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Preface I am pleased to offer this work as the third consecutive encyclopedia that I have authored in the last two years. ­ Those who are familiar with the previous two, one which focuses on the U.S. flag and the other on the Declaration of In­ de ­ pen­dence, ­of will undoubtedly see connections among all three. All deal with symbols that express American identity. The last two deal with objects, in one case a parchment, and now a bell with a biblical inscription that is relatively self-­explanatory, but only partially illuminates the object itself. ­ These encyclopedias are, in turn, related to the largest encyclopedia that I have written, on the Constitutional Convention of 1787, as well as to encyclopedias that I have edited on the First and Fourth Amend- ments, civil rights and liberties, constitutional amendments and proposed amend- ments, and ­ great American ­lawyers and judges. I enjoy compiling and writing encyclopedia entries perhaps much as natu­ral sci- entists might enjoy collecting and cata­loguing species. Just as such scientists gain more knowledge about a species by identifying and collecting individual members, so too have I have gained a greater understanding of the history of the Liberty Bell as I’ve written and researched about it. As I near the pro­cess of identifying and describing all the individual essays, I generally begin to think of some summative essays that help put them in context. One of the joys of writing an encyclopedia on the Liberty Bell is finding how many replicas ­ there are both in the United States and abroad. Although each has an individual story, the replicas as a ­ whole, the rea- sons they ­were cast, and the ways that they have been interpreted paint a broader picture. Similarly, while it is exciting to research each of the seven trips that the Liberty Bell took from 1885 to 1915, it is also impor­ tant to try to analyze the impact of ­these trips as a ­ whole on the national consciousness. As I describe in the Introduction, I began this work remembering the many ques- tions that schoolchildren I gave guest talks to asked about the Liberty Bell/ on ­ those occasions where I happened to mention the topic while discussing the Dec- laration of In­de­pen­dence and the U.S. Constitution. It was not ­until a month or two ­ after I began research and writing that I was sure ­ there was enough material for a book, and even as the proj­ ect wound down, I found myself waking up in the early morning and wondering if ­there ­ were any entries that I might have omitted. As assiduously as I canvassed the Internet and other resources, I suspect that ­ there are some roadside replicas of the Liberty Bell that I have missed and some tidbits that ­ will remain for ­ future editions.