is a history of the first fifty years of the —the League of the Rights of Man. This is the first book-length study of the in any language, and it is informed by the recently available archives of the organization. Founded during the Dreyfus Affair, the took as its mandate the defense of human rights in all their forms. The central argument of this book—and the point on which it differs from all other writings on the subject—is that the often failed to live up to its mandate because of its simultaneous commitment to left-wing politics. By the late 1930s the was in disarray, and by the 1940s a number of its members opted to defend the Vichy regime of Marshal Petain.