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Freedom's Dominion
- A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power
- Narrated by: André Chapoy
- Length: 16 hrs and 5 mins
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Publisher's summary
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.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
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Critic reviews
"Jefferson Cowie has a knack for publishing instant classics: books that change historians' conversations. This is his most extraordinary yet. With eloquence and with brilliance, he delves deep into the annals of a specific place, Barbour County, Alabama, in order to excavate the foundations of America's darkest and most enduring story: how 'freedom' became a national alibi for cruelty, inequity, and reaction. As soon as I finished reading it, I wanted to start over and absorb it all over again."—Rick Perlstein, author of Reaganland
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Was the Civil War really about slavery? Or was it a war fought over money? Civil War historian Samuel W. Mitcham Jr., (Vicksburg, Bust Hell Wide Open) opens his fascinating new book, It Wasn't About Slavery, with Dr. Grady McWhiney's claim that "what passes as standard American history is really Yankee history written by New Englanders or their puppets to glorify Yankee heroes and ideals".
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Abbeville Condensed
- By AC Gleason on 07-16-20
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Reconstruction
- A Concise History
- By: Allen C. Guelzo
- Narrated by: Bob Souer
- Length: 4 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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The era known as Reconstruction is one of the unhappiest times in American history. It succeeded in reuniting the nation politically after the Civil War but in little else. Conflict shifted from the battlefield to the Capitol as Congress warred with President Andrew Johnson over just what to do with the South. Johnson's plan of Presidential Reconstruction, which was sympathetic to the former Confederacy, would ultimately lead to his impeachment and the institution of Radical Reconstruction.
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Very Well Done
- By Rob Welch on 08-20-21
By: Allen C. Guelzo
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The 1619 Project
- A New Origin Story
- By: Nikole Hannah-Jones, The New York Times Magazine, Caitlin Roper - editor, and others
- Narrated by: Nikole Hannah-Jones, Full Cast
- Length: 18 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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The New York Times Magazine’s award-winning “1619 Project” issue reframed our understanding of American history by placing slavery and its continuing legacy at the center of our national narrative. This new book substantially expands on that work, weaving together 18 essays that explore the legacy of slavery in present-day America with 36 poems and works of fiction that illuminate key moments of oppression, struggle, and resistance.
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Comprehensive and Cutting
- By Thomas Ray on 12-30-21
By: Nikole Hannah-Jones, and others
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How the South Won the Civil War
- Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America
- By: Heather Cox Richardson
- Narrated by: Heather Cox Richardson
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
While the North prevailed in the Civil War, ending slavery and giving the country a "new birth of freedom," Heather Cox Richardson argues in this provocative work that democracy's blood-soaked victory was ephemeral. The system that had sustained the defeated South moved westward and there established a foothold. It was a natural fit. Settlers from the East had for decades been pushing into the West, where the seizure of Mexican lands at the end of the Mexican-American War and treatment of Native Americans cemented racial hierarchies....
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Disappointing book that wasted such potential.
- By Amazon Customer on 08-07-21
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Confederate Reckoning
- Power and Politics in the Civil War South
- By: Stephanie McCurry
- Narrated by: Teri Schnaubelt
- Length: 16 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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The story of the Confederate States of America, the proslavery, antidemocratic nation created by white Southern slaveholders to protect their property, has been told many times in heroic and martial narratives. Now, however, Stephanie McCurry tells a very different tale of the Confederate experience. Confederate Reckoning is the startling story of this epic political battle in which women and slaves helped to decide the fate of the Confederacy and the outcome of the Civil War.
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Good view of the confederate inner workings.
- By Amazonian on 08-10-22
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We Are Not Yet Equal
- Understanding Our Racial Divide
- By: Carol Anderson, Tonya Bolden
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 6 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Carol Anderson's White Rage took the world by storm, landing on the New York Times best seller list and best book of the year lists from New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, and Chicago Review of Books. It launched her as an in-demand commentator on contemporary race issues for national print and television media and garnered her an invitation to speak to the Democratic Congressional Caucus. This compelling young adult adaptation brings her ideas to a new audience.
