
What Was Liberalism?
The Past, Present, and Promise of a Noble Idea
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
$0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Buy for $21.83
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
L.J. Ganser
-
By:
-
James Traub
About this listen
A sweeping history of liberalism, from its earliest origins to its imperiled present and uncertain future
Donald Trump is the first American president to regard liberal values with open contempt. He has company: the leaders of Italy, Hungary, Poland, and Turkey, among others, are also avowed illiberals. What happened? Why did liberalism lose the support it once enjoyed?
In What Was Liberalism?, James Traub returns to the origins of liberalism, in the aftermath of the American and French revolutions and in the works of such great thinkers as John Stuart Mill and Isaiah Berlin.
Although the first liberals were deeply skeptical of majority rule, the liberal faith adapted, coming to encompass belief in not only individual rights and free markets, but also state action to provide basic goods. By the second half of the twentieth century, liberalism had become the national creed of the most powerful country in the world. But this consensus did not last. Liberalism is now widely regarded as an antiquated doctrine. What Was LIberalism? reviews the evolution of the liberal idea over more than two centuries for lessons on how it can rebuild its majoritarian foundations.
©2019 James Traub (P)2019 Hachette AudioListeners also enjoyed...
-
The Great Debate
- Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left
- By: Yuval Levin
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 10 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Author Yuval Levin explores the roots of the left/right political divide in America by examining the views of the men who best represented each side at its origin: Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine. Striving to forge a new political path in the tumultuous age of the American and French revolutions, these two ideological titans sparred over moral and philosophical questions about the nature of political life and the best approach to social change: radical and swift, or gradual and incremental. The division they articulated continues to shape our political life today.
-
-
absolutely worth your time
- By Coffin Family on 10-30-22
By: Yuval Levin
-
Liberalism and Its Discontents
- By: Francis Fukuyama
- Narrated by: Christopher Ragland
- Length: 5 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It's no secret that liberalism didn't always live up to its own ideals. In America, many people were denied equality before the law. Who counted as full human beings worthy of universal rights was contested for centuries, and only recently has this circle expanded to include women, African Americans, LGBTQ+ people, and others. Conservatives complain that liberalism empties the common life of meaning. As Francis Fukuyama shows in Liberalism and Its Discontents, the principles of liberalism have also, in recent decades, been pushed to new extremes by both the right and the left.
-
-
For those who haven’t given up yet.
- By DMax on 09-29-22
By: Francis Fukuyama
-
A World After Liberalism
- Philosophers of the Radical Right
- By: Matthew Rose
- Narrated by: Jeff Harding
- Length: 5 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this eye-opening book, Matthew Rose introduces us to one of the most controversial intellectual movements of the 20th century, the "radical right", and discusses its adherents' different attempts to imagine political societies after the death or decline of liberalism. Questioning democracy's most basic norms and practices, these critics rejected ideas about human equality, minority rights, religious toleration, and cultural pluralism not out of implicit biases, but out of explicit principle.
-
-
Essential Reading for understanding the Far Right
- By BWA on 08-18-21
By: Matthew Rose
-
The Democrat Party Hates America
- By: Mark R. Levin
- Narrated by: Jeremy Lowell, Mark R. Levin
- Length: 11 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In American Marxism, Mark Levin explained how Marxist ideology has invaded our society and culture. In doing so, he exposed the institutions, scholars, and activists leading the revolution. Now, he picks up where he left off: to hold responsible the true malefactors steering our country down the wrong path. Insightful and hard-hitting as ever, Levin proves that since its establishment, the Democrat Party has set out to rewrite history and destroy the foundation of freedom in America.
-
-
As always thank you Mr. Levin for your Insight.
- By Yukonwill on 09-24-23
By: Mark R. Levin
-
The Enlightenment
- The Pursuit of Happiness, 1680-1790
- By: Ritchie Robertson
- Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble
- Length: 40 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This magisterial history - sure to become the definitive work on the subject - recasts the Enlightenment as a period not solely consumed with rationale and reason, but rather as a pursuit of practical means to achieve greater human happiness.
