Michael Maidan, Review of: A Companion to Foucault by Christopher Falzon,Timothy O’Leary, and Jana Sawicki (Editors) Wiley-Blackwell, 2013.

This companion to the work of French thinker Michael Foucault offers an overview of his work, and critical essays that explore Foucault’s insights and his influence on contemporary social and political thought.

Part I opens with the first English translation of the ‘Chronology’, a detailed summary of Foucault’s life and work with references to otherwise unpublished documents prepared by Daniel Defert for the French edition of Foucault’s shorter works and conferences. This is followed by studies of Foucault main works, starting with his History of Madness (1961) and to History of Sexuality vol. 1 (1976).  This section also includes a discussion of a few of the recently published Lectures at the Collège de France, and concludes with an essay by Paul Rabinow — one of the earliest and most influential Foucault scholars…