What I'm Reading Now: Lynn Hunt

Lynn Hunt is Distinguished Research Professor & Eugen Weber Endowed Chair in Modern European History at UCLA.  She received her Ph.D. in history from Stanford in 1973.  She is the author of many books including Inventing Human Rights (2007), Measuring Time: Making History (2008), and is the co-author of the textbook, The Making of the West: Peoples and Cultures (4th ed. 2012).

What are you reading now?

Silvia Sebastiani, The Scottish Enlightenment: Race, Gender, and the Limits of Progress, a remarkable study by an Italian historian who teaches in France of how race and gender come to be interpreted as signs of progress or the lack thereof.

Tan Twan Eng, The Gift of Rain. I read his later novel Garden of the Evening Mists which I found to be one of the most gripping novels I have ever read so am now going back to this one. He is a Malaysian author. They are set more or less in the period of the World War II and afterward.

Susan Elia MacNeal, Princess Elizabeth's Spy (I like to read historically situated mystery novels).

What is your favorite history book?

R.R. Palmer's Twelve Who Ruled. It got me interested in the French Revolution.

Why did you choose history as your career?

My mother's parents were not native English speakers. My grandfather came from Ukraine and though my grandmother was born in western Minnesota both of them spoke German first. It seemed therefore natural that I would be interested in Europe and especially things German. I started in German history in graduate school and then switched to French history. I was either going to study the Nazis or the French Revolution, both transformative events. I went to college and graduate school in the 1960s and revolution was very much in the air, so studying revolution or some kind of rapid change seemed obvious to me.

What was your favorite historic site trip?

Going to the Normandy beaches of World War II. Having seen the movies about D-Day and read about it in school, it was very moving to see the actual landscape and the cemeteries nearby. I went in 1994, the 50th anniversary of the invasion. The French did all kinds of things for the commemoration which brought home the significance of the turning point in the war. I suppose if I had gone to the eastern front, it would have been harder to get a sense from just one place though certainly the defeat of the Germans on the eastern front was at least if not more significant than the Normandy landings.

If you could have dinner with any three historians (dead or alive), who would you choose and why?

Jules Michelet because he was so passionate about French history, Natalie Zemon Davis because she is always bubbling over with new ideas about history, and Mona Ozouf because she is the most remarkable conversationalist I have ever had the pleasure of hearing in person. 

What is your favorite library and bookstore when looking for history books?

I liked to go to bookstores in Paris because there are still so many of them. But for a library, nothing is better than my own at UCLA.

Do you own any rare history or collectible books? Do you collect artifacts related to history?

Not many, just a handful, like French revolutionary plates and coins.

Which history museums are your favorites? 

Musée Carnavalet in Paris because it's small and has unexpected treasures about French history.

What would be your advice for history majors looking to make history as a career?

Be open to the possibilities because history can be useful for many different endeavors — parks, archives, museums, tours, even cruises! There are so many different places where history is front and center and people are needed to interpret it.

Who was your favorite history teacher?

My Carleton College teacher, Carl Weiner, got many students interested in history as a career. He was enthusiastic, passionate, and a great lecturer. Great teachers can make a great difference in the lives of young people, in particular.

Why is it essential to save history and libraries? 

There is no identity without memory and that's true for groups and nations as much as it is for individuals. Libraries are a way of venerating our predecessors while also providing food for thought in the present.