Our Fragile Freedoms: Essays

by Eric Foner

From one of the most acclaimed and influential historians of the United States, an insightful guide to our history and why it matters.


Eric Foner has done more to shape the public and professional understanding of American history than any other scholar. The preeminent historian of the Civil War era, Foner’s keynote has been American freedom and the recurring battles over its meanings and boundaries. His award-winning works show that freedom has been a birthright for some and a struggle for others, that rights gained can also be lost, and that they must always be tended with knowledge and vigilance. The present political moment makes the importance of these themes abundantly clear.


This collection of Foner’s recent reviews and commentaries demonstrates the range of his interests and expertise, running from slavery and antislavery, through the disunion and remaking of the United States in the nineteenth century, Jim Crow and the civil rights movement, and into our current politics. Each piece shows a master at work, melding historical knowledge and balanced judgment with crystalline prose. Foner takes up towering figures from Washington to Lincoln, Douglass, and Rosa Parks, pivotal events such as the Fugitive Slave Act and the Tulsa Race Massacre, and the fragility of constitutional guarantees to civil liberties, due process, and birthright citizenship, whether in times of war or peace. He also explores recent controversies over how to commemorate, and how to teach, our history.

Genres: History, Essays, Nonfiction, Politics, Political Science, American History, Civil War

577 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 2, 2025

About the author

Eric Foner is DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University, where he earned his B.A. and Ph.D. In his teaching and scholarship, Foner focuses on the Civil War and Reconstruction, slavery, and nineteenth-century America. His Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877, won the Bancroft, Parkman, and Los Angeles Times Book prizes and remains the standard history of the period. His latest book published in 2010 is The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery.

In 2006 Foner received the Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching at Columbia University. He has served as president of the Organization of American Historians, the American Historical Association, and the Society of American Historians.

Reviews

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent essays, as you might expect from the great historian Eric Foner (most famous for his works on the Reconstruction Era). Since it's mostly a collection of book reviews, and over 400 pages, I felt free to pick and choose the chapters I was interested in, rather than reading the whole book. He's a great writer and I'm sure I'd appreciate all the essays in the book, but I've got piles of books everywhere at home and still can't keep myself from getting new ones from the library, so I've decided I get to decide how much of a book I'll read. The worst problem with reading a bunch of book reviews is the temptation to read all the books being reviewed, but I'm hoping to resist that urge. (Smiley emoji goes here!)

The chapters I read:
The Rise and Fall of American Slavery
Israel Hill
Lincoln and Brown
The Emancipation of Abraham Lincoln
Whatever Happened to Integration
The Oldest Mass Party
American Anarchists (review of Lucy Parsons bio, which I'm pretty sure is on my to-read list)
Letter to Bernie
Du Bois
Rayford Logan
Vann Woodward
Hofstadter
American Myth

As with any good essayist/book reviewer, the chapters not only do justice to their topics, but give the reader much more to think about. And reading a bunch of them also gave me a lot to think about, so I'm glad I decided to check this out. And it's always at the library, in case I need to read more of it later.

[Ava Courtney Sylvester · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Curated Essay Collection from An Honored Historian

Eric Foner is a top-tier historian and remarkable writer, and in his latest book, we're treated with a compilation of nearly 60 of his book reviews and essays. Though I wish there were more of the latter than the former, Foner provides enough context and insights of his own so a reader unfamiliar with the discussed books can still enjoy the reviews.

Particularly crucial are the pieces that speak to our current political climate, such as analyses of the 14th Amendment (birthright citizenship), the electoral college, political parties, teaching history in schools, and freedom of speech and the press, as well as how these concepts have changed throughout our history. Turns out, the January 6, 2021 insurrection was not as unprecedented as I thought (and leave it to a historian to prove it)! Personally, I especially appreciated the autobiographical glimpses scattered here and there, such as lessons learned from his parents and uncle, or the time he met W.E.B. Du Bois.

[Kevin Hall · Rating 5 out of 5]

Foner, McCullough, Cox Richardson, Hochschild, and Larson are all basically deities at this point. Radden Keefe is on his way too.

[Jonathan Bockian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eric Foner’s Our Fragile Freedoms (Norton) is a selection of essays he’s written since about 1999. He was unknown to me until I heard him being interviewed on Maine Public Radio. If for no other reason, Our Fragile Freedoms is a must read for anyone who wants to make sense of our country’s current condition but who isn’t steeped in the history of white supremacy in America. This is the history that the far right would prefer to keep expunge from every school and college curriculum, lest our current condition becomes too well understood. It isn’t necessary to read all fifty seven essays to learn important truths about that history, from the years immediately preceding the Civil War to the Trump presidency, though it is rewarding. For me, someone unversed in the scholarly literature of this subject, Foner provided an introduction to a library of significant and interesting research by other historians, past and present, not only through reviews of new books but within analytic essays that report on the thinking in bygone eras. Inevitably, there is some repetition in this anthology, such as the fact that some 200,000 Black men served in the Union army and navy during the Civil War, as each essay originally had to stand on it’s own, without the ability to depend on its first readers knowing everything we learn in this volume. These repetitions are easy to slide over. Oddly, Foner’s review of the depths to which many of our political leaders and judges have sunk over many past eras, while showing how fragile our freedoms are, offers some basis to hope that we may resurrect and retain our freedoms in the future.

[Eric Grunder · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a wonderful collection of book reviews, book forwards and essays by one of the nation's foremost historians, Eric Foner. Although the entries take readers from the colonial period through the near-present, each one can stand alone allowing readers the pick and choose subjects that most interest them.
Foner specializes in the Civil War, Reconstruction and civil rights, other subjects are presented with the same clarity and depth as he uses on subjects of his specialties. As a bonus, this book -- one of dozens the Columbia professor has written -- can be used as a wonderful guide to books on important subjects and people in the nation's history. This is the kind of book that can remain on your bookshelf and serve as a go-to source not only to review Foner's thought but also direct readers to others have Foner believes have something to say about various people and events. Although almost 450 pages, Fragile Freedoms moves on at a good clip in that most entries are less than 10 pages.

[Rob · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eric Foner is one of the most revered scholars of 19th-century America, having written the definitive history of Reconstruction. This collection of essays and book reviews written from approximately the late 1990s to the present, presents the reader (or listener, in this case, since I listened to the audio version) with a strong introduction to Foner's work and his viewpoint. As someone interested in the study of the study of history, my attention naturally turned to Foner's review of a book about C. Vann Woodward and the introduction he wrote for a book on Richard Hofstadter. Presenting Foner's works in digestible, bite-sized chunks is a good way for the casual reader to go further into Foner's deeper work, especially on Reconstruction.

[Chelsea Knowles · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a little dry but overall I enjoyed this essay collection. Some of these are particularly poignant considering the current political situation in America. I liked how even the essays that were reviews explained things. My only issue was these did get a little repetitive because information was repeated over and over again simply due to the essays being on similar topics and written at different times. For example, the stuff on Lincoln and Reconstruction was repeated over and over again.

[Doug · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating exploration of history mostly through reviews of historical writings. I endorse the holistic understanding of history presented in these essays. In fact, I’ve compiled a list of books from these reviews to add to my reading list. The final essay’s thesis is particularly poignant, without a universal understanding of our shared history the nation has become more divided.

[Julian Pritchard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reviews of recent books in American history

[Jon Olver · Rating 5 out of 5]

Want a list of history/sociology books to read, but lack the time to read them all? Foner's read them, and offers his reviews - along with other essays on the American experiment.

[Roger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Highly engaging collection of essays from one of our most important historians. Insightful, measured and thoughtful. As usual.