No one is better suited than François Dosse to take on such a challenge: to write a panoramic and systematic narrative of the historical and creative adventure of French intellectuals during their period of global hegemony.

The first volume—from 1944 to 1968—covers the years of Sartre and Beauvoir and their refutations, their complex relationship with communism, the upheaval of 1956, the Algerian War, the beginnings of Third Worldism, the emergence of the Gaullist movement and its subsequent challenge: an era dominated by the test of history, the influence of communism, and the gradual disillusionment that followed. The second volume—from 1968 to 1989—covers everything from left-wing utopianism, Solzhenitsyn, and the struggle against totalitarianism, to the "new philosophers," the rise of ecological consciousness, and the disorientation of the 1980s: an era marked by a crisis of the future and the consolidation of the hegemony of the humanities. These are some of the milestones in this saga, which spans one of the most vibrant and creative periods in French and global intellectual history, from Sartre to Lévi-Strauss, from Foucault to Lacan.

"A fascinating overview of forty-five years of the battles fought by French intellectuals, from the Liberation to the fall of the Berlin Wall." Robert Maggiori, Libération

“They are all here: Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Raymond Aron, François Mauriac, Michel Foucault, Claude Lévi-Strauss, and so many others… heroes of a true saga.” Gilles Heuré, Télérama

“What we have here is a monument that will henceforth serve as a reference point for anyone wishing to understand the intellectual atmosphere of our postwar period, up until the fall of communism in 1989.” Jacques Julliard, Le Figaro