Skip to product information
1 of 1

Basic Books

Freedom's Dominion (Winner of the Pulitzer Prize): A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power

Regular price $14.95 USD
Regular price Sale price $14.95 USD
Sale Sold out
Shipping calculated at checkout.
Title
Title: Freedom's Dominion (Winner of the Pulitzer Prize): A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power
Author: Jefferson Cowie
ISBN: 9781541605121
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2024
Binding: Paperback
Language: English
Publisher Description:
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 Freedom's 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, Freedom's 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.