HOME View All Genre

Book

Audiobook

GENRES 🌙 Dark

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness - Peter Moore

By Peter Moore

Release Date: 2023-06-27

Genre: U.S. History

(0 ratings)
Read Download
“Gripping . . . Vibrant . . . A wonderfully absorbing and stimulating book.” —Sarah Bakewell, NBCC Award–winning author of How to Live and Humanly Possible

“[A] rollicking account . . . The book’s compulsive readability is a tribute to Moore’s skill at cracking open the pre-revolutionary period.” —Charles Arrowsmith, The Washington Post

A spirited group biography that explores the origins of the most iconic words in American history, and the remarkable transatlantic context from which they emerged.

The most famous phrase in American history once looked quite different. “The preservation of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness” was how Thomas Jefferson put it in the first draft of the Declaration, before the first ampersand was scratched out, along with “the preservation of.” In a statement as pithy—and contested—as this, a small deletion matters. And indeed, that final, iconizing revision was the last in a long chain of revisions stretching across the Atlantic and back. The precise contours of these three rights have never been pinned down—and yet in making these words into rights, Jefferson reified the hopes (and debates) not only of a group of rebel-statesmen but also of an earlier generation of British thinkers who could barely imagine a country like the United States of America.

Peter Moore’s Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness tells the true story of what may be the most successful import in US history: the “American dream.” Centered on the friendship between Benjamin Franklin and the British publisher William Strahan, and featuring figures including 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. Everyone, it seemed, had “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” on their minds; Moore shows why, and reveals how these still-nascent ideals made their way across an ocean and started a revolution.

Includes 16 pages of black-and-white images

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness - Peter Moore

By Peter Moore

Release Date: 2023-06-27

Genre: U.S. History

(0 ratings)
Read Download
“Gripping . . . Vibrant . . . A wonderfully absorbing and stimulating book.” —Sarah Bakewell, NBCC Award–winning author of How to Live and Humanly Possible

“[A] rollicking account . . . The book’s compulsive readability is a tribute to Moore’s skill at cracking open the pre-revolutionary period.” —Charles Arrowsmith, The Washington Post

A spirited group biography that explores the origins of the most iconic words in American history, and the remarkable transatlantic context from which they emerged.

The most famous phrase in American history once looked quite different. “The preservation of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness” was how Thomas Jefferson put it in the first draft of the Declaration, before the first ampersand was scratched out, along with “the preservation of.” In a statement as pithy—and contested—as this, a small deletion matters. And indeed, that final, iconizing revision was the last in a long chain of revisions stretching across the Atlantic and back. The precise contours of these three rights have never been pinned down—and yet in making these words into rights, Jefferson reified the hopes (and debates) not only of a group of rebel-statesmen but also of an earlier generation of British thinkers who could barely imagine a country like the United States of America.

Peter Moore’s Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness tells the true story of what may be the most successful import in US history: the “American dream.” Centered on the friendship between Benjamin Franklin and the British publisher William Strahan, and featuring figures including 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. Everyone, it seemed, had “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” on their minds; Moore shows why, and reveals how these still-nascent ideals made their way across an ocean and started a revolution.

Includes 16 pages of black-and-white images

More by Peter Moore

The 40-Year-Old Vespa Virgin

The 8-Hour Diet

Endeavour

Vroom With A View

The Lean Belly Prescription

Vroom By The Sea

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness

The Weather Experiment

The Wrong Way Home

Swahili For The Broken-Hearted

Dealing with Pain

Poultry Business in Africa: Poultry Management & Best Practices

The Full Montezuma

Smorgasbord

Reinventing Religion

Pain Toolkit for families, friends, and work colleagues

Prehab Pain Toolkit revised 15th Oct 2025

Pain and the Road to Recovery

Copyright

Badger To The Rescue

Poultry Business in Africa: Poultry Management & Best Practices 2nd Edition

No Shitting In The Toilet

Selfmgt Toolkit 5 Key Self-management Skills

Reich

Tangled Web

My Droving Days

Pain Toolkit

A New Approach to the Arts

Where are the Dead?

Reading the Signs

Earthly Immortalities

Related Articles