“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 far and wide. Hunt also shows the continued relevance of human rights in today’s world.

林·亨特 (Lynn Hunt),美国史丹佛大学博士。曾追随查尔斯·提利 (Charles Tilly) 从事历史社会学研究。她所到之处皆成为新文化史的重镇,每隔七、八年便有一重量级作品问世,诸如八十年代初期的《法国大革命时期的政治、文化与阶级》(Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution, 1986)、以及九○年代初期的《法国大革命时期的家庭罗曼史》等。此外,她每隔十年便组织一次会议反省十年来的新文化史研究成果,因而催生了一九八九年《新文化史》(The New Cultural History, 1989) 和一九九九年《超越文化转向》(Beyond the Cultural Turn: New Directions in the Study of Society and Culture, 1999) 两本论文集的问世。