Book excerpt: This is a history of Jean-Paul Sartre's monthly review Les Temps Modernes, an immensely influential publication launched in 1945. The journal set out from the beginning to effect a revolutionary redefinition of psychology, sociology, political theory and anthropology, in order to assist in the socialist transformation of France and the world. Dr Davies is the first author to examine the review from a multidisciplinary viewpoint. The result is a panorama of forty years of French intellectual history, of debate and rivalry informed by and influencing the political struggles of the time - the Cold War, the Algerian revolution, the Gaullist era, May 1968, the Maoism of the 1970s. It is also an important chapter in the biography of Sartre which offers a new sense of the magnitude of his philosophical and moral aspirations and a revaluation of his work and status.