Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness: Britain and the American Dream

National Archives Museum
Online

Peter Moore’s Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness tells the true story of what may be the most successful import in U.S. 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. Moore argues that everyone, it seemed, had “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” on their minds and reveals how these ideals made their way across an ocean and started a revolution