A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Mary Ann Glendon

Random House Publishing Group, Jun 11, 2002 - History - 368 pages

Unafraid to speak her mind and famously tenacious in her convictions, Eleanor Roosevelt was still mourning the death of FDR when she was asked by President Truman to lead a controversial commission, under the auspices of the newly formed United Nations, to forge the world’s first international bill of rights.

A World Made New is the dramatic and inspiring story of the remarkable group of men and women from around the world who participated in this historic achievement and gave us the founding document of the modern human rights movement. Spurred on by the horrors of the Second World War and working against the clock in the brief window of hope between the armistice and the Cold War, they grappled together to articulate a new vision of the rights that every man and woman in every country around the world should share, regardless of their culture or religion.

A landmark work of narrative history based in part on diaries and letters to which Mary Ann Glendon, an award-winning professor of law at Harvard University, was given exclusive access, A World Made New is the first book devoted to this crucial turning point in Eleanor Roosevelt’s life, and in world history.


Finalist for the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award

What people are saying

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - dono421846 - LibraryThing

Strong account of the drafting of the UDHR. Glendon is not by training an historian, so at moments she drops the necessary tone and perspective with jarring asides, but otherwise it is a consistently methodical description. Readable, informative, well documented. Highly recommended.

A WORLD MADE NEW: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

User Review  - Kirkus

A worthy review of the history and impact of the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights, "the polestar of an army of international human rights activists." Glendon (Law/Harvard Univ.; A ...

Contents

• The Longing for Freedom: 3
• Madam Chairman: 21
• A Rocky Start: 35
• Every Conceivable Right: 53
• A Philosophical Investigation: 73
• Late Nights in Geneva: 79
• In the Eye of the Hurricane: 99
• Autumn in Paris: 143
• The Declaration of Interdependence: 173
• The Deep Freeze: 193
• Universality Under Siege: 221
• The Declaration Today: 235
• Notes: 243
• Appendices: 252
• The Secretariats June 1947 Draft Humphrey Draft: 271
• The June 1947 Draft Revised by the Full Commission: 289
• The December 1948 Third Committee Draft: 300
• The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: 310
• Photo and Illustration Credits: 335

About the author

Mary Ann Glendon is Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard University. She led the Vatican delegation to the Beijing Women's Rights conference in 1995, the first woman ever to lead a Vatican delegation, and has been featured on Bill Moyers's World of Ideas. She is the author of Rights Talk; A Nation under Lawyers; Comparative Legal Traditions (a classic textbook on international law); Abortion and Divorce in Western Law, winner of the Scribes Book Award; and The Transformation of Family Law, winner of the Order of the Coif Prize, the legal academy's highest award for scholarship. She lives in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts.

Bibliographic information

• Title: A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; Random House trade paperbacks
• Author: Mary Ann Glendon
• Edition: illustrated, reprint
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group, 2002
• ISBN: 0375760466, 9780375760464
• Length: 368 pages
• Subjects: Biography & Autobiography / Political; History / United States / 20th Century; Political Science / Human Rights