Product Description

It was Thomas Jefferson who envisioned the United States as a great ‘empire of liberty.’In the first new one-volume history in two decades, David Reynolds takes Jefferson’s phrase as a key to the saga of America – helping unlock both its grandeur and its paradoxes.He examines how the anti-empire of 1776 became the greatest superpower the world has seen, how the country that offered liberty and opportunity on a scale unmatched in Europe nevertheless founded its prosperity on the labour of black slaves and the dispossession of the Native Americans. He explains how these tensions between empire and liberty have often been resolved by faith – both the evangelical Protestantism that has energized U.S. politics since the foundation of the nation and the larger faith in American righteousness that has impelled the country’s expansion. Reynolds’ account is driven by a compelling argument which illuminates our contemporary world. This is also a book in which the voices of the past speak out strongly for themselves.Not just presidents from Washington to Bush, but ordinary men and women – settlers and Indians, slaves and immigrants, factory workers and farmers, baseball players and suburban housewives.Reynolds celebrates America’s technological achievements – the plough, the skyscraper and the personal computer.He paints vivid pictures of the battlefield of Gettysburg, the stockyards of Chicago, and the bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama.But he also asks hard questions about the cost of greatness, from the Indian ‘Trail of Tears’ to the Civil War and the War on Terror. Reynolds depicts a country that has derived much of its energy – even its identity – from a perpetual struggle against enemies, real or imagined. Written with verve, insight and humour by a prize-winning historian, America, Empire of Liberty is a new history for a new presidency.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #66067 in Books
• Published on: 2009-01-19
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 671 pages

Review
David Reynolds probably knows more about America than any other British writer --Sunday Times, Max Hastings

Review
the most outstanding popular history of America written by a non-American ... Reynolds tells the ups and downs of this great narrative with tremendous verve and imagination

About the Author
David Reynolds is the Professor of International History at Cambridge and a Fellow of Christ’s College, where he has taught American history for more than thirty years. A regular visitor to the USA since first going there as a graduate student in 1973, he has held visiting posts at Harvard, Nebraska and Oklahoma, as well as at Nihon University in Tokyo. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2005. This is his tenth book; others include One World Divisible: A Global History since 1945 (2000), In Command of History: Churchill Fighting and Writing the Second World War (2004) which was awarded the Wolfson History Prize, and Summits: Six Meetings that Shaped the Twentieth Century (2007). All of these books are available as Penguin paperbacks.

Customer Reviews

Highly recommended
David Reynolds has written a fantastic book that is both comprehensive in its coverage and intimate in its biographical details of the major players and defining events in American history. It provides an extraordinatry insight into the dynamics that have shaped America from the dichotomy of an anti-empire founded on the 'will to be free' that offered liberty and freedom on a scale unmatched by Europe, that founded its prosperity on the labour of black slaves, to the debates that shape modern America, as it does what it has always done - defining its identity as its perpetual struggle against all enemies foreign and domestic, real or imagined.

This is a well-written, thoroughly enjoyable book that provides a new insight into the world's self-styled only super-power. If you don't believe me check out the Radio 4 series Reynolds has done based on this book.

AN IMPRESSIVE READ
I had hear excerpts from David Reynold's "Empire of Liberty" read on BBC Radio 4 - who serialised this book. I had encountered David Reynolds on BBC TV - for example his excellent series on world summit meetings.
I have always been interested in the history of the USA too but mainly through watching TV documentaries. In about 600 pages - David takes you through the last 400 or so years of american history at quite a pace. Key characters are fleshed out well. He has an eye for a telling quotation from those there at the time. Though quite a long book the pace is quick - the second world war only lasted less that 4 years for the USA so in a few pages we are into the cold war. Some may not like the considerable space devoted to social history as against political or economic history - but that comes down to personal interests of the reader. But no this is the Bizz!

A new angle on an old history
David Reynolds History of America is a timely book that takes us from the Founding Fathers right up too Barrack Obama's victory. The book explores this history through the contradictions and complexities of American ideas of Liberty - Empire and Faith , thus creating a fresh perspective to a subject that has been well covered. Reynolds, a professor of American history for over thirty years, displays a masterful control over the wealth of materials and information that his exhaustive research has produced - conveying the facts with such erudtion and style, I found the book hard to put down.
Viewing the history through the prism of Empire - Liberty and Faith, we see a country that has stuggled with these contradictions and wrestled with it's conscience - mainly in regard to slavery, human rights issues and foreign policy - though it has in the main endeavoured to the right thing, with varying degrees of success. In the end we are left with a picture of an Empire staring over the precipice - two costly wars and an economy reeling from the Sub-Prime mortgage disaster has left America in a very vulnerable position, and left a population wary of the future. Reynold's New History is compelling told with a story tellers skill and an historians eye for detail. Superb.History of the American PeopleMade in AmericaThe Right Nation: Why America is DifferentThe First Salute: View of the American RevolutionThe World We're inThe Eagle's Shadow: Why America Fascinates and Infuriates the WorldDivine Magnetic Lands: A Journey in America