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Freedom’s Dominion (Winner of the Pulitzer Prize): A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power Spiral-Bound | November 22, 2022

Jefferson Cowie

★★★★☆+ from 101 to 500 ratings

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WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE IN HISTORY

An "important, deeply affecting—and regrettably relevant" (New York Times) chronicle of a sinister idea of freedom: white Americans’ freedom to oppress others and their fight against the government that got in their way.  
 
American freedom is typically associated with the fight of the oppressed for a better world. But for centuries, whenever the federal government intervened on behalf of nonwhite people, many white Americans fought back in the name of freedom—their freedom to dominate others. 
 
In Freedom’s Dominion, historian Jefferson Cowie traces this complex saga by focusing on a quintessentially American place: Barbour County, Alabama, the ancestral home of political firebrand George Wallace. In a land shaped by settler colonialism and chattel slavery, white people weaponized freedom to seize Native lands, champion secession, overthrow Reconstruction, question the New Deal, and fight against the civil rights movement. A riveting history of the long-running clash between white people and federal authority, this book radically shifts our understanding of what freedom means in America.  
Publisher: Hachette Book Group
Original Binding: Hardcover
Pages: 512 pages
ISBN-10: 1541672801
Item Weight: 1.6 lbs
Dimensions: 6.3 x 1.8 x 9.4 inches
Customer Reviews: 4 out of 5 stars 101 to 500 ratings
“Important, deeply affecting—and regrettably relevant… essential reading for anyone who hopes to understand the unholy union, more than 200 years strong, between racism and the rabid loathing of government…White men did all this in Barbour County, by design and without relent, and Cowie’s account of their acts is unsparing. His narrative is immersive; his characters are vividly rendered.” —New York Times Book Review
Jefferson Cowie holds the James G. Stahlman chair in history at Vanderbilt University. He is the author of three books, including Stayin’ Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class, and his work has appeared in numerous outlets including Time, the New York Times, Foreign Affairs, and Politico. He lives in Nashville, Tennessee.