'This fascinating and refreshing book is more necessary than ever. A must-read' Thomas Piketty
'Fascinating' - New York Times
WINNER OF THE 2024 JACQUES BARZUN PRIZE IN CULTURAL HISTORY
Equality is in crisis. Our world is filled with soaring inequalities, spanning wealth, race, identity, and nationality. Yet how can we strive for equality if we don't understand it? As much as we have struggled for equality, we have always been profoundly sceptical about it. How much do we want, and for whom?
Darrin M. McMahon's Equality is the definitive intellectual history, tracing equality's global origins and spread from the dawn of humanity through the Enlightenment to today. Equality has been reimagined continually, in the great world religions and the politics of the ancient world, by revolutionaries and socialists, Nazis and fascists, and post-war reformers and activists.
A magisterial exploration of why equality matters and why we continue to reimagine it, Equality offers all the tools to rethink equality anew for our own age. Darrin M. McMahon is the David W. Little Class of 1944 Professor of History at Dartmouth College, and the author of Happiness: A History and Divine Fury: A History of Genius. 'This fascinating and refreshing book is more necessary than ever. A must-read' - Thomas Piketty, author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century Expert author with academic clout and great endorsements 'This fascinating and refreshing book is more necessary than ever. A must-read' 'Fascinating' 'An important examination of the past, present, and future of a key concept of political thinking' 'Darrin McMahon once again delivers a brilliant intellectual history of one of humanity's most important and least understood ideas. Sweeping, incisive, and provocative, Equality is nothing short of a masterpiece' 'In this ambitious book, McMahon places equality at the center of human history, showing us how elastic and unruly the concept is and illustrating struggles over its meaning continue to be central touchstones for our contemporary moment. This intellectual and political history is a critical resource in our age of inequality' 'McMahon's Equality is a magisterial and path-breaking history of the dialectic of equality and inequality, which has always been and remains today indispensable to understand the history of humanity' 'McMahon's Equality is a remarkable book full of penetrating insights, good humor, and hard truths' 'This is an essential book for thinking about the most pressing issues of our time. We instinctively react against inequality yet have confused and conflicting ideas about how to make equality a reality. McMahon explains why equality remains so elusive' 'McMahon's book is a rare general study of the topic... Sweeping and discerning' 'A meticulous and thoughtful account'