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Great
- By JD on 07-06-20
By: Carol Anderson, and others
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The Broken Heart of America
- St. Louis and the Violent History of the United States
- By: Walter Johnson
- Narrated by: Jamie Renell
- Length: 15 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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From Lewis and Clark's 1804 expedition to the 2014 uprising in Ferguson, American history has been made in St. Louis. And as Walter Johnson shows in this searing book, the city exemplifies how imperialism, racism, and capitalism have persistently entwined to corrupt the nation's past. St. Louis was a staging post for Indian removal and imperial expansion, and its wealth grew on the backs of its poor Black residents, from slavery through redlining and urban renewal.
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Sad & True,With Fascinating Facts of St.Louis Past
- By Ron G on 04-26-20
By: Walter Johnson
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An African American and Latinx History of the United States
- By: Paul Ortiz
- Narrated by: J. D. Jackson
- Length: 9 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Spanning more than 200 years, An African American and Latinx History of the United States is a revolutionary, politically charged narrative history arguing that the "Global South" was crucial to the development of America as we know it. Ortiz challenges the notion of westward progress, and shows how placing African American, Latinx, and Indigenous voices unapologetically front and center transforms American history into the story of the working class organizing against imperialism.
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I had to return
- By Andrew Alvarez on 05-19-20
By: Paul Ortiz
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Congress at War
- How Republican Reformers Fought the Civil War, Defied Lincoln, Ended Slavery, and Remade America
- By: Fergus M. Bordewich
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 15 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Building a riveting narrative around four influential members of Congress - Thaddeus Stevens, Pitt Fessenden, Ben Wade, and the pro-slavery Clement Vallandigham - Fergus Bordewich shows us how a newly empowered Republican party shaped one of the most dynamic and consequential periods in American history.
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Fascinating read!
- By Lisa Balestrini on 09-12-20
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Four Threats
- The Recurring Crises of American Democracy
- By: Suzanne Mettler, Robert C. Lieberman
- Narrated by: Andrea Gallo
- Length: 13 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Four Threats, Lieberman and Mettler explore five historical episodes when democracy in the United States was under siege: the 1790s, the Civil War, the Gilded Age, the Depression, and Watergate. These episodes risked profound, even fatal, damage to the American democratic experiment, and on occasion antidemocratic forces have prevailed. From this history, four distinct characteristics of democratic disruption emerge. Political polarization, racism and nativism, economic inequality, and excessive executive power...have threatened the survival of the republic.
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Very informative
- By Angela Fobbs on 12-31-20
By: Suzanne Mettler, and others
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The Failed Promise
- Reconstruction, Frederick Douglass, and the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson
- By: Robert S. Levine
- Narrated by: Ryan Vincent Anderson
- Length: 9 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Robert S. Levine foregrounds the viewpoints of Black Americans on Reconstruction in his absorbing account of the struggle between the great orator Frederick Douglass and President Andrew Johnson.
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A timely review of the threat to the nation of a President who is unlistening to the “better angels of our nature.”
- By Karl R. Walko on 02-28-24
By: Robert S. Levine
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White Rage
- The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide
- By: Carol Anderson
- Narrated by: Pamela Gibson
- Length: 6 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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As Ferguson, Missouri, erupted in August 2014 and media commentators across the ideological spectrum referred to the angry response of African Americans as 'Black rage', historian Carol Anderson wrote a remarkable op-ed in the Washington Post showing that this was, instead, 'white rage at work. With so much attention on the flames,' she wrote, 'everyone had ignored the kindling.'
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Good History, Was Hoping For More Insight
- By Mike on 09-08-16
By: Carol Anderson
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Intellectually dishonest
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YES! I GET IT! I've read history before - JUST STOP!!!!! British settlers were arrogant jerks!! Aaaaaaaargh
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We’d be in a much better position if everyone read this
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How the South Won the Civil War
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While the North prevailed in the Civil War, ending slavery and giving the country a "new birth of freedom," Heather Cox Richardson argues in this provocative work that democracy's blood-soaked victory was ephemeral. The system that had sustained the defeated South moved westward and there established a foothold. It was a natural fit. Settlers from the East had for decades been pushing into the West, where the seizure of Mexican lands at the end of the Mexican-American War and treatment of Native Americans cemented racial hierarchies....
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Disappointing book that wasted such potential.
