The Story of American Freedom

Rating:
Summary: A absolute must read for every American
Review: As Americans we have a tendancy to think of this country as the birthplace of freedom and enlightenment, that is just came to us naturally from the very beginning. Well, think again. We have not only thwarted freedom for women, minorities, immigrants and others, but our struggle for freedom has been long and is not over yet.
This book also explains the differences in our meaning of the word freedom and how it has been used and manipulated by ever special interest group.
This is a fascinating study and a compelling read. It should have been written, now it needs to be read. FIVE STARS!

Rating:
Summary: Left-Wing Revisionist Tripe
Review: Conservatives and Libertarians beware! Not very objective... reads like a liberal social history where American freedom and liberty can't quite reach into the economic realm. Foner is an okay writer, but typical of the many liberal cultural imperialists who try to pass off their historical perspective as objective history... In contrast, the overtly conservative historian Paul Johnson makes his views known to his readers and doesn't obfuscate fact with ideological dogma.

Rating:
Summary: Highly Recommended
Review: Eric Foner's title - The Story of American Freedom - is well chosen. The word freedom is so central to our national creed and discourse that it is seldom examined closely. Freedom for who? Freedom for what? Freedom from what?

Foner shows that far from being a fixed concept, the story of freedom is an ever-changing one. In our nation's founding, freedom was only truly enjoyed by property-holding white males. The story ever since then has been the expansion of the meaning in two broad historical senses. One is the struggle of broad classes of people to gain freedom. The freeing of slaves is the most famous narrative in this sense, but it is only one of many. For example, before that was the broadening of the right for democratic participation to wage earners as well as property-holders

The other is the expansion of what freedom itself means. Foner is especially good at exploring this with respect to womens' movements to not only gain the right to vote, but also to exercise more control over their own bodies.

One star is deducted in this review for the last chapter, which shows the peril of historians writing "today's history." As other reviews have alluded, this is the most politicized part of the book. Foner's strong left bias shows a lttle too baldly. I say this as one who basically agrees with his politics.

Still, essential reading for anyone interested in who we are as a people.

Rating:
Summary: A history marred by leftish politics
Review: Eric Foner's, The Story of American Freedom, is, on the whole, well written and entertaining. Unfortunately, the book fails to deliver in some key respects. Despite the claim by Foner's colleaque, Alan Brinkley, which appears on the book's cover that this is a "history of the idea of freedom", the book is really no such thing. This is no intellectual history; rather it is narrative, social history in the traditional sense. The common thread is the invocation of the symbols and language of freedom throughout American history, but there is little cogent analysis of the idea itself. The book also falls prey to the author's well-worn ideology (if this book were floating it would be listing hopelessly to the left). In an almost finger-wagging prose the author engages in what is now a quotidian chastisement of the Founding generation, for the inconsistancy of their idealized strivings for political liberty and the existance of the institution of slavery. Foner throughout the book commits the perennial error of some ideological historians: an interest in the present dissembled as an interest in the past. Foner's book is far more political than was necessary and is the principle characteristic that flaws what might otherwise have been a fine work. All pretense to objectivity is abandoned by the final chapter, on the Reagan presidency and the conservative movement of the 1980s, where the author takes off on a path which might be described as tangential at best and polemical at worst. Without much substantive discussion of the intellectual underpinnings of the conservative notion of liberty, this "history of the idea of freedom" prefers to vituperatively condemn the Reagan Justice Department for "gutting civil rights enforcement", for failing to sufficiently oppose apartheid, and "all but eliminating" the priciple of progressivity in taxation. What all this has to do with the idea of freedom the poor unsuspecting reader is left to ponder. Needless to say, Foner's, The Story of American Freedom, is a dissapointment, and stands as another example of the all too common occurence of politicized, ideological histories coming out of the American Academy.

Rating:
Summary: American history as it should be told.
Review: I enjoy Foner's books, I think he a brilliant historian, however I think perhaps he has here strayed a bit too far from the period of expertise (the Civil War era). However, on the other hand, why shouldn't he move out of his comfort zone! But this means that the book is strongest when dealing with the pre- and post- Civil War period. I feel that Foner is less assured when writing about the twentieth century. His pro-60's style radicalism and anti-Reaganite biases show up too much to be entirely convincing. For all that, his writing is always forceful and interesting.I would have liked the book to be less 'one thing after another' e.g. there was the Abolitionists, followed by the Gilded Age, followed by Progressivism, followed by the Roaring Twenties, followed by the New Deal ...etc. etc. I cannot help but wonder if Progressivism was a liberal response to the depression of the 1870s and 1880s, and the New Deal to the Depression of the 1930s, what will happen when the 'Reagan Revolution' is tested by the winds of severe recession? Already, the 'Reagan Revolution' is looking threadbare in the light of G.W.Bush's 'Compassionate Conservatism', and if the Democrats regain the White House in 2000, who knows what will come next? It would be interested for Foner to update this volume in eight, or even four years time.

Rating:
Summary: A well-done, comparative study of freedom
Review: The idea of freedom in American history seems to have gone through a series of cycles and metamorphic changes to suit a variety of social, political, and economic changes. These changes constitute a history in and of itself which goes far to define what freedom means to America's diverse population. Eric Foner's book "The Story of American Freedom" seeks to narrate that interesting history. Foner basically breaks down the meaning of freedom into two distinct spheres. Freedom of the individual to do as he/she pleases without government interference and, second, freedom that is supported by government intervention. Foner makes interesting points when he reveals that our nation's idea of freedom started out as socially narrow and then expanded to include other races and women as well. Economically, as demonstrated during the Gilded Age, freedom was to be enjoyed by those who fit the Darwinian ideal and denied to those who fell short of it. During the Progressive era, Foner illustrates that freedom was defined as government regulations on labor, food safety, and child labor laws meant to ensure the right to a better lifestyle. Throughout the book, Foner brilliantly narrates how the idea of freedom was tailored for political purposes for both the Left and the Right. I really enjoyed this book. Both a critique and a narrative of the idea of freedom, Foner's book provides a comprehensive overview of this all-pervasive concept. While I found it to be a little biased in its treatement of the 1960's (which prevents a 5-star rating) I nevertheless found it to be a well organized and well documented book (the pages of footnotes being very detailed). A must for an understanding of such an over-generalized concept.