THE LIBERAL TRADITION IN AMERICA
An Interpretation of American Political Thought Since the Revolution
Louis Hartz, Tom Wicker (Introduction)
Harcourt Brace, paperback (1991)
(first published in 1955)

Winner of the American Political Science Association's Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award in 1956 and the APSA's Benjamin E. Lippincott Award in 1977.

"One can use the term 'Liberal Reform' to describe the Western movement which emerged toward the end of the nineteenth century to adapt classical liberalism to the purposes of small propertied interests and the laboring class and at the same time which rejected socialism. Nor is this movement without its ties to the earlier era....But the American movement, now as during that age itself, was in a unique position. For swallowing up both peasantry and proletariat into the 'petit-bourgeois' scheme, America created two unusual effects. It prevented socialism from challenging its Liberal Reform in any effective way, and at the same time it enslaved its Liberal Reform to the Alger dream of democratic capitalism." Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America (1991 paperback edition), Chapter Nine, "Progressives and Socialists," page 228

BOOK DESCRIPTION
PUBLISHER
The American political experience is unique. As a people, we never had to stage a social revolution against an existing order nor did we construct a new society from the ashes of the old. Americans were "born equal, instead of becoming so," Alexis de Tocqueville remarked, and that simple fact serves as the catalyst for Louis Hartz's classic and challenging study of American political thought.

Dr. Hartz contends that America gave rise to a new concept of a liberal society, a "liberal tradition" that has been central to our experience of events both at home and abroad from the earliest times to the present. It is a tradition that, as Tom Wicker notes in his insightful introduction...protects "'the concept of personality' against the power of the state and other monoliths."

Now, more than ever, The Liberal Tradition in America is an important and timely book. How better to protect American liberalism now than by grasping its basic principles, and what surer way to guarantee its future than by understanding its rich past?

"Almost half a century after its publication in 1955, Louis Hartz's The Liberal Tradition in America continues to influence the way many Americans think about their nation and its history. Conservatives and radicals alike still explicitly invoke or implicitly embrace Hartz's analysis to support the claim that devotion to individualism and defense of property rights have defined American culture...." (from "In Retrospect: Louis Hartz's The Liberal Tradition in America," by James T. Kloppenberg, in Reviews in American History, 2001—online version on Project MUSE®, joint project of the Johns Hopkins University Press and the Milton S. Eisenhower Library at JHU)

BOOK REVIEWS
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
"Brilliantly written and sprinkled with fresh and pointed quotations from the entire corpus of American and European political writings."

THE REVIEW OF POLITICS
"A lively and thought-provoking book which in its unorthodox approach and style makes fascinating reading."

POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY
"Original, meaty and endlessly provocative."

Eric Foner, DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University, author of The Story of American Freedom
"...At the height of the cold war, in his brilliant and sardonic survey of American political thought, "The Liberal Tradition in America," Louis Hartz observed that despite its deepened worldwide involvement, the United States was becoming more isolated intellectually. Prevailing ideas of freedom in the United States, he noted, had become so rigid that Americans could no longer appreciate definitions of freedom, common in other countries, related to social justice and economic equality, "and hence are baffled by their use."

Today, if Americans hope to cultivate the growth of liberty in Iraq, Hartz's call for them to engage in a dialogue with the rest of the world about the meaning of freedom seems more relevant than ever."(conclusion of article, "Not All Freedom Is Made in America" in the New York Times [Week in Review], April 13, 2003)