Philosophies circle was the first group to present a coherent Hegelian Marxist–Leninism in France. Their approach to philosophy, urban and industrial sociology, psychology, political economy, poetry, fiction, and literary criticism was akin to the far better known Frankfurt School. There were six key figures in the group who founded La Revue Marxiste, the apex of their mutual endeavors, in 1929: Georges Friedmann, Norbert Guterman, Henri Lefebvre, Pierre Morhange, Paul Nizan, and Georges Politzer. Bud Burkhard makes a major contribution by writing the first intellectual history of this équipe, discussing how these young men reconceptualized Marxism as a response to the crise de l'esprit that followed in the wake of World War One in France. Burkhard examines how they became Marxists and situates the cadre within the wider French and European intellectual and political currents between the wars. He addresses the postwar cultural crisis and its transformation in the 1930s, the formation and politicization of the Philosophies circle, the influence of German Idealism, the creation and dissipation of La Revue Marxiste, with focused chapters on Politzer, Friedmann, and Lefebvre, and an epilogue that outlines each intellectual's activities from World War Two to the end of their lives.