Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness: Britain and the American Dream ~ SIGNED & NUMBERED
by Moore, Peter
- New
- Hardcover
- Signed
- first
- Condition
- New/New
- ISBN 10
- 0374600597
- ISBN 13
- 9780374600594
- Seller
-
Daphne, Alabama, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
SCARCE SIGNED! FIRST EDITION, first printing. Full number line present. Book is brand new and unread. Personally hand signed to bespoke, hand numbered (#4), bookplate affixed to ffep. Dust jacket hand covered in protective archival grade Mylar for many worry free years of reading/collecting! Photos available upon request.
"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.
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Details
- Bookseller
- Books On The Boulevard (US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 1046
- Title
- Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness: Britain and the American Dream ~ SIGNED & NUMBERED
- Author
- Moore, Peter
- Format/Binding
- Hardcover
- Book Condition
- New
- Jacket Condition
- New
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Edition
- First Hardcover Signed
- ISBN 10
- 0374600597
- ISBN 13
- 9780374600594
- Publisher
- Farrar, Straus and Giroux
- Date Published
- 2023
- Keywords
- signed; collectible; autographed, history, US History, World History, Founding Fathers, Ben Franklin, Revolutionary War, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence, 1776
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Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- First Edition
- In book collecting, the first edition is the earliest published form of a book. A book may have more than one first edition in...
- Number Line
- A series of numbers appearing on the copyright page of a book, where the lowest number generally indicates the printing of that...
- FFEP
- A common abbreviation for Front Free End Paper. Generally, it is the first page of a book and is part of a single sheet that...
- New
- A new book is a book previously not circulated to a buyer. Although a new book is typically free of any faults or defects, "new"...
- Jacket
- Sometimes used as another term for dust jacket, a protective and often decorative wrapper, usually made of paper which wraps...
- Bookplate
- Highly sought after by some collectors, a book plate is an inscribed or decorative device that identifies the owner, or former...