-
-
The quickest 40 hour audio book I’ve listen to
- By Joey Caster on 04-02-21
-
The Return of Resentment
- The Rise and Decline and Rise Again of a Political Emotion
- By: Robert A. Schneider
- Narrated by: Christopher Grove
- Length: 12 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The term "resentment" has dominated US news analysis since November 2016. Despite its increased use, this word seems to defy easy categorization. Does "resentment" describe many interlocking sentiments, or is it just another way of saying "anger"? Does it suggest an irrational grievance, as opposed to a legitimate callout of injustice? Does it imply political leanings, or is it nonpartisan by nature? Robert A. Schneider explores these questions and more, moving from eighteenth-century Britain to the aftermath of the French Revolution to social movements throughout the twentieth century.
-
The Great Debate
- Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left
- By: Yuval Levin
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 10 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Author Yuval Levin explores the roots of the left/right political divide in America by examining the views of the men who best represented each side at its origin: Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine. Striving to forge a new political path in the tumultuous age of the American and French revolutions, these two ideological titans sparred over moral and philosophical questions about the nature of political life and the best approach to social change: radical and swift, or gradual and incremental. The division they articulated continues to shape our political life today.
-
-
absolutely worth your time
- By Coffin Family on 10-30-22
By: Yuval Levin
-
Liberalism and Its Discontents
- By: Francis Fukuyama
- Narrated by: Christopher Ragland
- Length: 5 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It's no secret that liberalism didn't always live up to its own ideals. In America, many people were denied equality before the law. Who counted as full human beings worthy of universal rights was contested for centuries, and only recently has this circle expanded to include women, African Americans, LGBTQ+ people, and others. Conservatives complain that liberalism empties the common life of meaning. As Francis Fukuyama shows in Liberalism and Its Discontents, the principles of liberalism have also, in recent decades, been pushed to new extremes by both the right and the left.
-
-
For those who haven’t given up yet.
- By DMax on 09-29-22
By: Francis Fukuyama
-
A World After Liberalism
- Philosophers of the Radical Right
- By: Matthew Rose
- Narrated by: Jeff Harding
- Length: 5 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this eye-opening book, Matthew Rose introduces us to one of the most controversial intellectual movements of the 20th century, the "radical right", and discusses its adherents' different attempts to imagine political societies after the death or decline of liberalism. Questioning democracy's most basic norms and practices, these critics rejected ideas about human equality, minority rights, religious toleration, and cultural pluralism not out of implicit biases, but out of explicit principle.
-
-
Essential Reading for understanding the Far Right
- By BWA on 08-18-21
By: Matthew Rose
-
The Democrat Party Hates America
- By: Mark R. Levin
- Narrated by: Jeremy Lowell, Mark R. Levin
- Length: 11 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In American Marxism, Mark Levin explained how Marxist ideology has invaded our society and culture. In doing so, he exposed the institutions, scholars, and activists leading the revolution. Now, he picks up where he left off: to hold responsible the true malefactors steering our country down the wrong path. Insightful and hard-hitting as ever, Levin proves that since its establishment, the Democrat Party has set out to rewrite history and destroy the foundation of freedom in America.
-
-
As always thank you Mr. Levin for your Insight.
- By Yukonwill on 09-24-23
By: Mark R. Levin
-
The Enlightenment
- The Pursuit of Happiness, 1680-1790
- By: Ritchie Robertson
- Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble
- Length: 40 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This magisterial history - sure to become the definitive work on the subject - recasts the Enlightenment as a period not solely consumed with rationale and reason, but rather as a pursuit of practical means to achieve greater human happiness.
-
-
The quickest 40 hour audio book I’ve listen to
- By Joey Caster on 04-02-21
-
The Return of Resentment
- The Rise and Decline and Rise Again of a Political Emotion
- By: Robert A. Schneider
- Narrated by: Christopher Grove
- Length: 12 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The term "resentment" has dominated US news analysis since November 2016. Despite its increased use, this word seems to defy easy categorization. Does "resentment" describe many interlocking sentiments, or is it just another way of saying "anger"? Does it suggest an irrational grievance, as opposed to a legitimate callout of injustice? Does it imply political leanings, or is it nonpartisan by nature? Robert A. Schneider explores these questions and more, moving from eighteenth-century Britain to the aftermath of the French Revolution to social movements throughout the twentieth century.
