Liberty's Torch: The Great Adventure to Build The Statue of Liberty

by Elizabeth Mitchell

“Turns out that what you thought you knew about Lady Liberty is dead wrong. Learn the truth in this fascinating account.” —O, The Oprah Magazine   The Statue of Liberty is one of the most recognizable monuments in the world, a powerful symbol of freedom and the American dream. For decades, the myth has persisted that the statue was a grand gift from France, but now Liberty’s Torch reveals how she was in fact the pet project of one quixotic and visionary French sculptor, Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi. Bartholdi not only forged this 151-foot-tall colossus in a workshop in Paris and transported her across the ocean, but battled to raise money for the statue and make her a reality.   A young sculptor inspired by a trip to Egypt where he saw the pyramids and Sphinx, he traveled to America, carrying with him the idea of a colossal statue of a woman. There he enlisted the help of notable people of the age—including Ulysses S. Grant, Joseph Pulitzer, Victor Hugo, Gustave Eiffel, and Thomas Edison—to help his scheme. He also came up with inventive ideas to raise money, including exhibiting the torch at the Philadelphia world’s fair and charging people to climb up inside. While the French and American governments dithered, Bartholdi made the statue a reality by his own entrepreneurship, vision, and determination.   “By explaining Liberty’s tortured history and resurrecting Bartholdi’s indomitable spirit, Mitchell has done a great service. This is narrative history, well told. It is history that connects us to our past and—hopefully—to our future.” —Los Angeles Times

Genres: History, Nonfiction, American History, Biography, Art, New York, France

338 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 2, 2014

About the author

Elizabeth Mitchell is the author of four nonfiction books, including her newest, LINCOLN'S LIE: A True Civil War Caper Through Fake News, Wall Street and the White House (Counterpoint Press/October 2020). Her other work includes Three Strides Before the Wire: The Dark and Beautiful World of Horse Racing (Hyperion, 2002), W.: Revenge of the Bush Dynasty (Hyperion, 2000), and Liberty’s Torch: The Great Adventure to Build the Statue of Liberty (Grove/Atlantic Monthly Press 2014). The Washington Post selected Three Strides as one of the best nonfiction books of that year.

Mitchell has authored novella-length nonfiction works for Byliner, including The Fire Horse (2012); Lady With a Past: A Petulant French Sculptor, His Quest for Immortality, and the Real Story of the Statue of Liberty (2011); and the Amazon nonfiction bestseller, The Fearless Mrs. Goodwin (2011), about the first female detective in the United States.

Mitchell’s freelance writing has appeared in such publications as the Paris Review, TIME magazine, Wall Street Journal, New York, Chicago Tribune, Details, GQ, Condé Nast Traveler, O, Glamour, and The Nation. She was a contributing editor to Newsweek and senior long-form writer for the New York Daily News.

Her editing work has included Upcycle: Beyond Sustainability – Designing for Abundance (FSG, 2013) by William McDonough and Michael Braungart, foreword by President Bill Clinton. She served as executive editor of Marlo Thomas’ number-one New York Times bestseller The Right Words at the Right Time (Atria Books, May 2002).

She was executive editor of George and features editor at SPIN.

Mitchell has been interviewed on numerous radio and television shows, including “Hardball with Chris Matthews,” “The Charlie Rose Show,” “The O’Reilly Factor,” “Booknotes with Brian Lamb,” and many other CNN, MSNBC, network and local programs. She has delivered lectures on journalism and history at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. and the New York Public Library, among other research centers; and at Harvard University and Fairleigh Dickinson University, among other educational institutions. She taught creative nonfiction at Columbia University.

She is the co-founder of ReadThis, a volunteer group that delivers books where needed, including to troops abroad, children living in poverty, and public schools with no library.

Reviews

[Mysteryfan · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting book about how the Statue of Liberty came to America. It's an icon now but it's surprising how many people were indifferent or hostile to the project. The opening chapters focused on Bartholdi's history, including his trip to Egypt and his involvement in the disastrous Prussian conflict. He conceived the project and then spent years in fundraising and trying to get the support of influential people. Joseph Pulitzer spearheaded New York fundraising efforts, Gustave Eiffel created the skeleton, Victor Hugo supported the project. Emma Lazarus wrote her famous poem as part of a fundraising effort.

