'This collection expands our view of rights, bringing together differing opinions among its authors, looking back in time, and bridging the false dichotomy between social and political/civic rights. These valuable essays combine attention to historical detail with a keen sense of the intellectual and political stakes in debates over rights.' Frederick Cooper, New York University
'Jensen and Walton provide a rich and eye-opening edited volume showcasing the latest historical research on social rights. The volume advances the research agenda and busts prominent myths in the field, demonstrating that social rights did not arrive as part of three sequential generation of rights, that human rights were not born in the 1970s, and that the origins of social rights predate socialism. The introduction by the editors and the bracing conclusion by Phillip Alston belong on all human rights syllabi.' Kathryn Sikkink, Harvard University
'Economic and social rights history was never dull, but in both sharpening and lengthening that history, Stephen Jensen and Charles Walton have produced a book that is vital reading for human rights scholars, practitioners, and policy-makers. I have not seen a better treatment of what the shortcut thinking of 'generations' of rights - first as civil and political, second as economic, social and cultural, and third as collective, solidarity, and environmental rights - misses.' Katharine G. Young, Boston College Law School
'The book ushers in a revolution in the history of human rights which has long exclusively been focused on civil and political rights. It provides a framework for a wide range of research and forges a set of tools for thinking about social rights.' Karim Fertikh, H-Soz-Kult