The Lost History of Liberalism challenges our most basic assumptions about a political
creed that has become a rallying cry—and a term of derision—in today’s increasingly
divided public square. Taking readers from ancient Rome to today, Helena Rosenblatt traces the evolution of the words “liberal” and “liberalism,” revealing the heated
debates that have taken place over their meaning. She debunks the popular myth of
liberalism as a uniquely Anglo-American tradition centered on individual rights, showing that it was the French Revolution that gave birth to liberalism and Germans who
transformed it. Only in the mid-twentieth century did the concept become widely
known in the United States—and then, as now, its meaning was hotly debated. It was
only during the Cold War and America’s growing world hegemony that liberalism was
refashioned into an American ideology focused so strongly on individual freedoms.
