Freedom is the cornerstone of his sweeping narrative that focuses not only congressional debates and political treatises since the Revolution but how the fight for freedom took place on plantation and picket lines and in parlors and bedrooms.
Annotation: A survey of the various conceptions of freedom and liberty throughout American history, and how they function in relation to significant events and in the lives and political careers of notable persons. A "New York Times" Notable Book for 1998.
Praise
New York Times "Reading 'The Story of American Freedom', one is grateful for Foner's clarity and knowledge even while wishing that he had been conceptually bolder and more outspoken about his passions and less dutifully respectful of so many points of view, including those he clearly does not agree with." - Richard Bernstein 10/30/1998