Inventing Human Rights: A History

“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.

• Universal Human Rights in Theory and Practice
• The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History
• Human Rights: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)
• Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World
• Philosophy of Human Rights: Readings in Context (Paragon Issues in Philosophy)
• The History of Human Rights: From Ancient Times to the Globalization Era
• The Human Rights Revolution: An International History (Reinterpreting History: How Historical Assessments Change over Time)
• The Human Rights Reader 2nd ed
• Regarding the Pain of Others
• International Human Rights (Dilemmas in World Politics)