Equality: The history of an elusive idea Hardcover – 11 April 2024

This book covers the idea of Western ideas of equality from our primate ancestors all the way up to the present. Despite its vast scope, McMahon's book gives serious coverage to the concept from the Stoics, early Christianity, the Renaissance, Reformation, English Civil War, Enlightenment, early nationalism, nineteenth and twentieth centuries (including Fascist and Nazi ideas of equality, the Civil Rights movement, BLM, the feminist movements) to today's Alt-Right. In the final chapters, McMahon describes the recent rising of economic inequality, and today's "Crisis of Equality." From this list, you would think that all of these subjects would be covered only superficially, but he brings much serious scholarship and thought to each subject and their varying views of equality. A theme that runs through the book is the Janus-faced nature of equality. It is often an exclusionary ideology that seeks to circumscribe a select community from those whom it sees as either elites or as an underclass. I found particularly interesting the idea, stemming primarily from feminist scholarship, that the quest for equality can accommodate both difference and sameness. Readers might not find all of the subjects covered in the book interesting, and they may decide to read only the chapters that address their particular interests, but I encourage anyone interested to read the whole book to see how its many interrelated themes play out. I am sure that readers other than myself will have differing responses to this book, and I look forward to other reactions to it.