| Edition |
1st U.S. ed. |
| Description |
336 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color) ; 25 cm |
|
text txt rdacontent |
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unmediated n rdamedia |
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volume nc rdacarrier |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 301-324) and index. |
| Contents |
Setting the scene -- The demand for liberty. The Reformation and the beginning of modern liberty ; Freeing the mind ; The fight against absolutism -- The extension of liberty. Slaves, workers, women, and the struggle for liberty ; The Liberty Century ; Rights out of wrongs ; The idea of liberty and the verge of betrayal -- Landmarks on the road to freedom. The Bill of Rights, 1689 ; The United States Bill of rights, 1791 ; Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen ; The Chartists' 'Six Points' and petition ; United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. |
| Summary |
Do we take our liberties for granted at the risk of losing them in the war on terror? Grayling (Descartes: The Life and Times of a Genius), a professor of philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London, and a leading British public intellectual, believes so. This book is, in some respects, an old-fashioned, triumphalist history of the rise of Western liberty since the 16th century (with Martin Luther, John Locke and Elizabeth Cady Stanton playing leading roles), but nevertheless serves as a stirring call to arms to defend freedom from its enemies within and without. Grayling argues that the struggle for liberty has been one of sacrifice and hardship on the part of many heroic individuals. Despite the blood and the violence, it has been worth it. Today's ordinary Western citizen is, in sixteenth-century terms, a lord: a possessor of rights, entitlements, opportunities and resources that only an aristocrat of that earlier period could hope for. But, Grayling somberly writes, the process of losing our inheritance of liberty might have already begun.--From publisher's description. |
| Subject |
Civil rights -- History.
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Liberty -- History.
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Civil rights. (OCoLC)fst00862627
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Liberty. (OCoLC)fst00997251
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Civil rights -- History.
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Freedom -- History.
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| Genre/Form |
History. (OCoLC)fst01411628
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| Added Title |
Struggles for freedom and rights that made the modern Western world |
| ISBN |
9780802716361 |
|
0802716369 |
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