Of humankind's great achievements over the past 2,000 years, one towers above all the rest: the arduous, painstaking process of wresting liberty from tyranny's iron fist. The Triumph of Liberty chronicles this inspiring story through sixty-five biographical portraits. From the millions of men and women whose struggles and successes have made freedom possible, Jim Powell has chosen a few talented, courageous individuals whose lives illustrate the triumphing will of the human spirit. Some of these people, like Martin Luther King, Jr., remain famous; others, like John Lilburne, who spent most of his adult life in prison battling England's infamous Star Chamber, are almost unknown. Some of Powell's choices—Ludwig van Beethoven, Louis L'Amour—may be surprising. Others still—like Milton Friedman or Margaret Thatcher—are controversial. Woven together, their moving life stories tell a brilliant epic saga of the triumph of liberty as a whole.
The Triumph of Liberty
A 2,000 Year History Told Through the Lives of Freedom's Greatest Champions
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
July 15, 2005 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9781483078014
- File size: 766752 KB
- Duration: 26:37:23
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Languages
- English
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Levels
- Text Difficulty: 9-12
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Reviews
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Publisher's Weekly
July 3, 2000
Through 65 pithy, vivid biographical profiles, Powell traces the struggle for freedom from oppression, equality before the law, peace, social justice, toleration of thought, speech and individuality. Along with familiar figures such as Erasmus, Jefferson, Franklin, Locke, Tocqueville, Thoreau and Mencken, he presents liberty-lovers who deserve to be better known, including John Lilburne, an English pamphleteer who attacked taxes, censorship and the notorious Star Chamber; Hugo Grotius, a Dutch antiwar philosopher and father of international law; and Lysander Spooner, a maverick 19th-century American libertarian opponent of military conscription and intrusive big government. Powell, senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute and editor of Laissez-Faire Books, includes inspirational profiles of Raoul Wallenberg, Martin Luther King Jr., Frederick Douglass, Mary Wollstonecraft, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison. Among his eclectic, sometimes debatable choices for this motley portrait gallery are psychiatrist Thomas Szasz, opponent of involuntary commitment of mental patients, and anticollectivist novelist Ayn Rand. Equally unpredictable is the roster of creative artists whose works reputedly spread ideals of liberty: Robert Heinlein, western novelist Louis L'Amour, comic-opera whiz William S. Gilbert, Goya, Rabelais, Victor Hugo, Beethoven, Schiller. On balance, though, this stimulating sourcebook is a rousing testament to the belief that one person can make a difference; hopefully, it will inspire readers to go back to the original writings of these trailblazers.
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Formats
- OverDrive Listen audiobook
subjects
Languages
- English
Levels
- Text Difficulty:9-12
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