The Story of American Freedom
Author: Eric Foner
Over the course of our history, freedom has been a living truth for some Americans and a cruel mockery for others. In Eric Foner's stirring history, freedom's story is not the simple unfolding of a timeless truth, but an openended history of accomplishment and failure. Its impetus lies in the aspirations and sacrifice of millions of Americans, celebrated and anonymous, who have sought freedom's blessings. Its meaning is shaped not only in Congressional debates and political treatises, but on plantations and picket lines, in parlors and bedrooms. Its cast of characters ranges from Thomas Jefferson to Frederick Douglass, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan, from former slaves seeking to breathe real meaning into emancipation to the union organizers, freedom riders, and women's rights advocates of our time.
National Review - Robert Ferrell
Foner's book...approaches brilliance in relating the efforts of many Americans to advance freedom for everyone, of others to advance it for themselves.
The Progressive - Erin Middlewood
...[H]e shows why making sense of the West is so difficult....[H]e doesn't try to smooth the rough terrain. Instead, he explores the contours and contradictins of the ...states....He's not shy of interpretation or or deflating legends. But he leaves his vision of the future wide open.
The Progressive - Harvey J. Kaye
This is not a philosophical book on freedom....[The book] reminds us that in every age Americans have risen...to contest the established limits to freedom and to redeem the nation's prophetic memory of liberty, equality, and democracy.
KLIATT
"Today, when asked to choose between freedom and equality, three quarters of Americans give priority to freedom." This little survey appears early in Foner's introduction and it is the foundation of his story about how elusive, misunderstood, misrepresented, and how perverted the concept and meaning of freedom is today for most Americans. In a country that was "born of liberty" in the breach of a bloody revolutionary war, most Americans were anything but free. The enslavement of Africans, the oppression of American Indians, the subjugation of women and the inhumane conditions under which Americans labored mocked the very idea of liberty for two-thirds of the adult American population. Until equality and freedom were inextricably linked in our political philosophy, freedom could not begin to fulfill the promise of democratic ideals in the Constitution and the Bill Of Rights. Foner charts the 200-year evolution of freedom in America when, in the beginning, only white males who owned property achieved "the social preconditions to freedom." Not until the age of Jackson (1837) were these rights extended to "ALL white males, [but] "for everyone else, it took a lot longer." Foner relates the development of freedom to America's great social movements; freedoms derived from the contract (labor), the Progressives, the sixties, the Cold War and in 1980, "conservative freedom" when Ronald Reagan "transformed the public discourse [by] rewriting history to erase non-conservative meanings of freedom, insisting that Americans from the beginning had been concerned only with freedom from,' specifically from the evils of repressive government and never with freedom to." With Supreme Court nominee RobertBork urging Americans to repudiate "our modern, virtually unqualified enthusiasm for liberty," and the astonishing proposal at the 1996 Republican National Convention to rescind the 14th Amendment principal of birthright citizenship, Foner has good reason to be concerned. He fears that Americans are eroding their cherished freedoms as they retreat into a crude insularity that defines freedom as "little more than to be left alone." This book is a celebration and a warning for all who wish to understand democracy and our unique brand of American liberty. All that one can hope for in the future is that "the better angels of our nature will reclaim their place in the forever unfinished story of American Freedom." KLIATT Codes: A—Recommended for advanced students, and adults. 1998, Norton, 422p, 21cm, 98-3290, $15.95. Ages 17 to adult. Reviewer: William Kircher; Washington, DC, July 2000 (Vol. 34 No. 4)
Library Journal
Distinguished Columbia historian Foner frames American history as a continuing fight for freedom.
The New York Times - Richard Bernstein
. . .[O]ne is is grateful for Mr. Foner's clarity and knowledgeability, even while wishing that he had been more outspoken about his passions and less dutifully respectful of so many points of view.
The Progressive - Harvey J. Kaye
This is not a philosophical book on freedom....[The book] reminds us that in every age Americans have risen...to contest the established limits to freedom and to redeem the nation's prophetic memory of liberty, equality, and democracy.
