This volume is a very good introduction to Baudrillard for those unacquainted with his writings, and a useful companion volume to a thorough study of his texts. Unlike the "[Philosopher] in 90 minutes" series, the "Introducing" series, etc., this book is intended as a supplement to the primary texts, not as a simplified condensation of the original texts for the casual inquirer who wishes to appear well-read.



Cultural influences on Baudrillard are discussed at length (the Monnet projects in post-WWII France; the student revolt in Paris in May '68); etc. Also, many of the key concepts that Baudrillard appropriated from other thinkers are situated in context by reference to their origins with Foucault (the panopticon as a model for contemporary culture), Bataille (excess, expenditure - the escape from Hegel), Mauss ("potlatch"), Debord (spectacle), and others.



Some of the scandals associated with Baudrillard's writings - the fights with various feminists over his notorious remarks about women, his misconstrued analysis of the United States in "America," and of course the bru-ha-ha over his wildly misunderstood claim that "the Gulf War did not happen" - are rather neatly side-stepped in this volume with a paradigm in which Baudrillard's later writing (after "Symbolic Exchange and Death") is understood as performative, with an emphasis on hyperbole, exaggeration, fictionalization and, above all, humor.



A few disadvantages of this volume are largely caused by the date of its publication: completed in 1999, it does not address Baudrillard's final works, particularly his analyses of 9-11; nor does it include any commentary on the most important pop-cultural manifestation of Baudrillard's work, namely the Matrix trilogy.



I would suggest this book before, after, or along with Mark Poster's excellent selection of Baudrillard's texts in Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings: Second Edition and, of course, the now-classic text Simulacra and Simulation (The Body, In Theory: Histories of Cultural Materialism).