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, our most 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. By weaving together their moving life stories, he tells brilliantly the saga of liberty as a whole.
Some of these men and women, like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Martin Luther King, Jr., remain famous. Others are almost unknown, like John Lilburne, a seventeenth-century "Leveller" who spent most of his adult life in prison battling England's infamous Star Chamber. Some of Powell's choices—Erasmus, Cicero, Locke, Wollstonecraft, and Frederick Douglass—have been praised before by those who love liberty. Others—Ludwig van Beethoven, Leonard Read, and Louis L'Amour—may be surprising. Still others—like Milton Friedman or Margaret Thatcher—are controversial.
Any one of these life stories, based on biographies, letters, diaries, unpublished manuscripts, and interviews with leading scholars, could make a book in itself. Taken together, they form a saga of epic proportions. Here, in a single volume, are the greatest achievements of humankind and the first-ever full story of the triumph of liberty. |