It's very well researched but the stories about the fundraising got a little repetitious. So much for the myth that it was a gift from the people of France. It did make the point that projects unpopular at the time can go on to be roaring successes. And that difficulty in execution is no bar to success.

[Darla · Rating 2 out of 5]

Somehow I wanted this book to reinforce my sentimental notions of Lady Liberty. It did in fact quite the opposite. The book was very well researched but I felt the plot line often got lost in the telling of the back story to the back story of the back story.

[Arnied · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting account on one man's dream to build the Statue of Liberty. Lots of surprising characters you have heard of helped in really interesting ways. It was tough going from the start. And in the end the man who had the dream was all but forgotten except for this book. It is really an ode to him and the 15 or so years he spent trying to make HER happen. But no matter what his agenda was he knew from the beginning what the giant sculpture would represent. I just wish I was able to stroll past her majestic head as it rested on the ground at an Exposition or climb into the torch when it was the lone piece of the sculpture on tour begging for financial support. It makes one want to go back in time... so read the book... it's a wonderful trip to a place that is very much like today. A place full of madness and genius and luck.

[Doug Cutchins · Rating 3 out of 5]

In summer 2024 I joined the 4 million annual visitors to the Statue of Liberty. Though I had taken the Staten Island Ferry past her on a previous trip and had spied her in the distance many times over the course of my life, this was my inaugural trip to Liberty Island and my first opportunity not just to see her up close, but to learn about her history and think about what she means.

The Statue of Liberty is phenomenal in many ways. Walking onto the island feels like meeting a celebrity that you have admired from a distance all your life. She may not be alive, but she is right there, right next to you, in all of her oxidized glory. She’s massive. She’s gorgeous. She’s familiar, yet her inscrutable face, fame, and sheer size distances her from the viewer. I had never realized that there are broken chains at her feet. I did what all tourists do: walked around her, gazed up at her, appreciated her.

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to visit the attached museum, but what a missed opportunity that would have been! The museum as currently constituted is fantastic. Its opening short, 12-minute film breezes efficiently yet thoroughly through the highlights of her construction: her sculptor, Frederic Bartholdi, is introduced, along with the stories of his travel to the US, his design and construction of the great lady, her transport to the US, and her final erection in 1886. The rest of the museum shows how she was built, her use in advertising and media in the century-plus since then, and allows visitors to grasp how thin the copper plating is that makes up the body of the statue. Throughout, the mythos of the Statue builds: a gift of the French people to celebrate Franco-American friendship and our common ideals, she stands at the harbor to New York City, a welcoming beacon of light for new immigrants, proudly representing our highest aspirations: liberty, international cooperation, friendship, equality, progress, and democracy.

Where the museum truly shines, though, is in its closing interactive exhibit. Interactive exhibits can be trite or banal, but I found this one to be truly moving. As a visitor, you are invited to approach a kiosk where you take a selfie and choose your home country’s flag, then select up to seven images that you associate with the concept of liberty. Moments after you finalize your choices, your picture, flag, and chosen images appear together in a corner of a nearby massive screen, along with those of other visitors, where they then slowly move toward the center, ultimately joining and helping to build an image of the Statue of Liberty. The Statue, in the end, is made up of all of our notions of liberty, and she belongs to all of us. I found myself tearing up looking at all of the people from all over the world thinking about and contributing to the idea of liberty.

I was smitten. This gorgeous lady had won my heart. Her strong ideals drew me closer. I wanted to learn more about her. Where did she come from? How did she get here? What’s her story and background?

I searched the island gift stores for a book that would enlighten me, and picked up Elizabeth Mitchell’s Liberty’s Torch: The Great Adventure to Build the Statue of Liberty, first published 10 years ago in 2014. Now, after reading it, I feel like someone who has gotten to that point in a relationship where the initial, “You’re amazing and perfect!” feeling has worn off, and I understand that the object of my ardor, like everything, is flawed and her origins are less than what I had grown up learning. It’s not quite a “don’t meet your heroes” or “never learn how the sausage is made” story, but it’s close.

