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The Breakthrough: Human Rights in the 1970s (Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights Series), edited by Jan Eckel & Samuel Moyn (University of Pennsylvania Press 2014) 337 pages, ISBN No. 978-0-8122-4550-9.
I. INTRODUCTION
The Breakthrough,' as the title suggests, is a kind of sequel to the provocative work of human rights history's current enfant terrible, Samuel Moyn. He co-edits this volume of contributed works with a kin- dred colleague, Jan Eckel, who teaches modern and contemporary history at the University of Freiburg, Germany. In an early footnote, Moyn recognizes the simi- larity of the project he and Eckel share: "[Eckel and I] propose somewhat different interpretations of why the decade [of the 1970s] was so pivotal."1 2 Moyn, until this year a professor of history at Columbia University, and who is also trained in law, will join the faculty of his alma mater, Harvard Law School, in the fall of 2014 as a professor of law. Provocation can, in some circumstances, lead to academic ascendency. Moyn's earlier work, The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History (201 0), has become something of a bellwether in the field, the volume that must be responded to, whether by friend or foe, and the yardstick by which support for a certain view of human rights history, indeed of human rights themselves, must be engaged. The Breakthrough, in many ways, continues the same line of critique; in others, it challenges the revisionist project.
At face value, The Breakthrough is a fascinating collection of essays, all by historians rather than lawyers (other than Moyn), and all with what is said to be a shared thesis that something special happened in the field of human rights in the 1970s, something transformative and definitional for the global movement (hence the title). The contributions are framed by an opening descriptive essay by Moyn and a grand synthesis chapter at the conclusion by Eckel. The Eckel chapter, well written and clear, is a place for the casual reader to get a sense of the overall project of the book.
In his introduction in this volume, Moyn restates the thesis of The Last Utopia in a passage that bears extended quotation:
In particular, historians have begun to focus on the era of the 1970s, when- Initial Indications...