The Story of American Freedom (平装) 0393319628

在线阅读本书 From the Revolution to our own time, freedom has been America's strongest cultural bond and its most perilous fault line, a birthright for some Americans and a cruel mockery for others. Eric Foner takes freedom not as a timeless truth but as a value whose meaning and scope have been contested throughout American history. His sweeping narrative shows freedom to have been shaped not only in congressional debates and political treatises but also on plantations and picket lines, in parlors and bedrooms. His characters include the well-known--Thomas Jefferson, Frederick Douglass, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan--and the anonymous--former slaves, union organizers, freedom riders, and women's rights advocates. In the end he gives us a stirring history of America itself focused on its animating impulse: freedom. .com Review Freedom, Eric Foner writes, is "the oldest of clichés and themost modern of aspirations." But what does it mean to be free? For thepeople of the United States, the concept of "freedom"--and itscounterpart, "liberty"--have had widely differing meanings over thecenturies. The Story of American Freedom, therefore, "is not amythic saga with a predetermined beginning and conclusion, but anopen-ended history of accomplishment and failure, a record of a peopleforever contending about the crucial ideas of their politicalculture."

Foner begins with the colonial era, when the Puritans believed thatliberty was rooted in voluntary submission to God and civilauthorities, and consisted only in the right to do good. John Locke,too, would argue that liberty did not consist of the lack ofrestraint, but of "a standing rule to live by, common to every one ofthat society, and made by the legislative power." Foner reveals theideological conflicts that lay at the heart of the American Revolutionand the Civil War, the shifts in thought about what freedom is and towhom it should apply. Adeptly charting the major trends of20th-century American politics--including the invocation of freedom asa call to arms in both world wars--Foner concludes by contrasting thetwo prevalent movements of the 1990s: the liberal articulation offreedom, grounded in Johnson's Great Society and the rhetoric of theNew Left, as the provision of civil rights and economic opportunityfor all citizens, and the conservative vision, perhaps most fullyrealized during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, of a free-marketeconomy and decentralized political power. The Story of AmericanFreedom is a sweeping synthesis, delivered in clearheaded languagethat makes the ongoing nature of the American dream accessible to allreaders.--Ron Hogan--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From Library Journal Distinguished Columbia historian Foner frames American history as a continuing fight for freedom. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From The Washington Post In The Story of American Freedom, Foner has extendedhis reach, exploring how Americans have agreed and disagreed over themeaning of freedom, from the revolutionary era to themid-1990s. Broadly synthetic, this ambitious book looks at the entiresweep of American history through the lens of freedom: who had it andwho didn't, how people thought about it, spoke about it, wrote aboutit, claimed it, and lamented its misuse.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From Booklist The concept of "freedom" as a driving force in American history is often dismissed by Marxists, neo-Beardians, and revisionists as a smoke screen to cover the clash of competing economic interests. Foner, professor of history at Columbia University, acknowledges that different groups put different slants on the meaning of freedom. He also deals effectively with the exclusion of

出版社	W. W. Norton & Company
作者	Eric Foner