The Eighteenth Brumaire Of Louis Bonaparte

This book shows Marx in his form as a social and political historian, treating actual historical events—in this instance Napoleon III's coup d'etat of 1851 - from the viewpoint of historical materialism: "Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past." Many consider this to be Marx's greatest political work.