Part of the job of a historian, after all, is to pierce the myth and veil of nationalized fiction. It shouldn’t have surprised me that, in the end, the actual story of the Statue of Liberty’s creation is mostly an examination of normal, everyday humans who were visionary and driven, yet also flawed and disappointing. The people who came together to build the Statue all did so for their own selfish reasons: Bartholdi just wanted to fulfill his life-long dream of building an enormous statue. Charles Stone, who was in charge of the US side of operations, was looking to rebuild his tattered reputation as much as erect a statue. Eiffel, who designed the interior supports, saw it merely as an interesting engineering problem. Pulitzer, who raised small-dollar donations through his newspapers, was more interested in embarrassing the country’s millionaires for not ponying up. None of them were particularly moved by or wanted to celebrate high-minded ideals like French-American friendship, liberty, or opportunity. But together, they somehow, almost accidentally, ended up building a gorgeous, timeless, classic statue that today stands as a beautiful and beloved symbol. As Mitchell argues deep in the book on p. 254, “[The Statue of] Liberty had been an act of selfish promotion from beginning to end. The culprits had just been lucky enough to get an outstanding artwork out of it.”

And maybe this is a dumb thing to realize and say, but when I thought, “I want to read a history of the Statue of Liberty” what I was really saying was, “I want to read the story of the men who created the Statue of Liberty.” It’s not like she was hiding in a cave in France and then walked to the New York City harbor. It’s a hacky joke but still true: she doesn’t even show up until the end of the book!

In the end, then, the book is more of a focused biography of Bartholdi, and the Statue of Liberty is just his end product. In Mitchell’s convincing telling, the Statue of Liberty was not, as the museum myths would have us believe, a gift from the people of France to their American brethren to celebrate our common ideals, but instead was the product of a singularly focused man who just wanted to build a damn big statue, and found a way to do it. It’s a terrific story of how Bartholdi wrenched his vision into reality: he didn’t have the funding or support of either France or the US, the location of where the Statue would be located seemed to be constantly in flux, nobody really knew why it should exist or what it meant (one of the fundraising organizations claimed at one point that it would be a “functional monument to capitalism”! (p131)), and Bartholdi had no plan for making it stand independently (they considered filling it with sand at one point), but he sprinted ahead anyway. Somehow, he ended up not only making it work, but he created one of the most iconic and famous pieces of art in the world. That’s a pretty good story, well worth exploring.

In terms of the book itself and Mitchell’s writing, when she hits her groove her writing is fluid, her storytelling is compelling, and the narrative is clear. Descriptions of some scenes, such as Americans seeing the Statue of Liberty for the first time, divided into boxes in the hold of the ship that brought her from Europe (p196), are cinematically and evocatively told, and her writing is gorgeous in places. From what I can tell, Mitchell is not a trained historian, so the depth of her research is impressive and she does an admirable job of walking the difficult and fine line between academic rigor and popular accessibility.

Mitchell is especially devoted to her main subject (Bartholdi, not the Statue), and for good reason: he may have trained as a sculptor, but was equally talented as a visionary project manager and PR whiz, who took advantage of the paucity of intercontinental communications to convince both the French and Americans that a) the other side was really excited about this and b) the other side was eagerly committing resources and money to the cause, even when none of that was true. Mitchell shows the contradictions between Bartholdi’s urge to build a massive, famous, gargantuan monument on the one hand with his private and quiet life on the other. Ultimately, though, I found Mitchell to be too sympathetic to Bartholdi, arguing without sufficient evidence that his desire to build the Statue of Liberty may have been more than “hubris and grandiosity. It might have been a desire to never be separated from the earthly ephemera that so enchanted him” (p269).

Personally, I could have also used more information on Bartholdi’s “loyal assistant,” Marie Simon, who is tantalizingly mentioned several times throughout the book, but was a cipher, with almost no information given about who he was or what he did.

I also enjoyed Mitchell’s extensive use of what felt like guest appearances and cameos by various late-19th century celebrities: when Eiffel shows up halfway through the book, I was reminded of Roberty Downey, Jr suddenly appearing in a supporting role in the middle of a blockbuster. Hey, look kids, it’s Victor Hugo! Over there is Ulysses S. Grant! Is that Mark Twain in the corner?

