|
American
Reference Books Annual 2004
Lawrence
Looks at Books, December 2003
Midwest
Book Review, November 2003
Reference Reviews, November 2003
Reference Reviews (UK) July
2004
Review
from: American
Reference Books Annual 2004
These briefly annotated events
affecting groups usually considered protected under human rights
laws—women, children, indigenous peoples, homosexuals, physically
challenged people, ethnic and racial minorities, and aliens—are
international in scope and span about 2,000 years. The two-page preface
warns the unwary reader of the wide disagreement about how the term
"human rights" should be defined. Indeed, human rights laws,
often the result of mass sympathy for grossly abused groups of people, end
up begging the question of what anyone means by human rights, in an
objective sense….The Chronology’s extensive index and
bibliography of works focusing on specific rights are useful tools.
Certainly the broad scope and nonjudgmental tenor of this work, as well as
the lack of current chronologies on this topic, make this chronology a
desirable addition to reference collections of high school, university,
and public libraries.
Review from:
Lawrence
Looks at Books, December 2003
In the wake of the final
conquest of the Muslim state of Granada in 1492, the Spanish crown
expelled all Jews first from Spain and then from their Italian
possessions. Similar expulsions followed in Britain, France, Germany and
Switzerland. The tolerance that had characterized Renaissance Europe was
replaced by an age of segregation and persecution. In 1619, the crew of a
Dutch man-of-war sold the first African slaves to be imported into a
mainland English colony at Jamestown, Virginia. In 1842, the Mines Acts
prohibited the use of children under 10 in the mines of Great Britain. In
1864, Sweden enacted legislation granting women equal accessibility to
jobs and professions. After prolonged conflict in the state of Chiapas,
the Mexican senate in 2001 approved the Initiative for the Constitutional
Reform on Indian Rights and Culture, which granted indigenous peoples
constitutional rights, self-determination and autonomy. In November 2003,
the Massachusetts Supreme Court declared that the state constitution
guaranteed the rights of gay couples to marry and ordered the state
legislature to rewrite the state's marriage laws to benefit gay couples.
All of these events were
landmarks in an age-old struggle for the recognition of the rights of
various elements of human societies. Levinson's guide documents this
continuing conflict. In nine separate chronologies he details the
development of the concepts of human rights in general, civil rights,
religious rights, women's rights, indigenous rights, children's rights,
gay rights, disabled rights and refugee rights. While the quests for civil
liberties and women's rights have received considerable attention in
reference works, issues affecting other groups like children, the disabled
and refugees have been less blessed. Few sources combine all these issues
so coherently. The most selective chronology is the survey of human
rights. Intended as an introduction to the issues, it highlights such
landmarks as the Magna Carta, the Declaration of Independence, the Mexican
constitution and the United Nations Charter. The remaining eight sections
are substantial investigations of the development of these key concepts
from ancient times to the present. Decrees, legislation and court cases
dominate the entries, so modern, western-style governments consume much
attention. However, the coverage is deliberately worldwide, and this is
most evident in the sections on religion, indigenous peoples, gay rights
and refugees. A truly eye-opening chronicle of changing sensibilities and
standards, this guide is highly recommended to both public and academic
libraries.
Review from:
Midwest
Book Review, November 2003
Exhaustively compiled and expertly
edited by cultural anthropologist David Levinson, The Wilson Chronology
of Human Rights: A Record of the Human Striving for Freedom from
Ancient Times to the Present presents several thousand entries
recording the extended and extensive history human struggles for civil
rights, religious freedom, and the developing political and personal
rights for women, children, gays, indigenous peoples, the disabled, and
refugees around the world seeking to live out their lives with dignity. An
extensive index allows for easy reference of this moving chronicle of
humankind's slow struggle toward a greater good. No university or
community library Human Rights reference collection can be considered
comprehensive without the inclusion of David Levinson's The Wilson
Chronology of Human Rights!
Review
from: Reference Reviews, November 2003
Although human beings have
since early history considered that being human gave them certain rights,
just what those rights are has varied greatly. Since the horrors of Nazi
genocide in World War II, this has become of even greater worldwide
interest. Divided into nine chapters, "Human Rights - General,"
"Civil Rights," "Religious Rights," "Women's
Rights," Indigenous Rights," "Children's Rights,"
"Gay Rights," "Disabled Rights" and "Refugee
Rights," this reference discusses three specific controversies:
interpretation (Does the Universal Declaration and those that follow apply
to individuals or to groups?), affirmative action, and cross-cultural
relevance of current conceptions of human rights. "Human Rights -
General" is the shortest chapter, a 19-page chronology beginning with
1200 B.C.E. and Moses giving the Ten Commandments to the Hebrews, through
the Magna Carta and the Declaration of Independence, to 2002 and Michael
Melchior's warning of tragic consequences for Israel if the Palestinian
situation is not remedied. World history students will use this to fit
what went before and what came after major historical events.
Review from:
Reference Reviews (UK) July
2004
This is a new title in the Wilson Chronology
series, providing a chronological history of human rights from circa 3000
BCE to 2002 CE. Specifically, and as subjects for each chapter, it focuses
on civil rights, religious rights, women's rights, indigenous rights,
children's rights, gays' rights, disabled rights and refugee rights. There
is also a general opening chapter on human rights.
Each chapter is made up of a series of entries that
happened in a particular year or period of years. Each entry describes
historical events; laws and court cases; publications; formation of
organizations; and notable individuals, including his or her achievements.
There are also extracts of key documents in the first chapter, such as the
USA's constitutional protection of human rights enacted through the Bills
of Right, 1791. The Chronology is therefore comprehensive in
covering the ideology and praxis of repression and persecution as well as
the struggles to overcome them….There is…an excellent and detailed index
that does cross-reference subjects….
Generally the Chronology is a useful reference
resource for the last 300 years and especially post-1945. While early
references may be of interest to the reader, the references are typically
too disparate in time and geography to add much value on the subject.
Moreover, given that certain rights and the struggles over these rights
have a longer history, it is not surprising that this is reflected in the
amount of material included in each chapter. Civil rights, religious
rights, women's rights and indigenous rights are all substantive chapters
of between 70 and 116 pages. On the other hand, chapters on more recent
concerns, such as disabled rights and refugees' rights, are very short, at
between six and eight pages.
In the preface, David Levinson also acknowledges that much
of the material is biased towards the Western world and the USA in
particular. This is true, especially the chapters on civil rights and
indigenous rights, but less so generally in the references post-1945 and
the chapter on religious rights. This includes much non-Western material,
such as the struggles between the state, Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism
in China. A bibliography is provided….This book is…a useful addition to a
library specializing in human rights, such as a university library, which
holds or has access to other resources in the field that readers can turn
to.
Reviewed by: Simon Barrett, Information Systems
Development Officer, London, UK
|
