The topical and controversial French theorist Jean Baudrillard has played a role in the development of critical social theory and cultural sociology and his writings are currently at the centre of the post-modernism debate. This volume makes his most important work widely available in English for the first time. It includes selections from the entire range of his writings, from his early work on advertising and commodity culture to his most recent writings on simulation and desire. Throughout the book Baudrillard is concerned to stress the ways in which our lives are embedded in a world of images which have no clear referents, and which are reproduced by the new mechanisms of cultural production in contemporary societies. The central themes of Baudrillard's work are outlined in a lucid introduction by Mark Poster. This book should be of interest to anyone interested in contemporary French theory, in social and cultural theory, and in the cluster of issues surrounding the post-modernism debate as well as students and academics in sociology, media and cultural studies, literature, and in the social sciences and humanities more generally.