Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness From the Sunday Times bestselling author of Endeavour
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Peter Moore is a writer, journalist and lecturer in creative writing at the University of Oxford. He is the author of Damn His Blood; New York Times 'Notable Book of the Year' The Weather Experiment; Sunday Times bestseller Endeavour; and Life, Liberty & the Pursuit of Happiness. From 2019 to 2023, he presented the history podcast Travels Through Time. His latest book is A Life on the Edge, a new biography of Thomas Cochrane.<b>[An] absorbing book...</b> Moore has a <b>keen eye for the sort of eloquent detail</b> that enlivens biography, and he <b>expertly </b>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 . . . <b>Moore [is] a crisp writer and adept at narrative sweep</b>
- Henry Hitchings, The Times
[An] <b>engaging and thoroughly reader-friendly book</b>...<b> </b>[<i>Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness</i>] 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, <b>positively chilling</b>
- Noel Malcolm, Telegraph
In his <b>engaging narrative history</b> Peter Moore argues that Jefferson's celebrated words provide the key to understanding... a vibrant, enlightened Anglo-American culture of the eighteenth century
- T.H. Breen, TLS
A timely reminder that the origins of the three big ideas in the American Dream lay mainly in Great Britain, with a lively account of the principal actors and episodes in the developing drama, and Benjamin Franklin in the starring role: <b>a great read</b>
LADY HALE
With <b>deft insights</b> and in <b>clear prose</b>, Moore restores the cosmopolitan origins of an American Revolution meant to liberate human potential. In this <b>eloquent </b>book, that revolution becomes more global and enduring and less parochial and limited
ALAN TAYLOR, Pulitzer Prize winning author of American Revolutions
Building on the pioneering work of Bernard Bailyn and John Brewer, <b>Peter Moore offers a gripping account</b> of the way in which British pamphlet wars of the 1760s fuelled American debates about independence. Mixing famous Founders with lesser known figures, especially Franklin's long-time friend the Tory printer and publisher William Strahan, <b>Moore's book brings out the hidden roots of the Declaration of Independence</b>
STELLA TILLYARD, author of The Great Level
<b>Rollicking... </b>The book's <b>compulsive readability</b> is a tribute to Moore's skill at cracking open the pre-revolutionary period and reanimating the contingencies that eventually drove the settlers to embrace independence. Can be read as a refutation of originalism, or the contention that we should still live in a world governed by the putative beliefs of the Founding Fathers
Washington Post
History is best written by the losers. In <i>Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness</i>, Peter Moore... shows how Britain exported its highest ideals to the Americans who rejected it
- Dominic Green, Wall Street Journal
Moore offers a <b>rich and immersive</b> intellectual history of the American Revolution... <b>This is a pleasure</b>
Publisher's Weekly (starred review)
Like Jenny Uglow's <i>The Lunar Men </i>and Leo Damrosch's <i>The Club</i>, Moore's <b>vibrant </b>group biography brings to life the intellectual and political currents, in Britain and Colonial America, that gave rise to the phrase "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,"... <b>An energetic and meticulously researched history</b>
Kirkus (starred review)
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
'Absorbing... fascinating... eloquent' THE TIMES
'Engaging and thoroughly reader-friendly' TELEGRAPH
'Wonderfully absorbing and stimulating' SARAH BAKEWELL
Enlightenment Britain was ablaze with ambition and energy. Great writers like Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, Samuel Johnson, John Wilkes and Catharine Macaulay were part of a pioneering generation that shaped and inspired the American Dream. For the first time, bestselling historian Peter Moore vividly traces the transatlantic friendships and revolutionary ideas that inspired the Declaration of Independence.
'Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness' is the best-known phrase from that document, which was drafted by Thomas Jefferson in the summer of 1776. Today this line is evoked as a shorthand for that ideal we call the American Dream. But the vision it encapsulates – of a free and happy world – has its roots in Great Britain.
This book tells the story of the years that preceded the Declaration. From the accession of King George III to the astonishing tale of John Wilkes, from the notorious Stamp Act to the Boston Tea Party, it shows how Britain and her American Colonies broke apart. Following a star cast of Enlightenment characters, through their letters, arguments and rivalries, it reveals the rise of a rebellious and daring ideology – one that gave rise to the democratic birth of the United States and the principles we live by to this day.
'Deft insights and in clear prose' ALAN TAYLOR
'A gripping account' STELLA TILLYARD
'Rollicking...compulsive readability' WASHINGTON POST
'A great read' LADY HALE