
Freedom's Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power, by Jefferson Cowie, Basic Books, 512 pages, $35
Jefferson Cowie is a prodigious researcher who often shows sensitivity to historical complexities, and his narrative skills shine. The Vanderbilt historian's latest book, Freedom's Dominion, is readable and often provocative. But it superimposes a dubious thesis about Southern history over the facts, arguing that "land dispossession, slavery, power, and oppression do not stand in contrast to freedom—they are expressions of it."