Rating: 
Summary: An invaluable corrective, despite its faults and omissions
Review: "Freethinkers" is a worthwhile survey of the rich American metaphysical, spiritual, and philosophical heritage beyond the framework of organized religion. Although it has a number of shortcomings, Jacoby's spirited and opinionated overview serves as a corrective for the prevalent view that the history of the United States is that of a strictly "Christian nation" (whatever that term may mean).
The book is at its best when Jacoby discusses particular historical figures, treatises, movements, and events. She focuses on such stalwart and respected authorities as James Madison, Thomas Paine, Abraham Lincoln, Walt Whitman, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Ernestine Rose, Robert Green Ingersoll, Margaret Sanger, and Clarence Darrow. These biographical accounts include generous excerpts from and perceptive analyses of their writings and speeches. The lives and works of freethinkers are examined in the context of various movements and events, including Deism, anticlericalism, abolitionism, the Civil War, feminism, the first Red Scare, the Scopes trial, the growth of Catholic influence in urban politics, and the culture wars of the last two decades.
Nearly all this history is told as a series of captivating biographies and trenchant stories, and the result is unusually accessible and pleasurable reading. There are also some truly memorable anecdotes: the bravery required by Angelina and Sarah Grimke to inveigh against slavery in an era when women did not make public speeches; the issuance of the two-cent piece in order to accommodate the request by a small cadre of Christians to add "In God We Trust" to the currency; the uproar that greeted the publication of "The Woman's Bible."
Jacoby does occasionally overreach; she has a tendency to assert all-encompassing theses and easy generalizations that teeter on the shaky basis of her random sampling of people and events. Thus, "the more conservative clergymen and established churches in the North were slow to condemn slavery outright, and even slower to endorse any economic or political action that might bring about [its} end." Such a polemical statement cannot be proved by the anecdotes Jacoby relates and the footnotes she includes, and the sociological evidence required to support this type of thesis is beyond the scope of her research. In a similar vein, she overuses such loaded and imprecise terms as "conservatives," "the clergy", "orthodoxy," and "mainstream religions," and her occasional attempts at qualification only underscore their vagueness.
In addition (as other reviewers and readers have noted), the book presents only secularism of a liberal bent; politically conservative freethought is ignored altogether. I have no love for Ayn Rand, but her secularist influence on American politics is undeniable (as the ascendancy of Alan Greenspan attests); inclusion of such obvious examples would have actually strengthened Jacoby's survey rather than diluted it.
Yet the fault for these deficiencies is not entirely Jacoby's: so little has been written for general readers concerning the history of American secularism that such simplifications and omissions are perhaps unavoidable in any lucid reassessment of the historical record. The guts of the book--its stories, its heroes, and its underlying premise--provide a fundamental understanding of the tradition of American liberty that cannot be undermined by any of its failings.
Rating:
Summary: She's a brilliant writer but...
Review: ....her arguments are not convincing to those of us who have truly studied the Federalist Papers, Constitution, Declaration of Independence and historical lives of Founding Fathers who were emphatic about incorporating faith into the compass of the United States government. NOT religion, faith. The freedom was in choosing HOW to worship but no emphasis was ever placed on NOT worhsipping. Worship of God was a given and encouraged practice. I have tremendous respect for this author as a writer and her work is well researched but her arguments are thin although she sure takes what little there is an examines it in great detail. A good book for freethinkers to read for clarity of individual thinking.
Rating: 
Summary: Possible explanation
Review: Generally review copies are passed out before publication date. This book sounds interesting.
Rating: 
Summary: A choice of fundamentalisms
Review: Gordon Wood's The Radicalism of the American Revolution describes the way the attitudes toward religion of the Founders were confronted almost immediately by a resurgence of religion in the early republic, witness the experience of Paine. This brief launch window should make secularists feel fortunate indeed in their history.
Jacoby's fascinating account of freethinkers is an important history in this vein, but it leaves itself vulnerable to the question, what really do we mean by 'secularist'? If 'secularism' is on the wane (I doubt it, over the long term) it is in part because of the current narrowness of its meaning, almost as if it had been highjacked by a set of scientific fundamentalists and ultra-Darwinists trying to enforce an impossible view of reality on everyone else.
A few curve ball questions can illustrate the problem: Was Luther a secularist? Then, same question, was Kant, and, finally, Hegel a secularist? Then try that again, with Buddhists. The term 'secular' is ambiguous, and refers to the rise of the modern and/or the triumph of freethought. But these are not the same. Agree or not, figures like Kant were trying to defend human autonomy in relation to religion without moving to an opposite metaphysical extreme that is as dogmatic as religion. We cannot try to enforce any single 'ism' to go along with 'secularism', as a triumph of pluralism, but that is what is currently happening, and confusing the debate with the obsessions of its proponents. This is especially true of the Darwin debate where secularists have placed all their metaphysical hopes on an unsound foundation and declared everyone else non-secular, a virtual gift to fundamentalist reaction which took off after Darwin, we should note. The sad fact is that secularism could be live and well if it were not in the process of being wrecked by its own fanatics trying to create a religion of their own.
