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The Story of American Freedom (Norton Paperback)

by Eric Foner (Author)
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 184 ratings
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A stirring history of America focused on its animating impulse: freedom.

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.
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  1. ISBN-10
    0393319628
  2. ISBN-13
    978-0393319620
  3. Publisher
    W. W. Norton & Company
  4. Publication date
    September 17, 1999
  5. Language
    English
  6. Dimensions
    5.5 x 0.8 x 8.3 inches
  7. Print length
    448 pages
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Brilliant, important.... [A] superb book."
― Fred Anderson, Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Succinct, information-packed, wonderfully readable.... An excellent choice for serious readers."
― Pauline Maier, New York Times Book Review

"Foner tackles the whole drama of American history. He succeeds, with far-reaching intelligence and a genial respect for his reader."
― Mark Greif, Boston Sunday Globe

"A masterful book... that covers two centuries of courage, violence, achievement, and unfulfilled dreams in the quest for liberty."
― Herbert Mitgang, Newsday

"A thought-provoking look at the historical uses of freedom in the United States."
― Seattle Times

"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."
― Raleigh News & Observer

About the Author

Eric Foner is DeWitt Clinton Professor Emeritus of History at Columbia University. In his teaching and scholarship, he focuses on the Civil War and Reconstruction, slavery, and nineteenth-century America. He has served as president of the Organization of American Historians and the American Historical Association. In 2006, he received the Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching from Columbia University. His most recent books are The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery, winner of the Bancroft and Lincoln Prizes and the Pulitzer Prize for History; Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad, winner of the New York Historical Society Book Prize; and The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ W. W. Norton & Company (September 17, 1999)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 448 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0393319628
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0393319620
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 13.6 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.8 x 8.3 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 184 ratings

About the author

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Eric Foner

Eric Foner

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Eric Foner is DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University, where he earned his B.A. and Ph.D. In his teaching and scholarship, Foner focuses on the Civil War and Reconstruction, slavery, and nineteenth-century America. His "Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877," won the Bancroft, Parkman, and Los Angeles Times Book prizes and remains the standard history of the period. In 2006 Foner received the Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching at Columbia University. He has served as president of the Organization of American Historians, the American Historical Association, and the Society of American Historians. He is currently writing a book on Lincoln and slavery.

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Top reviews from the United States

jackson haugh
5.0 out of 5 stars good
Reviewed in the United States on February 19, 2024
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I like the book so far. A little bit repetitive.
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John G.
5.0 out of 5 stars A masterpiece for understanding the meaning of freedom across American history.
Reviewed in the United States on May 10, 2020
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Foner's book is an important book for people interested in understanding the (popular) idea of freedom at different times in American history. For example, the ideas of freedom during the revolutionary period (freedom from a tyrannical monarchy) were quite different from ideas of freedom in the civil war era (freedom from slavery), which were in turn very different from the ideas of freedom in the late 20th century (freedom of choice).

While showing the reader how ideas about freedom have changed in American over time, Foner also tells readers the story about how ideas about who is entitled to the rights, benefits, and privileges of freedom have changed over time in America. Using a framework of the social, economic, and political spheres to help frame this part of the story, Foner masterfully demonstrates to the reader how freedom and its benefits not only don't exist on their own in a vacuum, but that freedom and its benefits have not always been considered a universal right or equally available to everyone in America over time.

