A classic philosophical study on how political and cultural ideas come to dominate. “One reads him with excitement. There is no mystery about his capacity to inspire the intelligent young.”—Eric Hobsbawm

“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