American Freedom: The Basics explores ideals of freedom as they have been conceived, debated, practiced, and struggled for in the United States from the Revolutionary War to the present day.
Across ten chapters, the book addresses these core concepts: the nation’s revolutionary ideals and actualities; slavery and emancipation; and territorial expansion and demographic change. It goes on to discuss economic liberty, Native American survivance, women’s liberty and other modern freedom movements, finally addressing the issues around guns and freedom, American incarceration, and freedom across the Information Age. Taken together, these chapters offer an introduction to the subject of American freedom that charts – and reveals intersections between – critical ideas, events, figures, and cultural phenomena. The book provides an orienting view useful in guiding future explorations, along with a compelling sense of why such explorations matter. Examining ideals of freedom brings us to the center of debates about what being an American has meant – and might yet mean. Those debates are, this book argues, intensely vital and relevant today.
Readable and concise, featuring chapter summaries and discussion questions, this book will be useful for undergraduate students of American History, American Politics, American Cultural Studies, and American Literature.