Ark of the Liberties: America and the World - Tapa dura

Why the World Loves/Hates America
 
Long before there was an America, Europeans sensed that a land of freedom lay to the west, by definition different from the cloistered Old World. A fantasy grew into a society, then a nation, and finally a superpower; yet the belief always lingered that liberty and America were one and the same. Often they were. But unattainable aspirations can be as damaging as they are uplifting. From the Puritans to Thomas Paine, from Woodrow Wilson to George W. Bush, Americans have believed we have nothing less than a mission to redeem the world. Pursuing that belief, we have stumbled into a paradox: the desire to see liberty spread around the globe leads to forced efforts that are inconsistent with a true definition of liberty. 
 With wit, brilliance, and deep affection, the inimitable Ted Widmer has written a history of America in the world unlike any other. Ranging from the late seventeenth century to the present, Widmer traces America’s wondrous history, the arc that runs from the Declaration of Independence to the Gettysburg Address to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. He also looks unblinkingly at our less glorious history, from the 1739 Stono Rebellion, which saw slaves massacred under a banner declaring “liberty,” to the occupation of Iraq and America’s dismal standing in world opinion. Ark of the Liberties is that luminous rarity, a celebratory critique written in the conviction that if Americans want an occasionally ungrateful world to respect us more, then it will certainly help to know ourselves a little better.

A former speechwriter for President Clinton and author of three books, Ted Widmer is the director of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University. He is a frequent contributor of book reviews for The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, and The New York Observer.