In The Wager of Lucien Goldmann, Mitchell Cohen provides the first full-length study of this major figure of postwar French intellectual life and champion of socialist humanism. While many Parisian leftists staunchly upheld Marxism's "scientificity" in the 1950s and 1960s, Lucien Goldmann insisted that Marxism was by then in severe crisis and had t "Without question one of the most stimulating works in intellectual history and theory to appear in the last two decades.... In examining the origins of Goldmann's ideas, the theorist's preoccupations ... and the enduring significance of his work, Cohen demonstrates a rare, broad-ranging mastery of theory and an ability, like that of Goldmann himself, to uncover the essential historical and social message located within the works of an individual author."