The Story of American Freedom (Norton Paperback) - Softcover

"Brilliant, important... [A] superb book." -- Fred Anderson "Succinct, information-packed, wonderfully readable... An excellent choice for serious readers." -- Pauline Maier "Foner tackles the whole drama of American history. He succeeds, with far-reaching intelligence and a genial respect for his reader." -- Mark Greif "A masterful book... that covers two centuries of courage, violence, achievement, and unfulfilled dreams in the quest for liberty." -- Herbert Mitgang "A scholarly gem on the evolution of America's most cherished idea." "A thought-provoking look at the historical uses of freedom in the United States." "Powerful... Eric Foner has held up a mirror and asked us as a people to take a good, hard look at ourselves. It is incumbent on us not to turn away."

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, by our acknowledged leaders and by former slaves, union organizers, freedom riders, and women's rights activists.