"How can any certainty about history be established, and why does it matter? Lynn Hunt shows why the search for truth about the past, as a continual process of discovery, is vital for our societies. History, she argues, is our best defense against tyranny"--
These essays offer new insight into the development of modern conceptions of time, from the Christian dating system (BC/AD or BCE/CE) to the idea of modernity as a new epoch in human history.
Using a wide range of artistic, iconographic, literary and historical sources, Lynn Hunt undertakes a Freudian influenced analysis of the French Revolution to examine the breakdown of patriarchal model of authority.