Liberalism: The Life of an Idea

Liberalism dominates today's politics just as it decisively shaped the American and European past. This engrossing history of liberalism--the first in English for many decades--traces liberalism's ideals, successes, and failures through the lives and ideas of a rich cast of European and American thinkers and politicians, from the early nineteenth century to today.

An enlightening account of a vulnerable but critically important political creed, Liberalism provides the vital historical and intellectual background for hard thinking about liberal democracy's future.