Overview

A California Teacher of the Year outlines lessons from American heroes that instill renewed admiration of their achievements, provides guidelines for self-improvement, and sets us on a constructive path to recovering our past. In his quarter century of teaching, Jeremy S. Adams has watched his students become increasingly disinterested in history and cynical about the American Experiment itself. Students today reject America’s past, viewing it as a laundry list of corrupt people, oppressive institutions, and irrelevant out-of-date fables. As an educator and a father, Adams feels a deep responsibility to restore young people’s belief in the importance of American history, how it binds us as a nation and offers crucial insights to help us in the struggle to “become a more perfect Union.” In Lessons in Liberty, he carves out a fresh and surprising approach to the past, highlighting the unique human details of iconic figures and the lessons they teach, such as: Daniel Inouye, a Japanese American who carried out dangerous missions in World War II and later became a US Senator representing Hawaii, who exemplifies how true patriotism is never blind to injustice. George Washington, whose lifelong struggle to conquer his temper makes him a model for self-help and self-improvement. Eleven-year-old Clara Barton, whose experience helping her injured brother regain his health helped her develop the courage and ferocity she would need to pioneer nursing techniques during the Civil War. With this beautifully written, non-partisan, deeply researched book, Adams reclaims history for a new generation, showing the surprising ways heroes as diverse as Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Ben Nighthorse Campbell, Arthur Ashe, and Thomas Jefferson can speak to our lives today.

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9780063311077

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Reviews

"""So much of what's broken about American education boils down to refusing to love good things. Lessons in Liberty reminds us of why we love America--enlivening history through stories of great Americans. Smart, patriotic, and readable, it's what our cynical culture needs."" -- Pete Hegseth, New York Times bestselling author of Battle for the American Mind ""Self-help manuals and political treatises are thick on the shelves, but what we really need in our disorienting moment is aspirational character study--portraits of people we can look up to. It's a literary tradition as venerable as Plutarch's Lives, and almost as badly neglected. Jeremy S. Adams revives it masterfully for the modern day, drawing insight from the lives of figures both well known and unexpected. A book to be savored and handed down, like the stories of our greatest men and women, from parents to their children."" -- Spencer Klavan, author of How to Save the West ""For Americans who wring their hands about the state of the nation, Jeremy Adams offers blunt advice--do better--with examples, drawn from four centuries, of Americans who have done just that. Some of them made it to the White House, others worked in field hospitals or on tennis courts. All offer lessons we can learn from, if we try."" -- Richard Brookhiser, author of Glorious Lessons: John Trumbull, Painter of the American Revolution ""Jeremy S. Adams is brave enough to assert what's blindingly obvious: we can learn a lot from the heroes who believed in this crazy experiment of American freedom. Lessons in Liberty should be required reading in classrooms where iconoclasm has become the new dogma."" -- Wilfred Reilly, author of Lies My Liberal Teacher Told Me"

Author Information

Jeremy S. Adams was the Daughters of the American Revolution 2014 California Teacher of the Year and a finalist for the Carlston Family Foundation Outstanding Teachers of America Award. He is a social studies teacher at Bakersfield High School and was a longtime political science lecturer at California State University, Bakersfield.

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