In a sweeping history of centuries, Ted Widmer's Ark of the Liberties recounts America's ambition to be the world's guarantor of liberty.
The United States stands at a historic crossroads; essential to the world yet unappreciated. America's decline in popularity over the decades has been nothing short of astonishing. With wit, brilliance, and deep affection, Ted Widmer, a scholar and a former presidential speechwriter, reminds everyone why this great nation had so far to fall. It is a success story that America, and the world, forgets at its peril.
From the Declaration of Independence to the Gettysburg Address to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the United States, for all its shortfalls, has been by far the world's greatest advocate for freedom. Generations of founders imbued America with a surprisingly global ambition that a series of remarkable presidents, often Democratic, advanced through the confident wielding of military and economic power.
Ark of the Liberties brims with new insights: America's centuries-long favorable relationship with the Middle East; why Wilson's presidency deserves reappraisal; Bill Clinton's underappreciated achievements; how America's long history of foreign policy immediately touches on the choices we face. Fully addressing America's disastrous occupation of Iraq, Ark of the Liberties colorfully narrates America's long and laudatory history of expanding world liberty.
"Ted Widmer wants to restore idealism's good name. In the spirit of an old-fashioned jeremiad, he summons his countrymen to return to their own highest standards and properly play their anointed role in the world."
David M. Kennedy, The Washington Post
"Widmer has written an ambitious account of the enduring global reach of America, whose uniqueness he attributes to the millennial outlook of the Europeans who first settled here."
The New York Times Book Review, Editors' Choice
"In this exploration of the United States' promotion of liberty across the globe, Ted Widmer offers an examination of our history that should influence the way we think about our place in the twenty-first-century world. At a time when we need to restore America's standing in so many places, Ark of the Liberties shows us how we can do it if we remain true to our historic ideals."