Too often, though, Mitchell allows leaden details and what feel like side quests to bog down the narrative. She clearly did an impressive amount of meticulous research to create this book, but occasionally she gets in the weeds of the details of her research and has a hard time whacking her way out, leaving the reader behind in the shrubbery. She lacks the trained historian’s eye for what matters and what doesn’t: we get a page and a half on Napoleon’s unsuccessful attempt to annex Luxembourg (p43-44) without an obvious, necessary connection to the main story, for example.

It feels, unfortunately, like Mitchell decided how much space to dedicate to specific parts of the story based more on how much she had learned about it rather than how important it was to the overall narrative; that may be her lack of historical training shining through. The end result is that we get frustratingly little on what feel like major parts of the story (a mere page and a half each on Emma Lazarus’ poem (p. 177-179) and Bartholdi’s trip across the US to rally support for the statue (p 98-99)), while diving deep into the Congressional record for ten interminable pages (p. 219-228) about an unsuccessful and unimportant attempt to secure funding from Congress that had little impact on the overall narrative.

Additionally, Mitchell does not pay enough attention to the argument that this statue to American ideals was undertaken at a time of massive inequality in the US. The museum on Liberty Island handles this hypocrisy much more deftly than her book does, which mentions it only twice: once briefly on p246 and another paragraph in the epilogue (p. 258).

What I really appreciated about the book, though, was the extent of thinking it inspired me to do about what I had found so moving about my visit to the Statue of Liberty. Partially it is the art itself: she’s beautiful and awe-inspiring, memorable, familiar, and beloved. The sheer size of her indicates that it must Mean Something, just as Bartholdi intended. That hasn’t changed. But what Mitchell made me question is what I think the statue represents, and why I think that. I want the Statue of Liberty to Mean Something. I want it to tell a story about my country and represent the values I hold. The problem is that this story and those values do not actually undergird the statue, at least at its conception. The idea that Liberty was created to welcome new immigrants to next-door Ellis Island is a foundational part of my understanding of the statue, but is ultimately untrue: Bartholdi called the idea of the Statue of Liberty being a landing spot for new migrants “a desecration” and “monstrous.”

Which means that the ideals I attach to the Statue come mostly from Emma Lazarus’ iconic, breathtaking, awe-inspiring poem, The New Colossus. In her book, Mitchell shows that it is not entirely clear why Lazarus contributed the work, as she initially rejected the request, though she seems to have been inspired more by the plight of refugees than by the statue itself. When we think about what the Statue of Liberty means, then, we have to remember that Lazarus’ poem was not attached to its base until 1903 (and, at that, hidden away on the inside of the statue), and was not publicized as being there for 20 years after that. The Statue of Liberty, in the end, does not have an inherent meaning and is as open to interpretation as any piece of art: when I celebrate it as a beacon of American welcome to refugees and immigrants, I am imposing Lazarus’ poetic ideals on it, rather than recognizing her original intent.

I thought I was smitten with the Statue of Liberty; in reality, I was attracted to Lazarus’ poem.

This book also caused me to reflect on the Statue of Liberty today, as we are within shouting distance of her 150th birthday. This book stops at the 1886 inauguration, more or less (though the fantastic epilogue is required reading for anyone who makes it that far), leaving me to contemplate how the image and meaning of the statue has changed since then, and I would like to see another author tackle that story. In reading of the statue’s construction, Eiffel’s building of the interior support system, and from visiting the statue and seeing how thin the outer layer is, I also wonder and fear for the ability of the Statue of Liberty to physically withstand the ever-increasing challenges wrought by the climate crisis. There’s a metaphor here, of the seemingly-timeless statue being made of a thin veneer that we might all just take for granted until it is too late.

I finished Mitchell’s book with a vague sense of disappointment and gnawing cynicism that this statue I loved and felt so moved by when I visited it doesn’t actually mean what the myths have told me she meant. That’s probably a good thing: spoiler alert, but there is no Santa Claus or Easter Bunny, either. The highly fallible and self-serving men who built the statue may have selfishly taken advantage of those ideals I felt so keenly and deeply on Liberty Island--liberty, international cooperation, friendship, equality, progress, and democracy--as a tool to fulfill their own self-serving desires. But we still love her anyway. She’s still gorgeous, still beloved (what has a higher approval rating in the US than the Statue of Liberty?), is still standing in the perfect spot over a hundred years later, and each of us, in the end, can add our own meaning of Liberty to her.

