Wind From the East: French Intellectuals, the Cultural Revolution, and the Legacy of the 1960s (Second edition.)

Michel Foucault, Jean-Paul Sartre, Julia Kristeva, Phillipe Sollers, and Jean-Luc Godard.

During the 1960s, a whos who of French thinkers, writers, and artists, spurred by Chinas Cultural Revolution, were seized with a fascination for Maoism.

Combining a merciless expos of left-wing political folly and cross-cultural misunderstanding with a spirited defense of the 1960s, The Wind from the East tells the colorful story of this legendary period in France.

Richard Wolin shows how French students and intellectuals, inspired by their perceptions of the Cultural Revolution, and motivated by utopian hopes, incited grassroots social movements and reinvigorated French civic and cultural life.Wolins riveting narrative reveals that Maoisms allure among Frances best and brightest actually had little to do with a real understanding of Chinese politics.

Instead, it paradoxically served as a vehicle for an emancipatory transformation of French society.

Recounting the cultural and political odyssey of French students and intellectuals in the 1960s, The Wind from the East illustrates how the Maoist phenomenon unexpectedly sparked a democratic political sea change in France.