Inventing Human Rights

A History

25 April 2008

Description

“A tour de force.”—Gordon S. Wood, New York Times Book Review

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.

Reviews

"Elegant... intriguing, if not audacious... Hunt is an astute historian." — Joanna Bourke, Harper's

"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." — The New Yorker

"A provocative and engaging history of the political impact of human rights." — Gary J. Bass, New Republic

"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

"Rich, elegant, and persuasive." — London Review of Books

"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, Commonweal

Also By: Lynn Hunt

Writing History in the Global Era
Lynn Hunt
Paperback, 2015
With history in ferment, leading historian Lynn Hunt rethinks why history matters and how it should be written.
Writing History in the Global Era
Lynn Hunt
Hardback, 2014
With history in ferment, leading historian Lynn Hunt rethinks why history matters and how it should be written.
Writing History in the Global Era
Lynn Hunt
E Book, 2014
With history in ferment, leading historian Lynn Hunt rethinks why history matters and how it should be written.
Telling the Truth about History
Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, Margaret Jacob
Paperback, 1995
"A fascinating historiographical essay. . . . An unusually lucid and inclusive explication of what it ultimately at stake in the culture wars over the nature, goals, and efficacy of history as a...