[Jen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Solid 4.5 star book. Rounded up because all the way up until the epilogue, I was completely loving on this book.

I enjoy learning things I didn't know before from the non-fiction I read. Lucky for me, I'm a product of the public education system in America, so there's a lot I don't know. Even, it seems , about the Statue of Liberty which is arguably THE symbol of America and the freedom within our borders. So shame on me for not even knowing the name of the creator of Lady Liberty until I read this book.

The book does include a LOT of backstory to get to the actual story of the creation and eventual funding of the statue and her pedestal. However, I do feel that the backstory was necessary, as well as interesting and informative, to impress the reader with the scale and scope of the statue, from soup to nuts as it were.

Many things in this book impressed me. The scope of research was immense. I, for one, had no idea that the idea of the statue was broached with Egypt, as a female slave to grace the entrance of the Suez Canal. The khedive of Egypt liked to think of himself as the savior of the slaves in Egypt at the time, so the statue was to flatter his misconception of his importance to the slaves. Slaves were actually treated worse during his reign than at other times. Go figure.

I find it ironic that Lady Liberty started out as a female slave and ended up being the beacon of Liberty for the entire world.

Also, I honestly I had no idea that France and America were once so close to one another, that a huge symbol of friendship such as the statue wasn't mind boggling at the time. Now relations between the two countries don't seem nearly so close and even at times antagonistic. It saddens me, but I honestly have to say it's most likely the fault of America, though it does take two to tango, or not. I don't know a lot about the world and relations between other countries, but America seems to me to be rather...polarizing and somewhat insistent on being in the right. Even if America IS right all of the time, which isn't possible, no one is right 100% of the time, it would maybe be beneficial to be tactful about it?

Also, America wasn't overly thrilled with the idea of the statue until it went up. Money for the pedestal and set up was slooooow in coming. It just amazes me that something that seems like such a HUGE part of our country's make-up was at one point, not only nonexistent, but not celebrated or properly backed.

This book was an incredible read. It should be required reading for anyone who calls themselves an American. To not know the background of one of our more important monuments really is a travesty.

My thanks to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for an eARC copy of this book to read and review.

[George · Rating 3 out of 5]

COLOSSAL.

“What other work of art required an army of men clocking in every morning and working a full day, for months, years, to get the piece built? Only bridges or buildings demanded this kind of commitment.”—page 148

For almost as long as I can remember, the Statue of Liberty, in New York harbor, has been my favorite icon in all the world. So, when BookBub advertised the title: Liberty’s Torch: The Great Adventure to Build the Statue of Liberty, by Elizabeth Mitchell, for $1.99, I was quick to grab it.

Despite some confusing, and frequently sluggish, prose; the book is rife with interesting and informative anecdotes, asides, tidbits, and trivia about the Great Lady’s gestation. To whit: I did not know, “She would not be green for some forty years.”—page 230 I simply can’t imagine her as reddish or copper colored. She’s always been green and beautiful to me.

And what an outstanding cast of promoters and supporters over the years. Some of the best minds and biggest egos in late-nineteenth century France: Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, Gustave Eiffel, Ferdinand de Lesseps, and Victor Hugo, among others. And, in the U. S., folks like Ulysses S. Grant and Joseph Pulitzer were helpful in their support.

Recommendation: Perhaps not as well written as: David McCullough’s The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge, or his Path Between the Seas: the Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914; or John Steele Gordon’s A Thread Across the Ocean: The Heroic Story of the Transatlantic Cable; but it certainly earns its place in any library with those books. A fine study in what hubris, determination and a lot of dumb luck might accomplish.

