Freethinkers by Susan Jacoby

Rating: 4.0

What it's about:
At a time when the separation of church and state is under attack as never before, Freethinkers offers a powerful defense of the secularist heritage that gave Americans the first government in the world founded not on the authority of religion but on the bedrock of human reason. In impassioned, elegant prose, celebrated author Susan Jacoby traces more than two hundred years of secularist activism, beginning with the fierce debate over the omission of God from the Constitution. Moving from nineteenth-century abolitionism and suffragism through the twentieth century's civil liberties, civil rights, and feminist movements, Freethinkers illuminates the neglected achievements of secularists who, allied with tolerant believers, have led the battle for reform in the past and today.
Rich with such iconic figures as Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Paine, and the once-famous Robert Green Ingersoll, Freethinkers restores to history the passionate humanists who struggled against those who would undermine the combination of secular government and religious liberty that is the glory of the American system. -taken from back of book

My thoughts:
Freethinkers is a history lesson we never learned in school. Susan Jacoby brings to light a number of significant people from the past who wanted to change the future. She begins in the days of the American Revolution and covers more than 200 years of freethinking people and the principles they fought for. The writing can be a little cloying and dull at times but the information Jacoby relates is important and much of it probably unknown to much of the American populace. This book illuminates many (sadly) uncelebrated freethinkers in our history and is certainly worth a read.