Louis Althusser was born in Algeria in 1918 and died in France in 1990. He taught philosophy for many years at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris, and was a leading intellectual in the French Communist Party. His books include For Marx; Reading Capital (with Etienne Balibar); Essays in Ideology; Politics and History: Montesquieu, Rousseau, Marx; Machiavelli and Us; and The Spectre of Hegel.
'The elegant theorist, the man who redefined the concept of ideology '--Alice Kaplan, Los Angeles Review of Books 'One of the most important Marxist thinkers of the twentieth century ... nothing short of electric. His renewal of Marxism represented a liberation for a younger generation' --Radical Philosophy One reads him with excitement. There is no mystery about his capacity to inspire the intelligent young.--Eric Hobsbawm Louis Althusser influenced so many discourses, actions and existences by the radiant and provocative force of his thought.--Jacques Derrida