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Summary: Essential read on modern existentialism
Review: Sartre, more than any other existentialist writer, has in Being and Nothingness developed a comprehensive philisophical system. The book is concisely written -- every sentence is important. I found that it was useful to become completely familiar with the introduction by translator Hazel Barnes before diving into the text. The book is fascinating, and for anyone interested in existentialism, provide a wealth of insights into the nature of choice, the other and man's relation to the universe.
Rating: 
Summary: Speed Reading
Review: The concepts and methods contained in B&N are some of the most fruitful of the 20th century. But great ideas don't necessarily translate into a good book. Sartre often repeats himself (almost verbatim), fails to follow through on crucial points and often leaves the reader thinking this is a first draft. The overall impression is that the book was written in a coffee shop that features a bottomless cup. I imagine that Sartre couldn't write a page without someone walking in and having a chat about ideas for the book. The book feels like a transcript of these chats. Not surprisingly I find that on rereads, my most fruitful moments of study are when I too have a little too much caffeine in me. Anyone serious about philosophy must read this book, but at the same time they should not take it too seriously.
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Summary: The most underated classic of all time!
Review: The review before mine says that there is a God shaped hole in existential thought. I disagree. Being an existentialist deals with man's acceptance of powers greater than his own. God is not the focus, and yes Sartre has a problem with the God idea, but God can exist if he exist's with the individual. There need not be a hole. Man is minute, but in his own life he is usually more important than anything. This does pose a problem for the western ideal of God, but it does not destroy the existence. The book will show you a God like hole only if one exists already, within you.
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Summary: Tne natural evolution of existencialism
Review: The rightful owner of the crown of Nietzsche! This book is very complex, and it does require that you read at least a little bit of Heidegger. It explains everithing? you can say that. but it mainly makes you think about life! Essencial for filosophy freaks...
Rating: 
Summary: The Emperor Has No Clothes
Review: This book is a confused and tangled mass of almost utter nonsense. Take the time to think about what Sartre is "saying" and see if it makes any sense. I found it to be utterly incoherent and unilluminating. If we are to deal at all productively with difficult issues, our foremost concerns must be clarity and intellectual honesty. This book lacks both.
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Summary: This is it!
Review: This book is the meat and potatoes of the modern philisophical renaissance. Like Sartre's other works, it is beautifully worded and moving. Even if you don't find what you're looking for, it will give direction and ambition to your intellectual evolution.
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Summary: Remarkable work
Review: This excellent book is a profound restatement of key philosophical principles, especially ontological ones dating back to Aristotle's own ontology. I noticed several people complaining that this book is badly written. Badly written? Consider that Sartre won the Nobel prize for literature (which he declined--still a first, I believe). Hence, the difficulty in reading this book is not due to any inability by Sartre. It is that the ideas are very difficult to approach and require more than the amount of study required by other philosophers. This is a book you work through very slowly. Which is what you would expect it to be.
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Summary: A systematic explanation of existential thought
Review: This is a book which takes constant re-reading and reading within context: that is, pick one theme, and read the entire book in search of all Sartre has to say about that theme. This book is completely indispensible to anyone wishing to deal in post-modern philosophy and existentialism: it is a secular philosopher's bible. Dealing in systematic brilliance throughout the experience of life, Sartre delves into psychology and theological ideas while remaining true to his own purely atheistic and philosophical roots. Dense? Sure... but illuminating examples help to describe the deep thought, almost as parables in the Synoptic Gospels. The crag in the rock, the meeting at the cafe, all these verbal illustrations work into the text very well. Personally, I love the sections on the anguish of man when faced with the facticity of his own freedom. The dualism expressed by Sartre is a theme in philosophy which I usually don't enjoy (like any good post-Hegelian, I enjoy synthesizing opposites), he is able to pull it off with ease and magnificence. Though it is not as eloquent as the existentialism expressed by Albert Camus, it is every bit as enlightening and valuable. Most people object to its density because they are used to the existential wanderings of the modern novel - Camus' The Stranger, or Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment - but this is the philosophical reflection of the situation of man expressed by such work. Sartre states early on that he is not performing an objective analysis of humankind, but rather a biased and understandably nuanced descriptionof ontology from the perspective of the modern man. Brilliant and exciting, Being and Nothingness is an essential part of anyone philosopher's bookshelf!
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Summary: profound
Review: This is by no means an introduction to existentialism, you might try reading his book of exerpts called Existentialism and Human Emotions. There is a lot of jargon in this book, and each page is packed with so many arguments. This is like my copy of Remembrance of Things Past or Ulysses that are indispensable yet I can never attempt to get past the first ten pages.
Rating:
Summary: I'm being generous
Review: This is, for most people, an unwieldy, incomprehensible, impenetrable, and virtually unreadable book. That said, it also contains one of the most revolutionary and incontestable phenomenolgical theories ever devised, and it can be yours in exchange for a "mere" two months of your life. Sound like a good deal? Well, it's not. Unfortunately there was nobody around to tell me "don't jump!" as I was about to plunge headlong into this book, with obsessive-compulsive and monomaniacal desire to get through it. Apparently, I wanted to prove something to myself and others, by putting a tattered and heavily underlined copy of _Being and Nothingness_ back on my bookshelf, and being able to say "I read that". These types of motivations may be the only force in the known universe powerful enough to propel a man through a book such as this. And it's a good thing I read it when I was still young enough, stubborn enough, and crazy enough to do so.
.........This brings me back to my praise of this book, and its lofty, creative theories. Yes, it has its problems in the area of readability, and this is particularly inexcusable because it was written in the second half of the twentieth century. However, we must not forget that it was Sartre who first coined the theory "being unto other" as an explanation for the phenomenon of human temporal experience. This, as it turned out, was an enhancement and fortification of Heidegger's phenomenological theory of "being-unto-death", and was able to incorporate this older and influential theory into a new and more comprehensive theory of the self. Keep in mind that Sartre does not necessarily contradict Heidegger's theories, but instead corrects their narrow, one-dimensional nature by adding to and expanding upon them. The end result is a comprehensive and all-encompassing theory of being, which is a sort of fusion between the theory of being-unto-death and being-unto-other. The last 200-300 pages of this book are particularly brilliant in explaining this flexible, agile theory, accounting for every possible type of interaction between human feelings of isolation/self-conscious otherness and history/death. Sartre realizes that it is futile to try to narrow down an all-encompassing theory of existence into a few powerful determining concepts. Instead, Sartre presents us with a system that is able to account for many more secondary, but important, factors in the formulation of existential being.
Strange as it may sound, I would recommend that a reader who is pressed for time, but still curious about this philosophy, to start reading this book about 500 pages in. Many will vehemently disagree, but a skilled veteran of reading philosophy should be able to start this book about 2/3 of the way in and still pick up the vast majority of important concepts. You may ask, how can I justify buying a book when only 1/3 of it is worth reading? Well you'll just have to trust me on this one. Start reading about 500 pages in, save yourself about 6 weeks worth of aggravation, get all of the important concepts on the relationship between death and the self, and thank me later. Overbloated as it may be, the last 1/3 of this book alone is easily worth the price of admission. So go ahead and try it, if you dare!
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