For the most part, The Wind from the East is a critical history of the French left and its numerous sectarian subdivisions during and after the 1960s, with a special emphasis on the student uprising of May 1968 and figures such as Althusser, Badiou, Foucault, Lacan, and Sartre. Prominent themes include the differences between the Soviet, or “Jacobin-Leninist authoritarian political model,” and a seemingly more authentic and revolutionary Maoist leftism. The book also appears to be an attempt to salvage what its author considers the inspiring beliefs and attitudes of the 1960s. The latter disposition is captured in paragraphs such as the following:

The May movement’s uniqueness lay in the challenges it posed to traditional forms of political struggle. . . . The May revolt corresponded to a new, multivalent political dynamic that transcended the Manichaean oppositions of a class-based society. Students and workers invoked norms of openness, publicness [sic] and direct democracy in order to contest new technocratic models of social control. . . . The May movement targeted impersonal, bureaucratic, and highly formalized modes of socialization that operated “without regard for persons.”

There is a precarious balance between the author’s lurking nostalgia for the ethos and hopes of the 1960s and his awareness of the destructive irrationalities of the period and some of its core beliefs. There is a further tension between his sense of reality and moderation and his restrained utopian longings.

The attributes of the French left here analyzed will remind