The story of the changing meaning of freedom in America is an important one, but equally important is Foner's magnificent effort to help the reader understand that freedom--while having very tangible and concrete facets and features--is not a monolithic or static thing that just “is”, is promised to everyone, or something to be taken for granted.
8 people found this helpful
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book
Reviewed in the United States on November 1, 2023
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Good read, very informative book concerning the progress of U S freedom.
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Thomas Gutman
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent and Just the Facts, Please!
Reviewed in the United States on June 26, 2021
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This is the 3rd book that I have read by Eric Foner and probably should be substituted or at least required reading in every U.S. History class in high school. Alas, that is a wish too good to be true. Reading this book was time consuming & often dense, but incredibly comprehensive, informative and enlightening to me. The book ended in 1973 but for me, born in 1951, it was interesting and in-depth look back at my history - both living in Memphis, TN and Chicago; two hotbeds of history. I would encourage everyone to take the time to read this book. Skip the propaganda and Critical Race Theories of today and form your own conclusions which will likely be the same. But you will better understand how what is happening today is just an extension, in different ways, of what has been part of American History since Jamestown and 1607.
2 people found this helpful
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Rayah
4.0 out of 5 stars I like it
Reviewed in the United States on May 6, 2013
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I got it for a class and it is good definitely a good book if you are interested in american history even a little bit.
One person found this helpful
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John F. Gilligan
5.0 out of 5 stars Freedom In America
Reviewed in the United States on July 28, 2009
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This is an extraordinary book. Eric Foner traces the evolution of our understandings and meanings of freedom from America's foundation to the present. The concept of freedom is fundamentally cultural. That is, it embodies the habits of the heart, mind, and action of the American people: what we believe, how we feel, and how we act out our beliefs regarding freedom. Foner illustrates how our understandings of freedom have expanded, deepened and become more inclusive over the decades as a function of events, struggles, debates, Surpreme Court decisions, and outright violence, e.g. Civil War.
You might say, our understandings of freedom are continually being forged in real life conflicts over its meanings wheather it was slavery, segregation, women's right to vote, unions, and the current freedom issues of gay marriage etc. In the end, Foner's book provides the reader with a deep understanding of how our notions of freedom have and continues to evolve. Foner educates us about American history and what it means to be an American. A great and optimistic book and a must read for anyone who want's to understand the fundamental character of our nation amd the core of the American Identity.
8 people found this helpful
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Alana Tendering
3.0 out of 5 stars interesting
Reviewed in the United States on November 19, 2020
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good book
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Brian
5.0 out of 5 stars Great for those studying history but the excessive use of ...
Reviewed in the United States on April 16, 2018
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Great for those studying history but the excessive use of "big words" may not be for those with a smaller vocabulary. Just have a dictionary handy. Great book. Eric Foner is very informative and the quite the expert on history.
2 people found this helpful
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Bob Taylor
5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful historian
Reviewed in Canada on February 14, 2021
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My third book by Foner; he tells the essential stories and always accurately.
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CP
1.0 out of 5 stars forcée de l'acheter
Reviewed in France on August 24, 2022
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pour un cours d'histoire mais je l'ai même pas lu
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S Wood
5.0 out of 5 stars Freedom?
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 14, 2009
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Eric Foner is a marvellous historian who has written a number of books on the American Civil War and the post-war Reconstruction including the brilliant  Reconstruction  which is practically the standard overview of that period. In his "The Story of American Freedom" he widens his view to encompass the concept of Freedom, its changing and fought over meanings in the whole period of American history from the War of Independence to the end of the twentieth century.

In a remarkably restrained manner, given the contentiousness of the matter he's dealing with, Foner takes us through the debates that surrounded the formation of the American constitution, how the founders rationalised their "free" State with Slavery. In the early years of the Republic leading up to the Civil War itself he covers the debates between free and slave labour and covers the expansion of the United States West at the expense of Mexico and the Native Americans. The sections that cover the Civil War and the period of Reconstruction are, as to be expected, excellent summaries of those times. The book then moves on to cover the Populist and Progressive era, World War One and the subsequent "Red Scare" before moving on to the Depression and the heated debates about the economic aspects of Freedom and what the role of the State was to promote economic freedom for ordinary Americans when the "free" market had so obviously failed. The Cold War, from McCarthyism to Regans support of "freedom" fighters in Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Angola is also covered as well as the blossoming of dissent during the 1960's during the Vietnam war and after the stultifying McCarthyite era. The book as a whole deals with what freedom meant in terms of personal liberties, as well as the economic and political spheres. It would have been nice to get his view on the reign of Bush II but unfortunately the book was written in the late 1990's.

The Text is accompanied by a number of illustrations that are indicative of different eras and interests attitude to freedom. The typeface is awful, but one gets used to it after the first couple of chapters. If you want a good introduction which deals with the concept of "freedom" as argued and fought over in the United States this book fits the bill admirably. Other books that cover specific periods in more detail would include Foners book on Reconstruction cited above, for McCarthyism Ellen Schreckers  The Age of McCarthyism , for the Cold War period as a whole Francis Stonor Saunders  Who Paid the Piper?: CIA and the Cultural Cold War . Edward Morgan's  American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia  is an excellent study of a specific geographical area that covers the contradiction between freedom and slavery in a manner that is relevant to the American experience as a whole.
2 people found this helpful
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Andrew Coates
5.0 out of 5 stars Good
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 5, 2013
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Good quailty second hand book that was sent quickly, This is a must for those who are studying American studies
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George W Dixon
4.0 out of 5 stars Four Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 4, 2015
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Good
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