Introducing Barthes brilliantly elucidates Roland Barthes application of semiotics to literature, popular culture, clothes, and fashion, and explains why his thinking in this area made him a key figure in the structuralist movement of the 1960s.

Between the end of World War II in 1945 and his death in 1980, Jean-Paul Sartre was the most famous French writer, as well as one of the best-known living philosophers. Introducing Sartre explains the basic ideas inspiring his world view, paying particular attention to his ideas on freedom, literature, Marxism, and inequality.