America, Empire of Liberty: A New History of the United States

xvii, 563 pp. It was Thomas Jefferson who envisioned the United States as a great "empire of liberty." This paradoxical phrase may be the key to the American saga: How could the anti-empire of 1776 became the world's greatest superpower' And how did the country that offered unmatched liberty nevertheless found its prosperity on slavery and the dispossession of Native Americans'