This book is detective work on the part of Behrent, who skillfully takes the times and surroundings of the young Foucault and completes a picture that even his exhaustive biographies so far did not fully capture.

What we get is a broad view of a battle ground. A number of important conflicts and contradictions were present in the development of France. Power meant to liberate, turned into the abuse of some for the benefit of others, all in the name of justice.

Before the Second World War, France's Third Republic had the ideal of science being the ultimate guide to social development and social liberation. Where science and its technology led, then social orders of France must go.

Science was a power in the land and a very brutal and merciless power if you were one of the deviants the system was trying to eradicate. Scientific technocratic control was ubiquitous throughout France and consequently it was an important influence in the most intimate way on the young Foucault's life. As a homosexual he was in the cross hairs of this social control.

Then there are the other two influences shown in the book. The fascist takeover of France during the Second World War and the social revolution that occurred after its fall. Behrent shows how these elements were important and how they affected his work and life. Simply put what is power and what is liberation. Foucault felt deeply these events and would constantly come back to these experiences in his work.

By the end of the book Behrent brings you right there with Foucault as he begins his brilliant career, you feel the sense of disquiet Foucault feels as he tries to work through the confluence of those experiences to produce his great works on Madness, Power, Discipline and Sexuality. This is a great book to begin to understand Foucault. I highly recommend this book.

a competent, well-researched biography that becomes surprisingly gripping as its main subject becomes older. i studied foucault’s texts extensively throughout my degree, but i’d never really stopped to research his background or his earlier years, and this was a perfect way to get to know the way his life went before he became one of the brightest minds of the twentieth century.