Ten glorious months in Europe with one of the nineteenth century's greatest thinkers; "I live the life of a long dried sponge thrown into water," enthused the celebrated intellectual Francis Lieber (1798-1872) in a letter from Paris to his friend, the future Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner. In that letter, Lieber, a scholar well known on both sides of the Atlantic, described his joyous return to Europe in 1844 after two decades teaching and working in the United States. During his ten-month sabbatical, Lieber gloried in Europe's people, places, art, theater, and diversity. He not only...