San Antonio College Library

This reference resource presents "entirely original articles, treating twentieth century events never before covered. The current five volumes of Human Rights address 462 topics in the history of human rights, both instances of human rights denial and human rights advances."--Page v of Publisher's note.

Micheline Ishay recounts the dramatic struggle for human rights across the ages in a book that brilliantly synthesizes historical and intellectual developments from the Mesopotamian Codes of Hammurabi to today's era of globalization. As she chronicles the clash of social movements, ideas, and armies that have played a part in this struggle, Ishay illustrates how the history of human rights has evolved from one era to the next through texts, cultural...

From Thomas Paine's "The Rights of Man," and Henry David Thoreau's "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience," to the practice of slavery and the treatment of Native Americans, the idea of human rights in North America has not always matched the deeds. This episode takes a look at "Freedom of My Mind," a documentary on Mississippi's Freedom Summer. Also included are reports on the impact of Canada's hydroelectric project at James Bay on the indigenous people...

"1956 was one of the most remarkable years of the twentieth century. All across the globe, ordinary people spoke out, filled the streets and city squares, and took up arms in an attempt to win their freedom. Popular uprisings in Poland and Hungary shake Moscow's hold on its eastern European empire. Across the American South, and in the Union of South Africa, black people risk their livelihoods, and their lives, in the struggle to dismantle institutionalized...

"Between 1939 and 1941, from the time that Germany invaded Poland until Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Americans engaged in a debate as intense as any in U.S. history. In Storm on the Horizon, prominent historian Justus Doenecke analyzes the personalities, leading action groups, and major congressional debates surrounding the decision to participate in World War II. Doenecke is the first scholar to place the anti-interventionist movement in a wider...

"A stunningly original look at the forgotten Jewish political roots of contemporary international human rights, told through the moving stories of five key activists The year 2018 marks the seventieth anniversary of two momentous events in twentieth-century history: the birth of the State of Israel and the creation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Both remained tied together in the ongoing debates about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict....

"During the past several decades, the international human rights movement has had a crucial hand in the struggle against totalitarian regimes, cruelties in wars, and crimes against humanity. Today, it grapples with the war against terror and subsequent abuses of government power. In The International Human Rights Movement, Aryeh Neier -- a leading figure and a founder of the contemporary movement -- offers a comprehensive and authoritative account...

"Peace on Our Terms follows dozens of remarkable women from Europe, the Middle East, North America, and Asia as they crossed oceans and continents; commanded meeting halls in Paris, Zurich, and Washington; and marched in the streets of Cairo and Beijing. Mona L. Siegel's sweeping global account of international organizing highlights how Egyptian and Chinese nationalists, Western and Japanese labor feminists, white Western suffragists, and African...

"By one of the nation's foremost legal historians, a groundbreaking history of the pioneering American role in establishing the modern laws of war. In the fateful closing days of 1862, just three weeks before Emancipation, Abraham Lincoln's top military advisors commissioned a code of rules to govern the armies of the United States in a newly intensified war effort. The code Lincoln issued the next spring helped shape the remaining two years of Civil...