7 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Timely and Highly Readable, July 19, 2008
This review is from: Ark of the Liberties: America and the World (Hardcover)
Let's face it. We Americans have a pretty sad track record when it comes to
knowing much about our nation's history, and understanding how our history
shapes our current lives and futures. With the United States now having more
interaction than ever with the rest of the world, it is even more critical
for each of us to gain knowledge of our past, and especially in the area of
foreign relations.
This book offers a timely and highly readable portrait of a fascinating part
of America's story: how the country was shaped from earliest moments to
become "the world's guarantor of liberty," and how it has variously grappled
with and cultivated that role in different eras.
The author is informed and entertaining. He sweeps readers through five
centuries of colorful, often uplifting, sometimes disturbing aspects of
America's unique qualities, beginning well before colonization and moving
through to the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I'm one of those Americans who is sheepishly ignorant of a lot of the
standard US history we're meant to have learned in high school or college. I
was worried that this book would assume that I already knew the basics, and
that it would contain too much about specialized foreign policy matters to
hold my interest. But I enjoyed Ark of the Liberties as an overview of
American history through the framing subject of liberty. It turns out that
even pre-colonial aspects of America are shaped by ancient ideas and images,
such as the Garden of Eden, are associated with freedom from rules. The book
explains how freedom became part of America's identity even before it
existed as a nation. And, as someone with ancestors and close relatives who
have served in foreign wars including in Iraq, I was especially interested
in the coverage of American ideas of freedom as they have been used in
different wars and in diplomatic relations that prevented military conflict.
The book follows some major threads that carry the theme of liberty through
America's history. The most enduring ones are religious, and associate
liberty with heavenly paradise or, at times, with diabolical lawlessness
(America as Satan!). Other recurring themes (isolationism, internationalism,
realism, idealism) appear in foreign policy arenas such as our presidents'
views of liberating others or 'exporting freedom'. The author examines how
variations on initial building blocks of America's humanistic (universal)
ideals have influenced US foreign policy for good and ill throughout the
country's history.
I count myself among those Americans who are tired of hearing how
pathetically ignorant we are about our past. I would recommend this book to
anyone eager to break the bad habit of avoiding American history lessons.
Ark of the Liberties is a fun read. Many of its details will grip you, and
overall it will equip you with an understanding of the big patterns that
form America's exceptional place in the world, its real and imagined
qualities as a country like no other. The author does unveil some strong
political leanings in the last parts of the book (he was a foreign
speechwriter in the Clinton White House, and Clinton provides a glowing
blurb for the book). But ultimately Widmer proves to be first and foremost a
historian, sometimes a quirky and very funny one, with a passion for his
subject. Plus he has a gift for clear, engaging prose (not that I would
expect much else from a world-class speechwriter).
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