-
The Death of Democracy
- Hitler's Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic
- By: Benjamin Carter Hett
- Narrated by: Steven Crossley
- Length: 11 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Why did democracy fall apart so quickly and completely in Germany in the 1930s? How did a democratic government allow Adolf Hitler to seize power? In this dramatic audiobook, Benjamin Carter Hett answers these questions, and the story he tells has disturbing resonances for our own time. Benjamin Carter Hett is one of America’s leading scholars of 20th-century Germany and a gifted storyteller whose portraits of the feckless politicians of the Weimar Republic show how fragile democracy can be when those in power do not respect it.
-
-
I can't trust the author's account of these events
- By Example: Mark Twain on 11-10-19
-
Democracy Rules
- By: Jan-Werner Müller
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 6 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Everyone knows that democracy is in trouble, but do we know what democracy actually is? Jan-Werner Müller, author of the widely translated and acclaimed What Is Populism?, takes us back to basics in Democracy Rules. In this short, elegant volume, he explains how democracy is founded not just on liberty and equality, but also on uncertainty.
-
-
Deeply instructive, flawlessly presented
- By MC on 07-11-23
-
A Thousand Small Sanities
- The Moral Adventure of Liberalism
- By: Adam Gopnik
- Narrated by: Adam Gopnik
- Length: 7 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A Thousand Small Sanities is a manifesto rooted in the lives of people who invented and extended the liberal tradition. Taking us from Montaigne to Mill, and from Middlemarch to the civil rights movement, Adam Gopnik argues that liberalism is not a form of centrism, nor simply another word for free markets, nor merely a term denoting a set of rights. It is something far more ambitious: the search for radical change by humane measures. Gopnik shows us why liberalism is one of the great moral adventures in human history.
-
-
Erudite and entertaining!
- By D. A. Vail on 05-20-19
By: Adam Gopnik
-
Jena 1800
- The Republic of Free Spirits
- By: Peter Neumann, Shelley Frisch - translator
- Narrated by: Christa Lewis
- Length: 6 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Around the turn of the nineteenth century, a steady stream of young German poets and thinkers coursed to the town of Jena to make history. The French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars had dealt a one-two punch to the dynastic system. Confidence in traditional social, political, and religious norms had been replaced by a profound uncertainty that was as terrifying for some as it was exhilarating for others. Nowhere was the excitement more palpable than among the extraordinary group of poets, philosophers, translators, and socialites who gathered in this Thuringian village.
-
-
Excellent book
- By Reid Kotlas on 08-02-24
By: Peter Neumann, and others
-
How to Destroy America in Three Easy Steps
- By: Ben Shapiro
- Narrated by: Ben Shapiro
- Length: 6 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States to the New York Times' 1619 project, the modern Left views American history through the lens of competing oppressions, replacing the traditional understanding that all Americans are part of a shared journey toward the perfection of universal ideals. Their attacks on the values that built our nation, from the rights to free speech and self-defense to the importance of marriage and faith communities, are insidious because they replace each of them with nothing beyond an increased reliance on the government.
-
-
A necessary call for unity
- By Brian Sachetta on 07-21-20
By: Ben Shapiro
-
American Marxism
- By: Mark R. Levin
- Narrated by: Jeremy Lowell, Mark R. Levin
- Length: 9 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 2009, Mark R. Levin galvanized conservatives with his unforgettable manifesto Liberty and Tyranny, by providing a philosophical, historical, and practical framework for halting the liberal assault on Constitution-based values. That book was about standing at the precipice of progressivism’s threat to our freedom, and now, over a decade later, we’re fully over that precipice and paying the price. In American Marxism, Levin explains how the core elements of Marxist ideology are now pervasive in American society and culture.
