What's in a word? Virginia Postrel reviews David Hackett Fischer's new book.

"Most Americans do not think of liberty and freedom as a set of texts, or a sequence of controversies or a system of abstractions, They understand these ideas in another way, as inherited values that they have learned early in life and deeply believe."

"[This book is] iconographic. It uses images, artifacts, and material culture as empirical evidence."

"The original meanings of freedom and liberty were not merely different but opposed. Liberty meant separation. Freedom implied connection."