to move inland from coastal areas—both east and west. Of the 2,000 Italians living in the US who were detained at the time, only 300 were deemed sufficient security risks for confinement. Also, about 1,300 Italian sailors and other visitors to the US had already been detained before Pearl Harbor. It is true, of course, that Japanese Americans, including those born in the USA, had a far worse fate in much larger numbers. There is absolutely no comparison between the Italian and Japanese treatment and confinements and Eco should never have compared the two.

But, surely, we will forgive him here, for the greatest men make the greatest mistakes—so the saying goes. The essay, in itself, deals with the aspect of Global War in view of the Twin Tower terrorist disaster. In the short of it, he states, quite correctly, in a global war, " . . . it would lead to the defeat of everyone."

Remember American political economist and philosopher Yoshihiro Francis Fukuyama? He wrote an essay in 1989, The End of History? in which he stated, "What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of postwar history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government." In 1992 he extended this essay into a book. Eco looks at this and states, "Basically Fukuyama was thinking about this peace with his idea of the end of history, but recent events have shown that history repeats itself, and always in the form of conflict." No one can argue with this. It is also a good reminder for all of us, and a warning to those who think the Cold War is over.

Turning Back the Clock is presented in seven parts, 'War, Peace, and other Matters', followed by 'Chronicles of a Regime' that takes a look at the Berlusconi era. The third heading is 'The Return of the Great Game', a rather esoteric title, but in it Eco reminds us that we need to know (or perhaps my comment would be, to know and understand) someone's culture to make war on them.

Next comes the ominous 'The Return of the Crusades'. Now, Eco knows a lot about the early Crusades, and has made them the subject of at least one of his novels, but here he refers to the present situation in the Middle East.

The 'Summa and the Rest' takes a philosophical look a variety of subjects from the roots of Europe to relativism, and an incisive essay that reveals clearly that if we don't believe in God, we believe in everything and that can lead to a whole lot of problems.

The sixth section of essays is headed 'The Defense of the Race', which deals with racism in a variety of guises, and in which he tackles that terrible phrase, 'some of my best friends are . . . '. The final three essays have an overall heading of 'The Twilight of the New Millennium'. What delights me in these final three postulations is that among many other things he takes a tack at 'postmodern' and what it implies and what it doesn't. Anyone who is familiar with my writing knows my strong dislike of the word, postmodern, because linguistically it makes no sense, and philosophically it is shallow. As Eco points out, "Postmodern is an all-purpose term, which can be applied to many—perhaps too many—things." He also examines the advantages and disadvantage of Death.

At one point he writes in this, the final essay of Turning Back the Clock, "I am one of those people who don't miss their youth . . . because today I feel more fulfilled than ever. But the thought that all that experience will be lost at the moment of my death, makes me feel pain and fear . . . What a waste, decades spent building up experience, only to throw it away. It's like burning down the Library of Alexandria, destroying the Louvre, or sending the beautiful, rich, and all-wise Atlantis to the bottom of the sea."

How much have we reflected on the only reliable fact we know, namely that our death is a certainty? Eco here puts a tiny spin of humor on the weighing of the advantages and disadvantages of his demise, while also inviting us to think more deeply about our own end, something we accept rather reluctantly.

Every essay in this book deserves a detailed analysis, but that will lead to a book-length review. Suffice it to say that I found the essays stimulating, frustrating, exhilarating, and there were moments when I wished I had the ability to comment with such razor-sharp insight as Eco is able to do. There is no telling on which side of the political divide he stands. He demolishes the left as much as the right, and those who stand in the center, whenever they act in ways that are philosophically unacceptable. At the same time, this book informs certain perceptions one has formed on one's own about Italian politics as they reach us here through our own media.

I just want to comment on one more item that is wholly superficial on my part, but that concerns the aspect of political correctness. PC politics are particularly strong in our part of the world and Eco uses several examples from North America in his essay 'On Political Correctness'. One of the words he quotes is fireman and how this term is—according to him—being revamped into fireperson. In all the years as a reporter, which included chasing fires, I have never heard anyone so much as whisper the horrific word, fireperson. Once again, Eco commits an error, even if he tells his readers that he came across a long discussion on how to translate fireman into PC language, but fails to give a direct a reference of who coined fireperson. Whomever he is quoting obviously has never heard of the correct term, 'firefighter', which is gender neutral and a name much preferred by those who fight fires for us. Fireman is an old-fashioned term that applies to a now almost extinct category of work, namely the man who used to stoke the fires of a train engine (in the bowels of a ship he was called a stoker). The distinction between firefighter and fireman was hammered into me almost 40 years ago before PC came into fashion. So, going through these essays in their translated form, we have to take the bad with the good, and recognize that the good things outweigh the bad by a long mile.

Finally, let me quote him from his short but incisive essay, Believing in Alchemy. He begins by asking "What is irritating about the New Age Spirit?" and then takes us to the heart of the matter, " . . . what's irritating about the New Age is syncretism. Syncretism consists in believing not in some things but in all things, even when they contradict one another." Well, one thing is certain and most refreshing, namely Eco simply does not contradicts himself.

See also: http://blogs.raincoast.com/weblog/comments/turning-back-the-clock-review-at-the-lancette