DAVID REYNOLDS - America, Empire of Liberty. A New History

London England, Allen Lane, 2009. 3rd Impression, Binding: Cloth, Fine/Very Good. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" Tall Octavo 9781846140563 Hardcover Hardcover. America, Empire of Liberty. A New History. Slught wear to top and bottom edge of spine of D/J. It was Thomas Jefferson who envisioned the United States as a great 'empire of liberry'. In the firsr new one-volume history of two decades, the author takes Jefferson's phrase as a key to the saga of America - helping to 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 oportunity 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 thjat has emergzed US politics since the foundation of the nation and the larger faith in American righteousness that has impelled the country's expansion. Reynolds' accounts 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, soldiers and farmers, factory workers and suburban housewives. Written with verve, insight and humour by a prize-winning historian, this book is a new history for a new presidency. Illustrated. 672 pp.