Jason Friedman's Liberty Street featured on Good Morning America

September 12, 2024 | by uscpress

Jason Friedman's new book, Liberty Street: A Savannah Family, Its Golden Boy, and the Civil War, was featured on Good Morning America as a GMA Buzz Pick for August 29, 2024.

In Liberty Street, as Jason K. Friedman renovates a flat in his historic Savannah townhouse, he unlocks the sweeping story of a the Cohens, a Southern Jewish family. The Cohens, part of a Sephardic community in London, arrived in South Carolina in the mid-1700s; became founding members of Charleston's Jewish congregation; and went on to build home, community, and success in Savannah.

Friedman takes the reader on a personal journey to understand the history of the Cohens. At the center of the story is a sensitive young man pulled between love and duty, a close-knit family straining under moral and political conflicts, and a city coming into its own. Friedman draws on letters, diaries, and his experiences traveling from Georgia to Virginia, uncovering hidden histories and exploring the ways place and collective memory haunt the present. At a moment when the hard light of truth shines on gauzy Lost-Cause myths, Liberty Street is a timely work of historical sleuthing.

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