Inventing Human Rights

Reviews / Votes

"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