WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE IN HISTORY - An important, deeply affecting--and regrettably relevant ( New York Times Book Review ) chronicle of a sinister idea of freedom: white Americans freedom to oppress others and their fight against the government that got in their way American freedom is typically associated with the fight of the oppressed for a better world.
But for centuries, whenever the federal government intervened on behalf of nonwhite people, many white Americans fought back in the name of freedom--their freedom to dominate others.
In Freedoms Dominion , prizewinning historian Jefferson Cowie traces this complex saga by focusing on a quintessentially American place: Barbour County, Alabama, the ancestral home of political firebrand George Wallace.
In a land shaped by settler colonialism and chattel slavery, freedom became a weapon.
With freedom as their cry, white Americans seized Native lands, championed secession, overthrew Reconstruction, questioned the New Deal, and fought against the civil rights movement.
Through a riveting account of two centuries of local clashes between white people and federal authorities, Freedoms Dominion offers a radically new history of federal power, democracy, and American freedom.
This history summons us today to embrace a vigorous model of American citizenship, backed by a federal government that is not afraid to fight the many incarnations of the freedom to dominate.
Paul J. Nahin
150.38 Lei
Claire Sarnowski
100.39 Lei
