How to Read Sartre

Bernasconi has done a huge service to everyone with an interest in Sartrean (or post-Sartrean) philosophy. He has, in around 100 very readable and interesting pages, taken from 10 excerpts of Sartre's massive bibliography and managed to give a more comprehensive and sensitive account of Sartre's philosophy. Significantly, he traces Sartre's development from his earliest writings to his last period, and in doing so he situates Sartre historically, politically and philosophically and is able to show the core points of emphasis in his work as he encountered new situations and ideas. Sartre's philosophical path makes much more sense in the reading Bernasconi gives, moreso than any treatment of Sartre I have ever read (and yes, I've looked at a lot of them).Thank you Bernasconi for not giving us another repetition of the same popularly narrow readings! This book should be a must for college courses, libraries and anyone who has had an interest in Sartre and existentialism.

I have found some titles in this "How to Read" series amazingly clear and helpful, for example the book on Heidegger. However, I found the writing in this book on Sartre to be so opaque, I just couldn't make any headway in it. I gave up after a couple chapters and returned the book. The author just does not have the necessary gifts to make Sartre's ideas clear to the type of audience for whom this series is intended. Such a book on Sartre is worth having, and I recommend to the editors a 'do-over' of this particular volume.