The great Italian novelist, essayist, semiotician, and public intellectual, Umberto Eco, died on February 19.  He was appropriately honored at his funeral in Milan last Friday.  He will be missed.  Eco’s most popular work was the novel, The Name of the Rose, a monastic murder mystery filled with arcane theological and historical discussions all presented in the context of a fascinating, memorable, and expertly-told story.  Eco was at his best when discussing and, in some case, simply cataloguing the arcane, the esoteric, the idiosyncratic, and the perplexing.  To read Eco is to allow yourself to get caught up in and carried along with his oftentimes seemingly inaccessible but almost never uninteresting reflections on life, culture, history, philosophy, and theology.  Eco was not a Christian yet he still seemed to have a certain respect of Christianity.  Though he was a man of the left he could indeed skewer the excesses of leftist politics and ideology.  He was, in all, an intriguing and enthralling person and one whose writings are well worth reading.  A final volume of his essays will be published in the near future with the English translation of it coming later.