Nicolas Bourbaki, whose mathematical publications began to appear in the late 1930s and continued to be published through most of the twentieth century, was a direct product as well as a major force behind an important revolution that took place in the early decades of the twentieth century that completely changed Western culture.[...]This is the story both of Bourbaki and the world that created him in that time. It is the story of an elaborate intellectual joke because Bourbaki, one of the foremost mathematicians of his day never existed.

The disappearance -- An arrest in Finland -- Escape -- Arrival in Paris -- The general and the zeitgeist -- When Braque met Picasso -- The café -- The achievements of Bourbaki -- Bourbaki's reign -- Claude Lévi-Strauss and the birth of structuralism -- The linguistic origins -- Structuralism in psychology, psychiatry, and economics -- The literary group Oulip -- Alexandre Grothendieck and the IHES -- The death of Bourbaki and his legacy.