Da sempre considerato il piů grande presidente della storia degli Stati Uniti e mitizzato come 'emancipatore' degli schiavi, Lincoln č una figura storica affascinante, ma spesso sfuggente, dal carattere inquieto e tormentato, che si puň capire pienamente solo inserendolo nel suo contesto storico. Nato e cresciuto agli inizi dell'Ottocento in una famiglia povera di pionieri, Lincoln sembrň incarnare il mito americano del self-made man, riuscendo a diventare un avvocato di grido nell'Illinois in un momento in cui la nazione statunitense diventava sempre piů ricca e potente ed allo stesso tempo sempre piů lacerata dai contrasti scaturiti dall'industrializzazione incipiente nel Nord e dall'espansione della schiavitů nel Sud. Successivamente, Lincoln scalň i gradini del potere politico fino a diventare Presidente, mentre la grande lotta tra la libertŕ e la schiavitů divenne il punto centrale della vita politica, sociale ed economica degli Stati Uniti e provocň infine la Guerra Civile (1861-1865), che costituě il momento centrale del processo di formazione della nazione statunitense. A questo processo, Lincoln diede un contributo fondamentale e indelebile, riunificando il paese al prezzo di centinaia di migliaia di morti e mantenendo in vita gli ideali della repubblica democratica americana, creando, quindi, le basi della futura egemonia statunitense nel mondo contemporaneo. Non solo, con la sua legislazione a favore dell'emancipazione, Lincoln diede un contributo decisivo anche alla creazione di un mondo nel quale la libertŕ č ora riconosciuta come un diritto fondamentale e la s

William Lloyd Garrison and Giuseppe Mazzini, two of the foremost radicals of the nineteenth century, lived during a time of profound economic, social, and political transformation in America and Europe. Both born in 1805, but into dissimilar family backgrounds, the American Garrison and Italian Mazzini led entirely different lives -- one as a citizen of a democratic republic, the other as an exile proscribed by most European monarchies. Using a comparative analysis, Enrico Dal Lago suggests that Garrison and Mazzini nonetheless represent a connection between the egalitarian ideologies of American abolitionism and Italian democratic nationalism.

Focusing on Garrison's and Mazzini's activities and transnational links within their own milieus and in the wider international arena, Dal Lago shows why two nineteenth-century progressives and revolutionaries considered liberation from enslavement and liberation from national oppression as two sides of the same coin. At different points in their lives, both Garrison and Mazzini demonstrated this belief by concurrently supporting the abolition of slavery in the United States and the national revolutions in Italy. The two meetings Garrison and Mazzini had, in 1846 and in 1867, served to reinforce their sense that they somehow worked together toward the achievement of liberty not just in the United States and Italy, but also in the Atlantic and Euro-American world as a whole. In the end, the abolition of American slavery led to Garrison's consecration, while the new Italian kingdom forced Mazzini into exile. Despite these different outcomes, Garrison and Mazzini both attracted legions of devoted followers who believed these men personified the radical causes of the nations to which they belonged.

Dal Lago (American history, National U. of Ireland-Galway) offers an interpretive summary of the past and present comparative history of American slavery and related scholarship, and suggests further directions of inquiry. He covers American slavery at the periphery of the Atlantic system; colonial slave societies between reforms and revolutions; the 'cotton kingdom,' its neighbors, and its contemporaries; servitude and agrarian labor in the Euro-American world; abolitionism and nationalism on the two sides of the Atlantic; and the American Civil War, slavery, and emancipation in a nation-building age. Annotation ©2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Ground-breaking edited collection charting the rise and fall of forms of unfree labour in the ancient Mediterranean and in the modern Atlantic, employing the methodology of comparative history. The eleven chapters in the book deal with conceptual issues and different approaches to historical comparison, and include specific case-studies ranging from the ancient forms of slavery of classical Greece and of the Roman empire to the modern examples of slavery that characterised the Caribbean, Latin America and the United States. The results demonstrate both how much the modern world has inherited from the ancient in regard to ideology and practice of slavery; and also how many of the issues and problems related to the latter seem to have been fundamentally similar across time and space.