A world made new : Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

"This is the story of Eleanor Roosevelt's proudest achievement, one that both she and generations of historians came to see as her greatest contribution to world history." "One of FDR's most cherished dreams as the war drew to a close was that all of the nations dragged into this conflagration would come together to form an international organization whose purpose would be to ensure that such a war would never happen again. The president died a few months before the opening of the United Nations in London, and, to the great chagrin of the American delegation, Eleanor Roosevelt went in his place. She performed so well that she was asked to head one of the UN's most sensitive commissions. Her assignment was to hammer out the world's first international bill of rights, a document that would enshrine Roosevelt's four freedoms and define the rights that every man and woman in every country around the world should enjoy. That document, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, was the founding document of the modern rights movement."--Jacket. Read more... Abstract: "This is the story of Eleanor Roosevelt's proudest achievement, one that both she and generations of historians came to see as her greatest contribution to world history." "One of FDR's most cherished dreams as the war drew to a close was that all of the nations dragged into this conflagration would come together to form an international organization whose purpose would be to ensure that such a war would never happen again. The president died a few months before the opening of the United Nations in London, and, to the great chagrin of the American delegation, Eleanor Roosevelt went in his place. She performed so well that she was asked to head one of the UN's most sensitive commissions. Her assignment was to hammer out the world's first international bill of rights, a document that would enshrine Roosevelt's four freedoms and define the rights that every man and woman in every country around the world should enjoy. That document, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, was the founding document of the modern rights movement."--Jacket FINALIST FOR THE ROBERT F. KENNEDY BOOK AWARD • “An important, potentially galvanizing book, and in this frightful, ferocious time, marked by war and agony, it is urgent reading.”—Blanche Wiesen Cook, Los Angeles Times Unafraid to speak her mind and famously tenacious in her convictions, Eleanor Roosevelt was still mourning the death of FDR when she was asked by President Truman to lead a controversial commission, under the auspices of the newly formed United Nations, to forge the world’s first international bill of rights. A World Made New is the dramatic and inspiring story of the remarkable group of men and women from around the world who participated in this historic achievement and gave us the founding document of the modern human rights movement. Spurred on by the horrors of the Second World War and working against the clock in the brief window of hope between the armistice and the Cold War, they grappled together to articulate a new vision of the rights that every man and woman in every country around the world should share, regardless of their culture or religion. A landmark work of narrative history based in part on diaries and letters to which Mary Ann Glendon, an award-winning professor of law at Harvard University, was given exclusive access, A World Made New is the first book devoted to this crucial turning point in Eleanor Roosevelt’s life, and in world history. A World Made New tells the dramatic story of the struggle to build, out of the trauma and wreckage of World War II, a document that would ensure it would never happen again. There was an almost religious intensity to the project, championed by Eleanor Roosevelt under the aegis of the newly formed United nations and brought into being by an extraordinary group of men and women who knew, like the framers of the Declaration of Independence, that they were making history. They worked against the clock, the brief window between the end of World War II and the deep freeze of the cold war, to forget the founding document of the modern rights movement.A distinguished professor of international law, Mary Ann Glendon was given exclusive access to personal diaries and unpublished memoirs of key participants. An outstanding work of narrative history, A World Made New is the first book devoted to this crucial moment in Eleanor Roosevelt's life and in world history.