The Foucault Reader

For anybody with more than a superficial interest in Foucault's thought, I would strongly suggest not buying this volume. Buy Discipline and Punish, The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1, the three volume Essential Foucault, The Order of Things, and Language, Counter-memory, Practice instead. I bought this for a graduate seminar on Foucault and was a bit peeved to see how much it overlapped with books I already owned or was going to have to buy soon thereafter.

This book is intended as an accessible introduction and overview of Foucault's main ideas. I would recommend this book to anyone, but especially undergrad students, who want to get a grasp of Foucauldian theory which can otherwise be a bit overwhelming at first if read straight from the man himself. As another reviewer has said though, it probably won't include much for those that are already familiar with Foucault's work. Personally, I always found it very useful in helping to remind me of certain terms and concepts.

A selection of pieces from Foucault's entire body of work. In addition to philosophy, the book contains essays on the history of ideas and other fields. This serves as an excellent introduction to the ideas of this significant thinker of the 20th century.

This is a compilation of some of Foucault's most interesting or important writings. This is designed to give the reader a cross-section, a sense of Foucault's body of work in general.

A good collection of some of Foucault's best known pieces.

Michel Foucault was one of the most influential thinkers in the contemporary world, someone whose work has affected the teaching of half a dozen disciplines ranging from literary criticism to the history of criminology. But of his many books, not one offers a satisfactory introduction to the entire complex body of his work. The Foucault Reader was commissioned precisely to serve that purpose. Source: GoodReads

Michel Foucault was one of the most influential thinkers in the contemporary world, someone whose work has affected the teaching of half a dozen disciplines ranging from literary criticism to the history of criminology. But of his many books, not one offers a satisfactory introduction to the entire complex body of his work. The show more Foucault Reader was commissioned precisely to serve that purpose. The Reader contains selections from each area of Foucault's work as well as a wealth of previously unpublished writings, including important material written especially for this volume, the preface to the long-awaited second volume of The History of Sexuality, and interviews with Foucault himself, in the course of which he discussed his philosophy at first hand and with unprecedented candor. This philosophy comprises an astonishing intellectual enterprise: a minute and ongoing investigation of the nature of power in society. Foucault's analyses of this power as it manifests itself in society, schools, hospitals, factories, homes, families, and other forms of organized society are brought together in The Foucault Reader to create an overview of this theme and of the broad social and political vision that underlies it.
Source: Publisher per www.books.google.com show less

Excerpts from essential Foucault texts, organized into sections on Truth and Method (What is Enlightenment; Truth and Power; Nietzsche, Geneaology, History; What is An Author?), and Practices and Knowledge (Madness and Civilization, Disciplines and Sciences of the Individual, Bio-Power, Sex and Truth, and Practices and Sciences of the Self).