Minerva's Matchbook

This volume collects texts published between 1990 and 2000 in the legendary column "Bustina di Minerva" - "Minerva Matches", which Umberto Eco (1932-2016) wrote in the magazine. "For more than three decades, he was a brilliant journalist, astute analyst, political and social commentator. A colorful mosaic of the lives, feelings, and thoughts of the people of the 1990s through Eco's mocking, ironic, sarcastic, yet deeply humane lens. Reflections on events large and small, on Italian society and all of humanity, on the media, on modern technology, on the fate of the book in the digital age, on the role of intellectuals in public life, on ecology, on genetics, insightful predictions for the future, delivered by an erudite and compelling storyteller who has a knack for turning the unfortunate into literature. Themes that have outgrown their time, that still sound relevant today. This is the most succinct way to present the contents of this collection - a real delight for thinking people.