The Lost History Of Liberalism: From Ancient Rome To The Twenty-first Century

Description

"The Lost History of Liberalism challenges our most basic assumptions about a political creed that has become a rallying cry - and a term of derision - in today's increasingly divided public square. Taking readers from ancient Rome to today, Helena Rosenblatt traces the evolution of the words "liberal" and "liberalism," revealing the heated debates that have taken place over their meaning. In this timely and provocative book, Rosenblatt debunks the popular myth of liberalism as a uniquely Anglo-American tradition centered on individual rights. It was only during the Cold War and America's growing world hegemony that liberalism was refashioned into an American ideology focused so strongly on individual freedoms."--

About the Author

Helena Rosenblatt serves as executive officer of the Ph.D. Program in History. Her specialty is eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European intellectual history. She is the author of Rousseau and Geneva: From the First Discourse to the Social Contract 1749–1762 (1997) and Liberal Values: Benjamin Constant and the Politics of Religion (2008). She is also the editor of Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality among Men by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (2010) and the Cambridge Companion to Constant (2009); and coeditor, with Raf Geenens, of French Liberalism from Montesquieu to the Present Day (2012).Rosenblatt’s numerous articles have appeared in such journals as Modern Intellectual History, French Historical Studies, History of European Ideas, French Politics, Society and Culture, and Daedalus. A member of the editorial board of Modern Intellectual History, she has also been a fellow at the National Humanities Center. She is currently working on a history of liberalism. Rosenblatt earned her M.A. and Ph.D. in history from Columbia University.