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free . . . . I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”—page 178

NOOKbook edition, 291 pages

[Rene · Rating 5 out of 5]

Elizabeth Mitchell's LIBERTY'S TORCH tells the story of Frederic Bartholdi, the charismatic, visionary French sculptor, who created one of the world's most iconic works of art, the Statue of Liberty. I live in Brooklyn, and I see the statue nearly everyday from across the water, but after reading this book, I will never look at it in the same way. All of the things I thought I knew about the creation of the statue were wrong, and the real story was much more fascinating. Mitchell has a nearly magical gift for transporting a reader to another time and place, and she has done the kind of research that unearths the surprising details, rivalries, and heroics that make an historical account a delight to read. But even more than that, this is a moving story about an artist who dared to imagine a nearly impossible creation, and an investigation of the colorful characters, the unpredictable powers, and the driving talent that finally brought the statue into being. I recommend this book to anyone interested in the story of America, and to anyone interested in the combination of idealism, ego, and selflessness behind any monumental achievement. This is an inspired book by a brilliant writer.

[Nancy · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a biography of a man, Frederic Bartholdi, and his most famous work, the Statue of Liberty. Bartholdi is a sculptor who was known for sculpting mostly smaller projects when he became embroiled in a war between France and Germany and subsequently traveled to America. At some point, he became inspired to build a statue as a means of "thanks" to Americans for their assistance to the French during their war. The book chronicles the problems he encountered with building the Statue and shipping it to America.

I was inspired to read this book because it sounded interesting, mostly because of the reviews. I can say now, after reading this that I'm not sure that I was even reading the same book as the reviewers. The positive reviewers describe this as "rollicking" and "adventurous," neither of which I feel are applicable to this book. What this book was about was endless fundraising and other moneymaking schemes. It was so boring that I debated putting it down and not finishing it; I only finished it because I felt it might get better once the monies were raised (it didn't). If you're interested in the Statue of Liberty, you would seriously have a better time reading the Wikipedia entry. I would pass on this book.

[K Walker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having been taught that the Statue of Liberty was a "gift" from France, I was surprised by its real history. In fact, it is really surprising that the statue was ever delivered, much less erected in this country. As is typical of human endeavors, there were many obstacles and egos involved in this project. This book provides a rich history of France from the time of the French Revolution and into the late 19th century, as well as the general attitudes about the statue itself within the United States. It is a compelling and interesting saga with many famous people (from Joseph Pulitzer, to President Grant, to de Lesseps (the builder of the Suez Canal), and many more. Definitely worth reading!

[wade · Rating 4 out of 5]

A detailed history of both the artist and the statue and its long road from development to completion. It is a wonder the Statue of Liberty was every built because it faced major hurdles all along the way not just in design but more importantly in funding. The United States and France were to share the cost but while the French fairly quickly paid for the statue itself the US could not find donors to pay for the base. Were it not for Joseph Pulitzer (newspaper fame) taking the fundraising under his wing we might never have seen this wonderful monument built. This and many other insights are shown in this highly informative book.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Elizabeth Mitchell has crafted a quiet colossus of a story: readable, human, and witty, yet also filled with detail and told with precision. Mitchell manages to convey the turmoil of France's politics and civic life in the 19th century without ever losing sight of the complex man who created a complex symbol for a complex nation.

[Robin Clayton · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked it buy there was a little too much detail. It was interesting to read before my first trip to NYC and tour of the statue.

[Sharon · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bit of a slow starter, Mitchell teases the reader with Bartholdi arriving in NYC and deciding Bledsoe Island, now Liberty Island, would be perfect for his colossus. It was a fifteen year odyssey of funding nightmares, engineering challenges and an American population lukewarm at most about this gift. Mitchell goes from the prologue to a slow burn of a biography of Auguste Bartholdi until he decided to move forward with Liberty Enlightening the World.
After a disillusioning war against Prussia that robbed Bartholdi of his French hometown, and a failed Parisian revolution that destroyed chunks of his beloved Paris, Bartholdi sets out for America to revive his idea of a statue/lighthouse taller than any other. To say that Lady Liberty exists because of Bartholdi’s unstoppable drive is no exaggeration. He had big ideas about French and American friendship and their shared love of freedom to go with his colossus. And for an American Public that barely cared and had no desire to fund the building of the pedestal and dock. Just getting the unveiling party funded by Congress was a slog.
In the end, Lady Liberty is unveiled to great fanfare but can’t be lit for another 30 years. By then, she had grown on the people and had already gained popularity as the first sight for arriving immigrants. It’s been quite a 134-year history for Lady Liberty, here’s to another 134 years!

