Judging by the queries about the book from usually indifferent New York City Subway riders, The History of Human Rights certainly has an interested audience outside the academy. To be sure, considering the "slaughter bench of history," and the twentieth century's innovations of mass murder, the development and institutionalization of human rights the book charts represent remarkable achievements. But institutionalization is not the same as compliance. Thus what may account for my fellow travelers' interest is that, as immigrants from developing countries, they are probably well aware that the mid-twentieth century's human rights victories proved incapable of halting atrocities perpetrated after their ratification. For while an acknowledged genocide in western Sudan rages, economic disparities continue to increase globally as the richest, most powerful nation on earth is engaged in an ill conceived war initiated on the most flimsy pretexts. Speaking in this context, Micheline Ishay provides a necessary and refreshingly accessible study.