Liberty and freedom: Americans agree that these values are
fundamental to our nation, but what do they mean? How have their
meanings changed through time? In this new volume of cultural
history, David Hackett Fischer shows how these varying ideas form
an intertwined strand that runs through the core of American life.
Fischer examines liberty and freedom not as philosophical or
political abstractions, but as folkways and popular beliefs deeply
embedded in American culture. Tocqueville called them "habits of
the heart." From the earliest colonies, Americans have shared
ideals of liberty and freedom, but with very different meanings.
Like DNA these ideas have transformed and recombined in each
generation.
The book arose from Fischer's discovery that the words themselves
had differing origins: the Latinate "liberty" implied separation
and independence. The root meaning of "freedom" (akin to "friend")
connoted attachment: the rights of belonging in a community of
freepeople. The tension between the two senses has been a source of
conflict and creativity throughout American history.
Liberty & Freedom studies the folk history of those ideas
through more than 400 visions, images, and symbols. It begins with
the American Revolution, and explores the meaning of New England's
Liberty Tree, Pennsylvania's Liberty Bells, Carolina's Liberty
Crescent, and "Don't Tread on Me" rattlesnakes. In the new
republic, the search for a common American symbol gave new meaning
to Yankee Doodle, Uncle Sam, Miss Liberty, and many other icons. In
the Civil War, Americans divided over liberty and freedom.
Afterward, new universal visions were invented by people who had
formerly been excluded from a free society--African Americans,
American Indians, and immigrants. The twentieth century saw liberty
and freedom tested by enemies and contested at home, yet it brought
the greatest outpouring of new visions, from Franklin Roosevelt's
Four Freedoms to Martin Luther King's "dream" to Janis Joplin's
"nothin' left to lose."
Illustrated in full color with a rich variety of images, Liberty
and Freedom is, literally, an eye-opening work of
history--stimulating, large-spirited, and ultimately, inspiring.
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