Books

  • Equality: The History of an Elusive Idea

    Equality: The History of an Elusive Idea

    The definitive history of the idea of equality—and why we’re so ambivalent about it  On Sale November 14, 2023 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…

  • Divine Fury: A History of Genius

    Divine Fury: A History of Genius

    Divine Fury: A History of Genius, Basic Books, 2013 Selected Comments and Reviews “[An] erudite and engaging history of genius…McMahon is refreshingly unafraid to embrace the mythic dimension of his subject as part of its true importance, an approach that offers to deepen, not undermine, our appreciation of genius.” —The New York Times “A deeply…

  • Happiness: A History

    Happiness: A History

    Happiness: A History, Atlantic Monthly Books, 2006browse book on Amazon — | — visit Publisher’s site Selected as one of The New York Times Book Review 100 Notable Books of the Year for 2006. Selected as a 2006 Washington Post Book World Most Favorable Reviews title. Selected Comments and Reviews “Excellent history” —The Economist “From…

  • Enemies of the Enlightenment

    Enemies of the Enlightenment

    Enemies of the Enlightenment: The French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity Oxford University Press, 2001visit Publisher’s site Selected Comments “Enemies of the Enlightenment is, simply put, the most exciting and important book on the French Revolutionary era to appear since the bicentennial. Required reading not only for students of the French Revolution, but for…

  • History & Human Flourishing

    History & Human Flourishing

    The Humanities and Human Flourishing series publishes edited volumes that explore the role of human flourishing in the central disciplines of the humanities, and to what degree the humanities can increase human happiness. This volume examines the relationship between history and human flourishing and, more broadly, investigates the ways in which the arts and humanities…

  • Rethinking Modern European Intellectual History

    Rethinking Modern European Intellectual History

    Rethinking Modern European Intellectual History Oxford University Press, 2013edited with Samuel Moyn— visit Publisher’s site Selected Comments “At the crossroads of many disciplines, intellectual history has emerged as a vital stimulus to the humanities as a whole. Shedding the residues of cultural condescension, European intellectual history in particular has come to be an endlessly renewable…

  • Genealogies of Genius

    Genealogies of Genius

    Genealogies of Genius, palgrave macmillian, 2016edited with Joyce E. Chaplin— visit Publisher’s site The essays in this volume seek to examine the uses to which concepts of genius have been put in different cultures and times. Collectively, they are designed to make two new statements. First, seen in historical and comparative perspective, genius is not…