"In a companion volume to his earlier book Mythologies, the noted French thinker continues his demystification of the everyday. In 29 short essays Barthes reads the gestures, signs, and symbols of the human landscape to disentangle reality from appearance, fact from wish. . . . The sinuous contours of Barthes' ever-surprising reflections make for a dazzling adventure of the mind."—Publishers Weekly

"In the long title essay of this book of varied reflections and observations, Roland Barthes writes lovingly about one of the world's most celebrated structures: 'Just as there is no Parisian glance which is not compelled to encounter it, there is no fantasy which fails, sooner or later, to acknowledge its form and to be nourished by it.'. . . The essay stays at this splendid level throughout, extraordinarily fresh, full of exact revelation. All of Barthes' sometimes scattered virtues come together in it: his learning, his prowess as an observer, his lyric gift."—Richard Gilman, The New York Times Book Review