Lynn Hunt

Lynn Hunt is a Distinguished Research Professor at UCLA and one of the world's most influential historians. Her work has shaped how we understand the French Revolution, human rights, and cultural history, and she has received numerous awards for her scholarship. Inventing Human Rights argues that the concept of human rights emerged not just from philosophical argument but from changes in how people experienced empathy — particularly through reading novels. Hunt traces how the eighteenth-century proliferation of epistolary novels helped readers develop the imaginative empathy necessary for the idea of universal human rights to take hold. The audiobook and book versions of Inventing Human Rights offer listeners and readers a brilliantly original argument about the origins of one of the most important ideas in modern history. Hunt's work is essential for anyone interested in human rights, history, and the unexpected ways that culture and literature shape political thought.