"Death to Bourgeois Society tells the story of four young anarchists who were guillotined in France in the 1890s. The texts collected in [the book] focus on the main avatars of this movement: the grave-robber/murderer/terrorist Ravachol; Auguste Vaillant, who bombed the Chamber of Deputies; Emile Henry, who attacked both the bourgeois in their class function and their very existence; and the Italian immigrant Santo Caserio, who brought down the curtain on the age when we assassinated the French president Sadi Carnot. The volume contains key first-person narratives of the events, from Ravachol's forbidden speech and his account of his life, to Henry's questioning at his trial and his programmatic letter to the director of the prison in which he was held, to Vaillant's confrontation with the investigators immediately after tossing his bomb, and Caserio's description of the assassination and his defense at his trial." -- back cover.