American Freedom
The Basics
Geoff Hamilton(Author)
Routledge (Publisher)
Will be published approx. on 12. November 2026
166 pages
E-Book
978-1-040-51907-3 (ISBN)
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Description
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American Freedom: The Basics explores ideals of freedom as they have been conceived, debated, practiced, and struggled for in the United States from the Revolutionary War to the present day.
Across ten chapters, the book addresses these core concepts: the nation's revolutionary ideals and actualities; slavery and emancipation; and territorial expansion and demographic change. It goes on to discuss economic liberty, Native American survivance, women's liberty and other modern freedom movements, finally addressing the issues around guns and freedom, American incarceration, and freedom across the Information Age. Taken together, these chapters offer an introduction to the subject of American freedom that charts - and reveals intersections between - critical ideas, events, figures, and cultural phenomena. The book provides an orienting view useful in guiding future explorations, along with a compelling sense of why such explorations matter. Examining ideals of freedom brings us to the center of debates about what being an American has meant - and might yet mean. Those debates are, this book argues, intensely vital and relevant today.
Readable and concise, featuring chapter summaries and discussion questions, this book will be useful for undergraduate students of American History, American Politics, American Cultural Studies, and American Literature.
Across ten chapters, the book addresses these core concepts: the nation's revolutionary ideals and actualities; slavery and emancipation; and territorial expansion and demographic change. It goes on to discuss economic liberty, Native American survivance, women's liberty and other modern freedom movements, finally addressing the issues around guns and freedom, American incarceration, and freedom across the Information Age. Taken together, these chapters offer an introduction to the subject of American freedom that charts - and reveals intersections between - critical ideas, events, figures, and cultural phenomena. The book provides an orienting view useful in guiding future explorations, along with a compelling sense of why such explorations matter. Examining ideals of freedom brings us to the center of debates about what being an American has meant - and might yet mean. Those debates are, this book argues, intensely vital and relevant today.
Readable and concise, featuring chapter summaries and discussion questions, this book will be useful for undergraduate students of American History, American Politics, American Cultural Studies, and American Literature.
Reviews / Votes
"At a moment when the heritage of American liberty is noisily championed by some of the very same forces that threaten to curtail our hard-won freedoms, Geoff Hamilton's lucid, wide-ranging, timely, and eminently sane delineation of the much-contested concept feels like necessary reading for all who wish to understand and sustain the democratic national experiment in all its complexity and precarity."Art Redding, Professor of English, York University
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Target group
College/higher education
Illustrations
20 Halftones, black and white; 20 Illustrations, black and white
ISBN-13
978-1-040-51907-3 (9781040519073)
Copyright in bibliographic data is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or its licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Book
approx. 11/2026
1st Edition
Routledge
€191.50
Not yet published
Book
approx. 11/2026
1st Edition
Routledge
€52.50
Not yet published
Person
Geoff Hamilton teaches humanities at Medicine Hat College in Alberta, Canada. He is the author of The Life and Undeath of Autonomy in American Literature (2013), Understanding Gary Shteyngart (2017), and A New Continent of Liberty: Eunomia in Native American Literature from Occom to Erdrich (2019).
Content
Introduction, Prologue: Indigenous Foundations, 1: Revolutionary Ideals and Actualities, 2: Slavery and Emancipation, 3: Territorial Expansion and Demographic Change, 4: Economic Liberty, 5: Native American Survivance, 6: Women's Liberty, 7: Modern Freedom Movements, 8: Guns and Freedom, 9: American Incarceration, 10: Freedom in the Information Age
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