Customer Reviews

Ark of the Liberties: America and the World

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This book is a delicious series of essays documenting America's relation to and impact on the concept of liberty, beginning with the earliest days of colonialization. Widmer has assembled an unprecedented collection of material, selecting the most provocative and telling events in the history of our self-assigned role as liberty's hero. A treat for those prone to despair in these benighted - but, as Widmer shows, not unprecedented - times.

Many authors have looked at America, liberty and her relationship with the world, but Widmer does it with a unique intensity and wealth of knowledge and references. Not to mention that it is beautifully written. Even if you are steeped in American history, there is something to be learned on every page.

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).

The following is from the first chapter of this book:

It does not take too much effort to perceive an erotic energy pulsing beneath these breathless accounts (of America.) Far from thinking the world flat, Columbus likened the earth to a pear shape with a nipple, and throughout the literature of exploration one encounters a relentless emphasis on fecundity, both human and vegetable. In retrospect, the use of the term Virginia to describe this land appears to have been somewhat ironic....In narrative after narrative, the feeling of liberty was enhanced by the description of unclothed women, eager...

To say this book is full of historical fluff is to give historical fluff a bad name. Small wonder Bill Clinton's and Ted Kennedy's praises for the book topped the list at the back of book.

As the narrative progressed, things did not improve much.

I read (but did not finish) this book in an effort to try to understand the viewpoint of the liberal. I got more than I asked for. To be fair, this book is a small improvement over Howard Zinn's.

It is hard to write a serious review of this book, because the book doesn't say anything. It is US history, but the topic suggests that international affairs would be a more appropriate focus. The important period for understand current affairs are from WW II to the present. The framing of the constitution is important, as are the ideas of the Founding Fathers. But, we should learn how these ideas reverberated in democratic movements and constitutions in the rest of the world. There is none of that---just a lot of historical fluff of the sort one finds when Googling a topic and randomly writing a narrative on what one found.

The development of democracy in Latin America never gets focus. Allende is mentioned on one page, Cuba gets passing mention, as does Guatemalan death squads. El Salvador is not in the index, and the Trilateral Commission is never mentioned. This is a truly pathetic treatment of the region. Africa is treated even more casually. There are a few pages on the Philippines, but the role of the Reagan administration in promoting democracy in the Philippines is not mentioned. The relationship between democracy in the US and the promotion of democracy in the European Community is mentioned in passing on one page.

Someone should write this book. Widmer should stick to writing Presidential speeches and issuing little sound bites.

The New York Times last week gave a scathing review of this work. Every sentence of this book was home to purple prose and flat-out amatuerish-cliche-ridden writing. The review compared this book to a rushed sophmore term paper. The reviewer also compared the author to "Amy Winehouse."

If you are looking for sharp analysis of any issue at all, you shall not find it. This book was poorly written pointless historical fluff. It was if the only reason the author penned this work was to include his criticism of the Iraq war in the epilogue.