The New York Times Book Review - Pauline Maier
Succinct, information-packed, wonderfully readable. . .an excellent choice for serious readers.
Los Angeles Times
Eric Foner's brilliant, important book. . .shows how, having invoked liberty to justify their independence in 1776, Americans have fought ever since over what that freedom means and over who may enjoy its blessings.
The Progressive - Erin Middlewood
...[H]e shows why making sense of the West is so difficult....[H]e doesn't try to smooth the rough terrain. Instead, he explores the contours and contradictins of the ...states....He's not shy of interpretation or or deflating legends. But he leaves his vision of the future wide open.
Kirkus Reviews
A leisurely stroll through American history in search of the elusive and constantly changing concept of freedom. Foner (History/Columbia; Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution), a Bancroft Prize-winning historian of the Gilded Age, here examines the growth of the American ideal of personal and political freedom. The two are not necessarily the same, he notes: in our history, there has been a longstanding tension between 'freedom as the power to participate in public affairs and freedom as a collection of individual rights requiring protection against governmental interference.' The generation of the American Revolution believed that freedom was largely the latter, Foner argues: this was exemplified by their estimation of 'the most sacred of rights,' freedom of religion and conscience. Other generations, such as the free-labor movement of the Civil War era and the freedom-as-utilitarian-good school of thought that held sway during the New Deal years, have seen things differently. Foner is particularly good on the abolitionist movement, which held that freedom as extended by statute to American citizens had to be broadened to include those who were not citizens—namely, slaves and (in later decades) guest laborers brought from places like Mexico to fill in during wartime labor shortages. He observes, with the abolitionist Thomas Higginson, that the history of freedom is not 'a narrative of linear progress' and that, particularly in the matter of civil liberties for African-Americans, one step forward is often immediately followed by two steps backward. Sometimes competing (often widely varying) notions of freedom mark our history, Foner notes: ThomasJefferson's ideal of liberty was not necessarily that of W.E.B. DuBois or Susan B. Anthony. But each interpretation has influenced our present ideas of democracy and responsibility, which, Foner observes, continue to spread across the world. .
Table of Contents:
| Introduction | ||
| 1 | The Birth of American Freedom | 3 |
| 2 | To Call It Freedom | 29 |
| 3 | An Empire of Liberty | 47 |
| 4 | The Boundaries of Freedom in the Young Republic | 69 |
| 5 | A New Birth of Freedom | 95 |
| 6 | Liberty of Contract and Its Discontents | 115 |
| 7 | Progressive Freedom | 139 |
| 8 | The Birth of Civil Liberties | 163 |
| 9 | The New Deal and the Redefinition of Freedom | 195 |
| 10 | Fighting for Freedom | 219 |
| 11 | Cold War Freedom | 249 |
| 12 | Sixties Freedom | 275 |
| 13 | Conservative Freedom | 307 |
| Notes | 333 | |
| Acknowledgments | 395 | |
| Index | 397 |
Book about: Managing People in Public Agencies or Inside Vietnams Last Great Myth
True Green @ Work: 100 Ways You Can Make the Environment Your Business
Author: Kim McKay
Now, from the authors of the quintessential how-to-go-green guide for individuals and households, this definitive do-it-yourself manual is for the working world—businesses, workers, and day-to-day life at the office. Positive and practical, True Green at Work tells everyone who holds a job, from top executives on down the ladder, how to help minimize their company’s carbon footprint. The book is accessible and actionable, with its signature, crisp design and lively text. Each page contains a single tip for reducing waste, making it easy for anyone in any job to take small steps toward a healthier planet. Suggestions run the gamut, from obvious recycling to innovative strategies that encourage sustainability.
Authors McKay and Bonnin draw on their extensive industry expertise to address corporate culture, branding, and marketing and to profile American businesses on the leading edge of green—inspiring stories that are sure to motivate any company and employee. Timely and smart, True Green at Work is one business book that will pay dividends.
