A milestone in the development of post-war Marxist thought. “One reads him with excitement. There is no mystery about his capacity to inspire the intelligent young.”—Eric Hobsbawm

“Louis Althusser traversed so many lives ... so many personal, historical, philosophical and political adventures; marked, inflected, influenced so many discourses, actions and existences by the radiant and provocative force of his thought ... that the most diverse and contradictory accounts could never exhaust their source.”—Jacques Derrida