by Walter A. McDougall April 5, 2004 We are pleased to publish
the excerpt below from the just-published book Freedom Just
Around the Corner: A New American History, 1585-1828, by Walter
A. McDougall, Senior Fellow of the Foreign Policy Research
Institute and Co-Chairman of our History Institute for Teachers.
McDougall is also the Alloy-Ansin Professor of History at the
University of Pennsylvania and a Vietnam veteran. We publish
this excerpt from the preface of the book with permission of the
publisher, HarperCollins. McDougall will lead a BookTalk in
Philadelphia on May 13 sponsored by FPRI; for details about this
event and other book talks by McDougall, visit our website
www.fpri.org. The creation of the United States of America is
the central event of the past four hundred years. If some
ghostly ship, some Flying Dutchman, were transported in time
from the year 1600 into the present, the crew would be amazed by
our technology and the sheer numbers of people on the globe, but
the array of civilizations wou