In this lively and penetrating book, Rosenblatt offers an intellectual history of the term [liberalism], from its roots in Roman notions of civic duty and public morality down to its modern use ... She also challenges the traditional narrative of liberalism as an Anglo-American project ... Rosenblatt shows that liberalism has survived thanks to its appeal as a moral ideal, a vision of political community that is based not just on interests but also on values: respect, tolerance, and justice.

Rosenblatt has written one of those rare academic books that, for all its brilliance, needed to be longer. For someone seeking to reevaluate Britain’s place in the history of liberalism, she devotes little sustained attention to British thought and politics. Locke, one of the prime targets of her revisionism, gets just three pages of close analysis. The epilogue, at only thirteen pages, cannot be more than suggestive. At times, Rosenblatt’s argument becomes so compressed that she fails to distinguish adequately between the history of the word 'liberal' and the ideas we now associate with it. The two are, after all, separable ... Yet at the same time readers will come away with the realization that the liberal ideal has a much richer, deeper, more varied past than they might imagine from accounts that stress only the supposed Anglo-American path to 'classical' liberalism.

Rosenblatt is impressive in the scope of her reading and at her best in identifying different usages of the term liberal ... Rosenblatt is at her best when showing that 'classical liberalism' is largely a retrospective construct, justifying one modern ideological reading that seeks to minimize the role of the state and maximise that of the market ... So what game is Rosenblatt herself playing as a 'conceptual historian'? Essentially she offers a history of the word itself; in which case, it seems, anyone is a liberal if they claim to be so ... Though Rosenblatt...[tries] to resist making it all a cozy Anglo-American party, [she has] written [a book] that can help readers on both sides of the Atlantic.

In a book attuned to the power of words, it is surprising that 'neoliberalism' appears only once, in passing ... In her long history of liberalism, Rosenblatt’s treatment of the twentieth century remains more or less restricted to showing the triumph of laissez-faire and individualist liberalism in America. Yet even in America, the 'generous' stream of liberalism suggested by John Dewey persists—though it has undoubtedly been battered and bruised in recent decades. What is more, she gives relatively little attention to the fate of liberalism in twentieth-century France and Germany, even though, in the decades after World War II, France and West Germany were arguably the strongest embodiments of the older liberal traditions that she contrasts with post-war American liberalism ... Rosenblatt’s message for our own time is rather tepid ... can one convincingly designate these civic-minded qualities the core values of a political tradition that for two centuries has also repeatedly declared its allegiance to possessive individualism and the free market? ... Instead of leading us to a set of regenerative virtues, Rosenblatt’s account underscores the dilemmas that have chronically plagued liberalism.

Comparatively compact and elegantly written ... The Lost History of Liberalism offers fascinating discussions of liberalism’s engagement with religion and the Catholic Church, with colonialism, with the rise of state-sponsored education, with movements leading to the emancipation of slaves and of women, and with laissez-faire economics ... Despite [some] shortcomings — and any history is apt to overlook figures or to do a certain amount of cherry-picking — Rosenblatt does contemporary audiences a great service by illuminating the neglected tradition of continental European liberalism and showing how those liberals responded to the political, social, and economic challenges of their day. She does this admirably, revealing also early liberalism’s rich texture. As we search for ways to respond to the challenges of the contemporary world, The Lost History of Liberalism offers us a valuable resource.

Rosenblatt...brings considerable scholarly substance to this work, though most of it forms the infrastructure for the accessible text ... There are some true surprises here, too, perhaps most notably the initial liberal opposition to women’s rights and a fondness for eugenics in the late 19th and early 20th centuries ... Fair, balanced, and chockablock with information and surprise.