Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness by Peter Moore [Signed Edition]

SUMMARY

Bestselling historian Peter Moore traces how Enlightenment ideas were exported from Britain and put into practice in America - where they became the most successful export of all time, the American Dream. 

‘Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness’ is the best-known phrase from the Declaration of Independence, one of the most important documents of the eighteenth century and the whole Enlightenment Age. Written by Thomas Jefferson, the principal author of the text, it is frequently evoked today as a shorthand for that idea we call the ‘American Dream’. But this is a line with a surprising history. Rather than being uniquely American, the vision it encapsulates — of a free and happy world – owes a great deal to British thinkers too.

Centered on the life of Benjamin Franklin, featuring figures like the cultural giant Samuel Johnson, the ground-breaking historian Catharine Macaulay, the firebrand politician John Wilkes and revolutionary activist Thomas Paine, this book looks at the generation that preceded the Declaration in 1776. It takes us back to a vital moment in the foundation of the West, a time full of intent, confidence, and ideas. It tells a whole new story about the birth of the United States of America – and some of the key principles by which we live to this very day.

REVIEWS

[An] absorbing book… Moore has a keen eye for the sort of eloquent detail that enlivens biography, and he expertly evokes Franklin's transformation from proud artisan to member of a new American elite. He's particularly good on the quirkiness of Franklin's early adulthood… Moore [is] a crisp writer and adept at narrative sweep

Henry Hitchings, The Times

[An] engaging and thoroughly reader-friendly book… [Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness] is about how a crazed, paranoid kind of political rhetoric was spread from the England of Wilkes to the America of Franklin and Paine, making rebellion possible. This part of the story is not just convincing but, to a modern reader, positively chilling

Noel Malcolm, Telegraph