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."

'Liberty and Freedom': The Eagle Has Landed