Why read Towards the Light?

Book cover of Towards the Light: The Story of the Struggles for Liberty and Rights that Made the Modern West

Book description

In Towards the Light, A.C. Grayling tells the story of the long and difficult battle for freedom in the West, from the Reformation to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, from the battle for the vote to the struggle for the right to freedom of conscience. As Grayling passionately affirms,…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Towards the Light as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Russell Blackford

Author

The famous British philosopher A.C. Grayling tells the story of a hard-fought struggle over the past five centuries for the rights and freedoms now enjoyed in Western democracies. He emphasizes that our rights and freedoms are both precious and precarious: they could easily be lost if governments and citizens don’t adequately appreciate them or don’t understand how difficult they are to win.

For Grayling, our rights and freedoms began to contract around the beginning of this century. He points, for example, to the rise of state surveillance, particularly in response to terrorism but often just for the convenience of policing.

From Russell's list on The best books on the history of liberalism: five persuasive perspectives.