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Frederick Douglass
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As a young man, Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) escaped from slavery in Baltimore, Maryland. He was fortunate to have been taught to read by his slave owner mistress, and he would go on to become one of the major literary figures of his time. He wrote three versions of his autobiography over the course of his lifetime and published his own newspaper. His very existence gave the lie to slave owners: with dignity and great intelligence, he bore witness to the brutality of slavery.
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The sound of rollerskating in sand
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What listeners say about Freedom's Dominion
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- danielbrill
- 02-06-23
Enhanced my understanding of how difficult and time consuming it is to accept all citizens in the U.S.
The book is very well researched and written. It gave me more of an appreciation for the perspectives of those of us that grew up in states that enslave people.I understand their desire to have the freedom to maintain old ways despite national policies to treat all people equally.
The reader did a great job as well.
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- D. Keith
- 02-03-23
An extremely thoughtful history
Although I am now retired, I taught US history at the secondary level for decades, and and so I’ve been very familiar with much of the ground covered in this elegantly written book. But by focusing on one county in Alabama, and sketching out the continuing theme running through the Indian removals of the 1830s, the introduction of slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, Redemption, and the modern Civil Rights movement, Freedom’s Dominion, has given me a very different way of understanding this difficult history.
Most importantly, it provides a way of seeing those who saw (and see) freedom as the right to exclude and to dominate (often to the point of killing) nonwhite peoples free from interference by the federal government. But Cowle does this in a way that humanizes those oppressors and makes their terrible actions seem understandable as one of the dark tendencies that we can carry within us. Yet he also shows pathways that these tendencies can and must be opposed by those of us who believe in the equality and freedom of all people in our nation.
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- Robert Krabill
- 08-26-24
Fascinating
Derives and develops the complexities of the political concept of freedom in American history. I will be thinking about this one for a long time.
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- Kendra Koch
- 09-26-23
Jefferson Cowie and the Gems of the New Fatalism
An astoundingly well researched piece that sheds a great deal of light on our current cultural situation. Excellent reader as well.
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- M. Lachapelle
- 10-12-23
Narrator is distracting
The subject matter of this book is very interesting. However, at times, the narrator nearly renders it ridiculous with accents that are what? Perhaps the problem lay all with me but I couldn’t really understand what the objective was. The “accent” for Alexis de Tocqueville was particularly hilarious and distracting. I stuck with the book, and with time the effort became less annoying, but it never stopped being annoying.
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- Dwight
- 02-16-23
Unique and Worthwhile Perspective
This book includes some remarkable characteristics. Meticulous historical detail weaves a compelling narrative that carefully marks a straight line from dispossession of native people a generation before the Civil War, immediately followed by slavery as an integral part of the cotton economy, to the century of Reconstruction, Jim Crow and determined resistance to civil rights and racial equity that persists to the present. In a remarkably dispassionate unpacking of unapologetic white supremacy, there is virtually no hyperbole of grievance and outrage for its own sake. That is left to the reader. At times, the experience becomes boundless and nearly inexpressible. To perpetrators, the callous exercise of power and privilege is no more than the exercise of sacred, personal liberty with no regard for the consequences to those of lesser empowerment. One might hope that this illumination could inspire change in those who most need to change. At the same time, however, the history imparts that such hopes have frequently arisen before, only to face nearly total disappointment. Brave agents of change have achieved considerable success. The road ahead remains very long.
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- Smithep
- 05-20-23
Sobering
A great and disturbing history lesson. And, we are still living it. Explains the rise of Trump.
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- CBanks
- 03-09-23
Highly recommend
Anyone truly interested in American history should read or listen to Freedom’s Dominion. It’s a difficult truth to face, but we cannot have a secure democratic future without understanding our divisive and challenging past.
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- Norman P. Lewis
- 07-12-23
Past As Prologue
This marvelous book, well written and read, helps explain how today’s political rhetoric equates discrimination and book bans as acts of “freedom.”
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- Amazon Customer
- 09-27-23
Masterful
In a day of hysterical anti-“woke” politics, reexaminations of how our nation arrived at such anti-democratic reality are more important than ever. This book serves as a moving and compelling illumination of one small section of this nation. It succeeds in relating the relationship of this locale to the upheavals inherent in local white resistance to federal power to promote the doctrine of “all men are equal”, and as a reminder to us all that true freedom can only exist as long as we constantly, continually, strive to oppose the will of a minority to dominate.
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