Alan Jacobs reviews "Inventing the Individual"

Here, in Books & Culture, is Alan Jacobs's review of Larry Siedentop's "Inventing the Individual:  The Origins of Western Liberalism."  Jacobs writes ,

. . . Siedentop, an American political philosopher who taught for many years in England, has here written, if not quite a magnum opus, nevertheless an ambitious and assured narrative that covers many centuries and several European cultures but pursues a single question: Where does the Western world's universally held idea that rights are invested in individuals come from? His answer suggests that those who have looked at the 16th century and the immediately preceding period as the key moment are taking too short a view. He would have us look back to far earlier days, and is willing to overcome his profession's resistance to Big History in order to explain why. . . .