Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, Britain and the American Dream, Peter Moore. Published by Chatto & Windus, London, 2023. Signed First Edition. 484pp. with glossy colour plates, bibliography, notes and index. Black boards, white titles, red endpapers. In fine, unread condition.
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.