In any case, a very good and useful history.
Rating:
Summary: I am astonished
Review: How could I have missed the historical importance of Freethinkers? This topic was not part of any history course at any of the schools I attended. Thank you Ms. Jacoby and I hope your book leads others to question the value of our educational system.
Rating:
Summary: a question about the above review
Review: I couldn't help notice that the above 5-star review is dated March 27, 2004, when the release date of the 1st edition, shown above, is APRIL 5th! Is this correct? Did anyone else notice this?
(I did NOT read the book, but I had to put in a rating to get this posted.)
Rating:
Summary: Theism's persistence
Review: I found Jacoby's latest book both inspiring and discouraging. Its history of American freethinkers is informative, entertaining and comprehensive -- from the founding fathers, inspired by the Enlightenment but before Darwin or the industrial revolution, on thru the next two centuries of our nation's adolescence and into its maturity. Eventho' freethinkers gave us our `God-less' Constitution and eventually helped win equality for African-Americans and women, and freethinking scientists eroded many of theism's tenets; yet freethinkers (especially agnostics and atheists) are scorned by many Americans who instead still defer to theistic beliefs. Why?
One reason, I suspect, may be that a plausible explanation of human's theistic predisposition has not been put forth -- which is what I attempt to do in my new book "Concepts: A ProtoTheist Quest for Science-Minded Skeptics." Rather than deride theistic beliefs, as some freethinkers do, I try to take a positive approach in order to examine why and how theism originated, and discover what it is in human nature that enables theism to still persist in spite of its apparent obsolescence. I attempt to explain theistic beliefs' origins and roots in human nature based on the knowledge science has gained in just the past few centuries. Prototheism attempts to replace the obsolete theistic explanations put forth back when most folks thought the Earth was flat and was controlled by the gods.
Jacoby's book traces our nation's long struggle between theists and freethinkers. Might an understanding of theism's origin and roots - prototheism - enable both to come closer together? Fifty years ago theists took the phrase "one nation indivisible" in our Pledge to the Flag and wedged "under God" between "one nation" and "indivisible" thus further dividing our one nation into two camps: theists and non-theists. It's my hope that an understanding of theism's origins might begin to lessen the antagonism and heal that wound.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting thesis
Review: I saw no discussuion of the role of the 18th-19th C. American diplomat Joel Barlow and the treaty he negotiated with Tripoli. I am puzzled as to why this was omitted.
Rating:
Summary: Clarification for the person who had a question
Review: I wrote the March 27th review. I bought the book in Barnes & Noble on Broaway & 81st Street in New York, where it was freely available on the shelves. I bought it about a week prior to writing the review.
Rating:
Summary: A really important expose of our freethinking history
Review: I've just finished reading this title, which I would best describe as a very important, thoroughly readable expose of our free-thinking history and the relentless, repetitive attempts to undermine that tradition. It's probably the most thought-provoking book I've read since Louis Menand's The Metaphysical Club (If you haven't read it already, look it up), the author of which seems to share the same enlightenment bent as Jacoby. As you can tell, that philosophy reflects my world view as well. In fact, the only downside of this book is that you're most likely to enjoy and appreciate it if you, like me, already consider yourself a free-thinking, secular rationalist with an "enlightenment" perspective on history, including a strong belief in the separation of church and state. If you are a member of the Christian right, you will probably throw this book into the fireplace after the first few chapters (That would be the only alternative to having your views on the mixture of politics and religion painstakingly and devastastingly revealed as narrow-minded and undemocratic). This is a "history" book, and rarely strays from the rationalist, dispassionate course you'd expect, but Jacoby's personal views are made amply clear: church and state were always meant to be and should remain separate institutions under our system of government. It's great to have someone like Jacoby on this (my) side, and to put it in print for the record, because she masterfully and precisely conveys the facts of history which, to put it plainly, make her opponents look silly. For a few examples, she:
-catalogs a long litany of misdeeds and injustices that have been carried out in the name of religion, refuting the idea that religion is always a force for good in a political setting.
-successfully undermines, as others have done elsewhere, the idea that the Founding Fathers never intended for the wall between church and state to be applied as strongly as we have today.
-shows us that current secularist trends where they exist today have NOT arisen only since the 1960s after supposedly being drummed up by hare-brained, dope-smoking hippies who have infected our culture ever since. Instead, she shows us that there is a long, long secularist, even atheistic, tradition in America and that attempts to paint history otherwise are misguided. She instead reveals that the resurgence of the Christian right is just as much a product of "today." (It is only recently that all presidential candidates now publically affirm the strength of their religious faith in order to have any hope of being elected. Most in the past never discussed their faith.) One final plug, the description of the Christian right "utopia" underpinning the culture wars (first two paragraphs of Chapter 7) is among the most eloquent expositions on the thought of mind of those in the Christian right movement I have ever encountered. If you only browse this book in a book store, I would have you take a look at those lines. Nothing else so pithily makes you realize the fundamental airiness of the contemporary movement to meld religion and politics.
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