Battles for Freedom The Use and Abuse of American History Eric Foner Eric Foner is a Pulitzer Prize winning historian and DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University. He is one of America’s leading historians of the American Civil War and Reconstruction Era. His books include The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery; Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution and Give Me Liberty! An American History.
January 2017 240 pages Approx. 75,000 words World rights available => American History, Politics
Eric Foner is one of America’s most prolific historians
American Radicalism especially relevant in today’s American politics
Wide-ranging historical and current affairs coverage
‘Nothing could be more timely, more needed than this collection of Eric Foner's work. For the depth and breadth of his intellect as well as the clarity and precision of his language, he has peers but no superiors. Throughout his career, Professor Foner has enlightened and provoked us to become our better selves.’ – Toni Morrison For almost four decades, Eric Foner, one of America's most distinguished historians, has introduced readers of his journalism to unknown or forgotten characters in American history, methodically unearthing the hidden history of American radicalism. In this collection of polemical pieces, Foner expounds on the relevance of Abraham Lincoln's legacy in the age of Obama and on the need for another era of Reconstruction. In addition to articles in which Foner calls out politicians and the powerful for their abuse and misuse of American history. Foner assesses some of his fellow leading historians of the late 20th century, including Richard Hofstadter, Howard Zinn and Eric Hobsbawm. Foner ends with an open leter to Bernie Sanders analysing the great tradition of radicalism that he has spent his career studing and which, he argues, Americans of progressive disposition should seek to celebrate and retrieve.