Inventing Human Rights: A History
Lynn Hunt
(Author)
Description
How were human rights invented, and how does their tumultuous history influence their perception and our ability to protect them today? From Professor Lynn Hunt comes this extraordinary cultural and intellectual history, which traces the roots of human rights to the rejection of torture as a means for finding the truth. She demonstrates how ideas of human relationships portrayed in novels and art helped spread these new ideals and how human rights continue to be contested today.Product Details
Price
$16.95
$15.76
Publisher
W. W. Norton & Company
Publish Date
April 01, 2008
Pages
272
Dimensions
5.56 X 0.64 X 8.32 inches | 0.54 pounds
Language
English
Type
Paperback
EAN/UPC
9780393331998
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About the Author
Lynn Hunt is professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution and editor of The New Cultural History.
Reviews
Rich, elegant, and persuasive.
Elegant... intriguing, if not audacious... Hunt is an astute historian.--Joanna Bourke
Fast-paced, provocative, and ultimately optimistic. Declarations, she writes, are not empty words but transformative; they make us want to become the people they claim we are.
A provocative and engaging history of the political impact of human rights.--Gary J. Bass
This is a wonderful story of the emergence and development of the powerful idea of human rights, written by one of the leading historians of our time.--Amartya Sen
As Americans begin to hold their leaders accountable for the mistakes made in the war against terror, this book ought to serve as a guide to thinking about one of the most serious mistakes of all, the belief that America can win that war by revoking the Declaration that brought the nation into being.--Alan Wolfe
Elegant... intriguing, if not audacious... Hunt is an astute historian.--Joanna Bourke
Fast-paced, provocative, and ultimately optimistic. Declarations, she writes, are not empty words but transformative; they make us want to become the people they claim we are.
A provocative and engaging history of the political impact of human rights.--Gary J. Bass
This is a wonderful story of the emergence and development of the powerful idea of human rights, written by one of the leading historians of our time.--Amartya Sen
As Americans begin to hold their leaders accountable for the mistakes made in the war against terror, this book ought to serve as a guide to thinking about one of the most serious mistakes of all, the belief that America can win that war by revoking the Declaration that brought the nation into being.--Alan Wolfe
