Eric Foner

A masterful history of the United States, focused on its animating impulse-freedom-and the continuing struggle to achieve it. Freedom: a promised land, a battleground, America's cultural bond and fault line. The Declaration of Independence lists liberty among mankind's inalienable rights; the Constitution ... (more)was framed to secure liberty's blessings. The United States fought the Civil War to bring about a new birth of freedom, World War II for the Four Freedoms, and the Cold War to defend the Free World. In Eric Foner's stirring history, freedom's story unfolds through aspiration and sacrifice, its meaning 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 Margaret Sanger to Franklin D. Roosevelt; from former slaves seeking to breathe real meaning into emancipation to the union organizers, freedom riders, and women's rights advocates of our time. This landmark history shows the story of American freedom to be not a mythic saga but a vital, open-ended tale of accomplishment and failure, a record of a people forever contending over the crucial ideas of their political culture. 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 open-ended 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. —from the publisher's website