Liberty and Freedom: A Visual History of America's Founding Ideas [Hardcover]

This is the third book in the four book (projected) that Fischer began with the seminal "Albion's Seed".

Liberty and Freedom is devoted to those two concepts, which Fischer holds are key to understanding the culture of America. Fischer uses quilts, flags, photos, paintings, sculpture and pretty much anything else under the sun(toilet decorated with a bald eagle, anyone?) to illustrate this thesis.

Clearly, Fischer is concerned with the idea of America. What is most novel about this book is the way that Fischer tries to assimilate some of the newer teachings of social history with the the method of traditional history(focus on military events/political leaders).

Never one to shy away from histiographical concerns, Fischer illustrates these varying approaches in a short appendix.

This book is of high quality, copiously illustrated and is published in conjunction with a touring museum exhibition that is travelling as far west as St. Louis (as a Californian, I am a little upset that it isn't coming out farther).

The chapters of the book are short to the point of being anecdotal: two pages on Emerson, four pages on Thoreau, three pages on Martin Luther King. However, that is in line with Fischer's central concern which is to document the imagery of the ideas of liberty and freedom in American history.

The heavier intellectual lifting is towards the front of the book. In the first hundred pages, Fischer produces a nifty chart that documents the differing origins of the concepts of liberty and freedom (Did you know that liberty derives from the Roman republic/empire whereas Freedom comes from Germanic/Anglo tribal roots?). He then relates these concepts to the cultural groups that settled America (and to which Albion's seed is entirely devoted).

While it is possible to quibble with the result, I will save that for the real historians. Suffice it to say, this book is an awesome achievment, and Fischer is once again to be commended, not only for his attempts to bravely reconsile two competing schools of history, but also for his large spirited message, that groups which turn away from the concepts of liberty and freedom ultimately lose the battle in America's "marketplace of ideas."

A must for cynics and believers alike.

David Hackett Fischer's Albion's Seed established him as one of the finest historians writing for a general audience. Since the publication of that landmark history, Fischer has produced a number of outstanding books, including among them Paul Revere's Ride, and Washington's Crossing, each of which skillfully demonstrates how cultural forces, reflected in individual decisions and actions, affected the course of events at a critical fork in the historical road.

This latest work from Fischer compares favorably to his greatest works, and is a plausible candidate for his finest effort yet.

To be great history, a work must succeed on several levels. One is that it must be interesting -- the reader must feel compelled to press on. Another is that it must be informative; it should educate, ideally in a fair way, conveying what is most important, and minimizing the influence of author bias. But the acid test of what makes for a great history may be whether it enables the reader to understand his world in a fundamentally new, insightful way. Albion's Seed and Fischer's other great works accomplish this. So too does Liberty and Freedom, in spades.

Fischer aims to trace the development of the concepts and values of Liberty and Freedom throughout American history. To lay the foundation, he studies the terms themselves. Liberty, Fischer finds, derives from the classical Latin world, with connotations relating to the release from bondage. Consequently, in later history, it carries overtones of meaning the ability to move and to act without interference or constraint by others.

Freedom, on the other hand, relates to the Germanic "Freiheit," and has different connotations, specifically the possession of the full rights of citizenship, of belonging to a society. We see its connotations in phrases such as "the rights of free-born Englishmen," the sense that in belonging to a community, each member is accorded certain rights and freedoms.

Fischer argues that the English language is unique in carrying these twin concepts within the language in parallel, with the result that English-speaking cultures have long pursued both conceptions, and only more recently have begun to use the terms more interchangeably. The suggestion is made that the dual conception arises in part from the historical fact that both Romance and Germanic language and cultural influences implanted themselves in England many centuries ago.

Fischer traces the flowering of the concepts of liberty and freedom in America, with great attention to how these have been expressed through popular culture and political argument. His history is one of broad participation; elected leaders make cases for their visions of liberty and freedom, but so too do the teeming masses express their evolving views of liberty and freedom in ways that shape the country's direction.

Someone who is considering buying this book should be aware that this is just about the quickest 800 pages you will ever come across. I devoured it in just a few days on my commutes. His writing is brisk, the volume handsomely illustrated. The chapters are brief and thematically very tightly organized. If there is a slow patch in the book, I cannot recall it.

One of Fischer's more interesting conclusions pertains to the role of America's military conflicts in shaping the progress of American freedom. His general thesis is that each conflict has led at first to a curtailment of individual freedom, but then has resulted in its considerable expansion. Consider, for example, that the Civil War began with the suspension of habeas corpus and ended not only with its reinstatement but with the (then) radical 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments, establishing emancipation and equal protection of the laws. WWII began with the incarceration of Japanese Americans, but its end ushered in the integration of America's schools, armed forces (and major league baseball.) Even the Cold War, which has become equated in Hollywood's popular memory with the early abuses by Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee, produced the boomerang effects of Miranda Rights, the Civil Rights act, and many other expansions of liberty in the 1960s.

Fischer's message is a hopeful one in the climate of America's current conflict. He reminds us not only that each of America's conflicts has produced an initial constraint on individual liberties followed by their subsequent expansions, but also that each conflict has advanced the ball relative to the one before. The restraints on individual freedoms, for example, that occurred in the context of World War I far surpassed those that occurred in either WWII or the Cold War.

Fischer saves his most powerful lesson till the end, when he documents that political power flows to those who publicly dedicate themselves to liberty and freedom, not to those who promise cradle-to-grave security, government-provided benefits, or any variant thereof. Americans' commitment to the twin conceptions of liberty and freedom remains strong even as Americans disagree on what these concepts mean and how they should apply to our daily lives. But the politician who ignores these fundamental values does so at his/her own peril.

If you're interested in American symbols of all kinds and/or in the varied and changing attitudes Americans have had toward liberty and freedom, this is a must-have book. Well-organized, easy to read but profound, with over 500 illustrations, this book again marks David Hackett Fischer as an author with a unique understanding of how the country's present has developed out of a past few Americans understand. Bravo, David!

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