Structuralism began in Saussurean linguistics and was enlarged by Claude Levi-Strauss into a new way of thinking that views our world as consisting of relationships between structures we create rather than of objective realities. The Age of Structuralism examines the work of seven writers who either expanded upon or reacted against Levi-Strauss.

Placing these major figures in the context of political, historical, and psychoanalytic currents of the time. The Age of Structuralism is a commanding and far-reaching study of a decisive epoch in intellectual history. Kurzwell's new opening essay explains how these towering figures prefigured current emphasis on semiotics, post-structuralism, deconstruction, and post-post-modernism. Kurt H. Wolff called it "lucid, splendid and unobtrusive" when the book first appeared.

It remains a central work in the appreciation of the French giants upon whose shoulders the new crop of thinkers expect to stand.