First English-language collection of writings by the legendary nineteenth-century insurrectionistLouis Auguste Blanqui (1805–1881) was one of the most important and controversial figures in nineteenth-century French revolutionary politics, and he played a major role in all of the great upheavals that punctuated his life—the insurrections of 1830, 1848 and 1870–71. Adamant that a just and egalitarian society can only be established by revolutionary means, he recogni...

In a century of revolutions, final emancipations, and eschatological dreams, the shadowy figure of Louis-Auguste Blanqui—the perpetual insurgent—composed Eternity by the Stars in 1871, imprisoned in the sea fortress of Fort du Taureau. From within his cell, Blanqui arrives at a stark and devastating proposition: given infinite time and a finite number of possible configurations, every event must recur, again and again, without end. Each life is lived an infinity of times across th...