'This fascinating and refreshing book is more necessary than ever. A must-read' - Thomas Piketty, author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century

'This fascinating and refreshing book is more necessary than ever. A must-read' Thomas Piketty

'Fascinating' - New York Times

WINNER OF THE 2024 JACQUES BARZUN PRIZE IN CULTURAL HISTORY

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 equality, we have always been profoundly sceptical about it. How much do we want, and for whom?

Darrin M. McMahon's Equality is the definitive intellectual history, tracing equality's global origins and spread from the dawn of humanity through the Enlightenment to today. Equality has been reimagined continually, in the great world religions and the politics of the ancient world, by revolutionaries and socialists, Nazis and fascists, and post-war reformers and activists.

A magisterial exploration of why equality matters and why we continue to reimagine it, Equality offers all the tools to rethink equality anew for our own age.

"'This fascinating and refreshing book is more necessary than ever. A must-read'" - author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century

"'Fascinating'" - New York Times

"'Compellingly readable'" - Times Literary Supplement

"'An important examination of the past, present, and future of a key concept of political thinking'" - Kirkus

"'This is an essential book for thinking about the most pressing issues of our time. We instinctively react against inequality yet have confused and conflicting ideas about how to make equality a reality. McMahon explains why equality remains so elusive'" - author of Inventing Human Rights