Lynn Hunt Books

The Making of the West is a story of interactions — cross-cultural exchanges that span the globe, as well as the ongoing interactions between societies, cultures, governments, economies, religions, and ideas. To highlight these interactions and help students grasp the vital connections between political, social, and cultural events, The Making of the West: A Concise History presents a comprehensive picture of each historical era within a brief chronological narrative. The book also situates Europe within a truly global context, facilitating students’ understanding of the events that have shaped their own times. A full-color map and art program deepen students’ understanding of the narrative.

Lynn Hunt offers a Freudian analysis of the French Revolution, exploring the collapse of patriarchal authority through diverse artistic, iconographic, literary, and historical sources. This examination reveals the complex interplay between gender dynamics and revolutionary change, highlighting how traditional power structures were challenged during this pivotal period.

Lynn Hunt and Jack R. Censer's The French Revolution and Napoleon provides a globally-oriented narrative history of events from 1789 until the fall of Napoleon. It emphasizes the global origins and consequences of the French Revolution and explains why it is the formative event for modern politics. The book integrates global competition, fiscal crisis, slavery and the beginnings of nationalism with the more traditional emphases on human rights and constitutions, terror and violence, and the rise of authoritarianism. This global approach then enables the authors – two world-renowned scholars in the field – to clearly illustrate how the French Revolution and Napoleonic Empire changed all the political givens for Europe, the Americas, North Africa and parts of Asia as well. Including numerous illustrations and maps, end-of-chapter questions, timelines and primary source document extracts for analysis in each chapter, this book is essential reading for all students of modern European history who want to understand the French Revolution and Napoleonic Empire in a truly global context.

We justify our actions in the present through our understanding of the past. But we live in a time when politicians lie brazenly about historical facts and meddle with the content of history books, while media differ wildly in their reporting of the same event. Frequently, new discoveries force us to re-evaluate everything we thought we knew about the past. So how can any certainty about history be established, and why does it matter? Lynn Hunt shows why the search for truth about the past, as a continual process of discovery, is vital for our societies. History has an essential role to play in ensuring honest presentation of evidence. In this way, it can foster humility about our present-day concerns, a critical attitude toward chauvinism, and an openness to other peoples and cultures. History, Hunt argues, is our best defense against tyranny. Introducing Polity's Why It Matters series; in these short and lively books, world-leading thinkers make the case for the importance of their subjects and aim to inspire a new generation of students.

In eighteenth-century Amsterdam, two French Protestant refugees created a remarkable work that captivated and provoked readers throughout Europe. This account by Lynn Hunt, Margaret Jacob, and Wijnand Mijnhardt delves into the vibrant Dutch Republic and its thriving book trade, focusing on a publication that proposed the radical notion of religious equality. Engraver Bernard Picart and author Jean Frederic Bernard produced The Religious Ceremonies and Customs of All the Peoples of the World, which began its release in 1723 with seven folio volumes. The work provided a comparative perspective on various religions, including Jews, Catholics, Muslims, and Protestants, along with diverse sects from the Orient and the Americas. Despite facing condemnation from the Catholic Church, it achieved remarkable success and was widely copied and adapted over the next century, often losing its original radical context and connections to clandestine literature and Spinoza's philosophy. This influential publication laid the groundwork for religious toleration during a time of persistent conflict and highlighted the global influences on Western thought. The authors illuminate the profound insights within this beautifully illustrated work, showcasing its role in shaping a modern, secular understanding of religion.

In this groundbreaking collection of essays, historians and literary theorists examine how, between 1500 and 1800, pornography emerged as a literary practice and a category of knowledge intimately linked to the formative moments of Western modernity and the democratization of culture. The first modern writers and engravers of pornography were part of the demimonde of heretics, freethinkers, and libertines who constituted the dark underside of the Renaissance, the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment, and the French Revolution. From the start, early modern European pornography used the shock of sex to test the boundaries and regulation of obscene behavior and expression in the public and private sphere. As such, pornography criticized and even subverted political authorities as well as social and sexual relations.

Reframes the debate on the French Revolution, shifting the discussion from the Revolution's role in wider, extrinsic processes to its central political significance.

A collection of essays which offer insight into the development of modern conceptions of time, from the Christian dating system (BC/AD or BCE/CE) to the idea of modernity as an epoch in human history.

A tour de force.-Gordon S. Wood, New York Times Book Review

With history in ferment, leading historian Lynn Hunt rethinks why history matters and how it should be written.