Liberty in Expansion, 1760-1850 (Liberty in America, 1600 to the Present) - Hardcover

Handlin, Oscar; Handlin, Lilian

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060390921 ISBN 13: 9780060390921

Publisher: HarperCollins, 1989

Synopsis

Traces the development of the idea of liberty from seventeenth-century America, and discusses the change in its meaning to people from all social levels

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

The crucible of the new American Republic, note the Handlins, forged a new breed of man or woman: self-reliant, disdainful of authority, provincial, vain, often reckless. How did we get that way? In this second installment in a projected four-volume history, the authors suggest that Americans fell back on their own resources when state and federal governments failed to provide various forms of support and regulations that the fledgling immigrant nation needed. But that selfish, driving individualism, in the Handlins' estimate, then brought havoc and reduced the middle and lower classes to a wretched existence; free whites evaded the paradox of the unfree--blacks and Indians--living in their midst. This searching socio-political history explores hidden crevices of the past--changing family structures, newspapers, jingoism, crime, the legal system, poverty, housing conditions--among a restless people pushing ever westward.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal:

This second volume in the Handlins' epic history of the United States charts dramatic demographic, economic, and territorial growth from 1760 to 1850. Using an interesting thematic approach, the authors contend that change, especially the rapid expansion of the American frontier, resulted by necessity in a uniquely self-reliant, individualistic American character. Americans demanded the liberty to act freely from restraint to pursue and protect the opportunities which expansion fostered and only accepted limited political authority which safeguarded liberty without threatening it. Though well-written, the book tends to ignore historical scholarship of the last 20 years and forces disparate characters and events into a blatantly nationalistic interpretation. Recommended for historiographical purposes only.
- David Szatmary, Univ. of Washington, Seattle
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 1989
• ISBN 10: 0060390921
• ISBN 13: 9780060390921
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 4