This work, originally published in 1964 with a foreword by Jean-Paul Sartre and as a second edition with an extended introduction in 1971, has been influential in presenting to the English reader aspects of Sartre's thought embodied in his three major books published between 1950 and 1960. The three books discussed - Saint Genet, Comédien et Martyr; Questions de Méthode; and Critique de la Raison Dialectique - span the distance from individual biography to the basic theory of groups and social organization: from Saint Genet, perhaps the most penetrating attempt by one man to understand the life of another living man, to the Critique, which seeks to establish the dialectical bases for a structural and historical anthropology. This body of thought represents more than another synthesis of social theories and the insights of individual psychologies; it is the contribution of one of the most radical thinkers of the 20th century to a revolution in man's understanding of himself.
