It would be best to read both Being and Nothingness and Search for a Method (aka Critique of Dialectical Reason, the direct translation), but both of those are quite long. Short pieces by Sartre can be found here: "Existentialism is a Humanism" - http://www.marxists.org/reference/ar...ist/sartre.htm "Marxism and Existentialism" - http://www.marxists.org/reference/ar...ic/sartre1.htm "The Dogmatic Dialectic and the Critical Dialectic" - http://www.marxists.org/reference/ar...ic/sartre2.htm "Collectives" (from Search for a Method) - http://www.marxists.org/reference/ar...ic/sartre2.htm "A Fellow Traveler of the Communist Party" - http://www.marxists.org/reference/ar.../compagnon.htm "Illegalism and Ultra-Leftism" - http://www.marxists.org/reference/ar...llegalisme.htm One should also try to read the works by others associated with continental philosophy (phenomenology, existentialism, and nihilism) and post-structuralism, as the ones that influenced them. This may include: Feuerbach, Kierkegaard, Husserl, Heidegger, Nietzsche, de Beauvoir, Merleau-Ponty, Zizek, Foucault, Derrida, Culler, Althusser, Marcuse, and Butler.