[Joshua Rivoli · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is very informative and very interesting in parts, but its one flaw is that it’s a little too informative. For every page of enjoyable, well-written information, there are twenty pages of long, tedious accounts of things that only serious researchers might care about. There were times during my reading experience that I was fascinated by all the work and steps that went into the end result of the Statue of Liberty. At other points, long stretches of boring minutia made me want to quit reading it.

[Mark A Cooper · Rating 4 out of 5]

The French Gave… and US at Times Seemed Not to Want it

The book was a delightful exposition of the construction and final delivery of the Statue of Liberty to the United States. There are many small tidbits along the way that tell you more about the statue than is typically taught in a high school history class. Or my favorite points is that most of America, nor even New Yorkers, actually wanted to build the pedestal to sit the statue on. It all came down to immigrants who were the most willing to share what little they had to build that pedestal for the statue.

[Cherlyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really liked this book, the stories within the story. If you know what the average American knows about this icon, it's just a speck on the top of the iceberg. Not only is the statue a feat of sculpture in a material not usually used, but its conception, its realization, its financing, its assembly, even its location, all came to fruition because Bertoldi never gave up on his dream. Good read.

[Jade Pham Gift · Rating 5 out of 5]

I heard of this book on NPR (I think) and checked it out from the library. It was well written and provided in details the struggles that Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi endured to bring the Statue of Liberty to America. If you appreciate the Statue of Liberty, and who wouldn't, then this book is a must read.

I don't remember the exact date that I read this book, so the dates are "guesstimation" of my memory.

[Marion Vermazen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a very interesting book that more than anything makes you realize that if you are committed to a goal and keep working on it you will eventually get there. I was surprised how little enthusiasm there was for the project for a very long time. The Path Between the Seas by David McCullough very much complements Liberty's Torch given that Ferdinand de Lesseps and Bartholdi were contemporaries.

[Alanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating story with a lot I did not already know. The only reason I didn't give it 5 stars is that I wish it was longer and dove deeper into the "secondary" players, such as Eiffel and Hunt. They were mentioned, but not really explored. I would have loved that too. One of the best parts is finally understanding just how critical Emma Lazarus is to the meaning of the Statue of Liberty.

[Susan Tan · Rating 3 out of 5]

A comprehensive yet boring history book that is a biography of the sculpture Bartholdi. I don't like this man personally because he is arrogant and so sure of himself so the book is hard to read quickly and was a chore. I really like the details of the engineering construction. listen to history chicks podcast episode on lady Liberty.

[Heather · Rating 5 out of 5]

Liberty’s Torch is surprisingly engaging and interesting. Often non-fiction can be dry, but this one is definitely not. The author tells the story of Bartholdi and his quest for fame by building a giant statue. I didn’t know much of how the Statue of Liberty came to be so this book was very fascinating and educational for me. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in history.

[Shana Best · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was listening to this book on Audible. I got to the 4th chapter and could do no more. There were so many French names of people and buildings I got lost in the narration. Other than that the story was too long. I feel like it could have been made more simple and to the point. I wanted to learn about the history of the Statue of Liberty in a more condensed version.

[Jane Thompson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Status of Liberty Story

This book was written about the quest of the sculptor to build the largest sculpture . The book seemed boring to me but I read it because I was interested in the story.

[Lance McNeill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well researched and well written

I thoroughly enjoyed this detailed history of how the Statue of Liberty came to be. It’s an inspiring story. The author did a great job of bringing in many sources and viewpoints. It is certainly heavy on Bartholdi but for obvious reasons.

[Andrew J.]

An interesting read. Wish there had been less about politics and the international fund-raising squabble, and more about the actual construction and installation of the statue. Bertholdi deserves a higher place in the American pantheon.

[Kirby Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

An insightful look at the artist, the project, and the times. Great read.

[Tracy Behrendt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting look at Bartholdi and his drive to build the Statue of Liberty and get it placed in New York harbor.

[Alexis Berman · Rating 4 out of 5]

I learned so much from this book but at times it was a very dry read.

[Elise · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ok.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oh how I long for footnotes :-(