Marc Roussel · CC BY 4.0

Born into a Sephardic Jewish family in Algeria, Bernard-Henri Lévy became one of France's most prominent public intellectuals, helping lead the "New Philosophers" break from Marxist orthodoxy with his 1977 book Barbarism with a Human Face. He has since paired writing — American Vertigo, The Genius of Judaism — with direct political advocacy, pushing for international intervention in Bosnia, Libya and Ukraine and reporting from those conflicts in person.