The trouble with freedom

Love, hate and America's future

By: Melissa Butcher

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Hardcover | 20 January 2026

At a Glance

Hardcover
264 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
23.4 x 15.6 x 2.0

Hardcover

$50.59

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An illuminating account of how Americans have been divided by the very value that unites them.

America today is being torn apart by the struggle over a single concept, deeply rooted in the country’s sense of self: freedom. Battered by wave after wave of crises, ordinary people of all political persuasions have come to feel that their freedom is under threat – and with it, nothing less than the soul of the nation.

In The trouble with freedom, journalist and researcher Melissa Butcher takes a trip into the ferociously polarised world of American politics, hoping to find out what’s going on beneath the surface. Criss-crossing the country, she talks to a wide range of people: Democrat and Republican, gay and straight, urban and rural, immigrants, First Nations, Black, white, the incarcerated.

What she discovers is that political conflict is often the outcome of very personal experiences of managing cultural change. Exploring the different ways freedom has been used to define what it means to be American, Butcher encounters anger and distrust, but also untapped possibilities for empathy and care.

About the Author

Melissa Butcher is Education Programme Director at the social enterprise Cumberland Lodge and Professor Emeritus of Social and Cultural Geography at Birkbeck, University of London. A former journalist for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, she is the author of two books, five edited collections and numerous pieces of journalism and travelogues.

Industry Reviews

'Freedom to be all that you can be - or freedom for others to hurt you at will? Butcher's book gets to the heart of the American drama defining our age.'
Peter Pomerantsev, author of How to Win an Information War

'A deeply researched, fair-minded and bracing book. Melissa Butcher offers a window into how Americans define "freedom" in wildly different ways. In doing so, she reveals the popular appeal of the MAGA movement and examines the ideas that are at the core of its most indefatigable critics.'
Matthew Dallek, author of Birchers: How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right

'In this perceptive travelogue, Melissa Butcher joins a storied tradition kickstarted by the likes of Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont. After travelling the nation and interviewing hundreds of people across the political spectrum, Butcher offers keen insights into American political culture and its obsession with freedom. The takeaway: the United States is descending into civil war levels of polarisation in the abstract, but at a granular level, Americans have more in common than they think - and all hope is not lost.'
Andrew Hartman, author of Karl Marx in America

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