-
-
An articulate and point by point analysis of current affairs
- By Ricky_Savage on 07-13-21
By: Mark R. Levin
-
Democratic Justice
- Felix Frankfurter, the Supreme Court, and the Making of the Liberal Establishment
- By: Brad Snyder
- Narrated by: James Fouhey
- Length: 37 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The conventional wisdom about Felix Frankfurter―Harvard law professor and Supreme Court justice―is that he struggled to fill the seat once held by Oliver Wendell Holmes. Scholars have portrayed Frankfurter as a judicial failure, a liberal lawyer turned conservative justice, and the Warren Court’s principal villain. And yet none of these characterizations rings true.
-
-
Great book
- By Kenneth J. Laska on 02-18-23
By: Brad Snyder
-
What It Took to Win
- A History of the Democratic Party
- By: Michael Kazin
- Narrated by: Lee Goettl
- Length: 13 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In What It Took to Win, the eminent historian Michael Kazin identifies and assesses the Democratic Party's long-running commitment to creating "moral capitalism" - a system that mixed entrepreneurial freedom with the welfare of workers and consumers. And yet the same party that championed the rights of the white working man also vigorously protected or advanced the causes of slavery, segregation, and Indian removal.
-
-
Timely and informative History Book
- By Asha Sceanca on 03-24-22
By: Michael Kazin
-
Abortion and the Law in America
- Roe v. Wade to the Present
- By: Mary Ziegler
- Narrated by: Teri Schnaubelt
- Length: 11 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With the Supreme Court likely to reverse Roe v. Wade, the landmark abortion decision, American debate appears fixated on clashing rights. The first comprehensive legal history of a vital period, Abortion and the Law in America illuminates an entirely different and unexpected shift in the terms of debate. Drawing on unexplored records and interviews with key participants, Ziegler complicates the view that the Supreme Court is responsible for the escalation of the conflict.
-
-
Great history
- By AustinCy on 06-17-23
By: Mary Ziegler
-
The Dying Citizen
- How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization Are Destroying the Idea of America
- By: Victor Davis Hanson
- Narrated by: James Edward Thomas
- Length: 15 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Human history is full of the stories of peasants, subjects, and tribes. Yet the concept of the “citizen” is historically rare — and was among America’s most valued ideals for over two centuries. But without shock treatment, warns historian Victor Davis Hanson, American citizenship as we have known it may soon vanish.
-
-
From an uneducated reader;
- By wbc on 10-12-21
-
The Shattering
- America in the 1960s
- By: Kevin Boyle
- Narrated by: Jonathan Yen
- Length: 18 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On July 4, 1961, the rising middle-class families of a Chicago neighborhood gathered before their flag-bedecked houses, a confident vision of the American Dream. That vision was shattered over the following decade, its inequities at home and arrogance abroad challenged by powerful civil rights and antiwar movements. Assassinations, social violence, and the blowback of a "silent majority" shredded the American fabric.
-
-
The insights of this period are enlightening
- By recreational skier on 01-17-22
By: Kevin Boyle
-
The Conservative Sensibility
- By: George F. Will
- Narrated by: Peter Ganim
- Length: 24 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist's "astonishing" and "enthralling" New York Times best seller and Notable Book about how the Founders' belief in natural rights created a great American political tradition (Booklist) - "easily one of the best books on American Conservatism ever written" (Jonah Goldberg).
-
-
Conservativism explained and in practice
- By kevinf on 06-13-19
By: George F. Will
Critic reviews
"No post-mortem, James Traub's urgent book accounts for what liberalism has been, why it stumbled, and why it must revive. Much as in the 1930s, assaults on liberal politics from the right and the left practically define our low, dishonest time. Traub joins a rising tide of writers, citizens, and political leaders who are reclaiming the rich, soulful, and indispensable liberal tradition." (Sean Wilentz)
"What Was Liberalism? provides a concise guide to both the origins and current travails of the most important idea of our time, one that is being threatened by populists and authoritarians today around the world. It is both sympathetic about liberalism's virtues and clear-eyed as to its limitations, showing us a way forward out of the present crisis." (Francis Fukuyama)
"In this remarkable tour de force, James Traub traces the roots of the idea of liberalism with such nuance and depth that even those steeped in political philosophy will gain insight--still more those of us who simply care about basic concepts of governance. This is an invaluable guide to the crisis that now afflicts the West." (John Sexton, President Emeritus of New York University)