Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality
-
-
4.0 • 15 Ratings
-
-
- $12.99
-
- $12.99
Publisher Description
“A tour de force.... No one has ever written a book on the Declaration quite like this one.” —Gordon Wood, New York Review of Books
Winner of the Zócalo Book Prize
Winner of the Society of American Historians’ Francis Parkman Prize
Winner of the Chicago Tribune’s Heartland Prize (Nonfiction)
Finalist for the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation Hurston Wright Legacy Award
Shortlisted for the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction
Shortlisted for the Phi Beta Kappa Society’s Ralph Waldo Emerson Award
A New York Times Book Review Editors Choice Selection
Featured on the front page of the New York Times, Our Declaration is already regarded as a seminal work that reinterprets the promise of American democracy through our founding text. Combining a personal account of teaching the Declaration with a vivid evocation of the colonial world between 1774 and 1777, Allen, a political philosopher renowned for her work on justice and citizenship reveals our nation’s founding text to be an animating force that not only changed the world more than two-hundred years ago, but also still can. Challenging conventional wisdom, she boldly makes the case that the Declaration is a document as much about political equality as about individual liberty. Beautifully illustrated throughout, Our Declaration is an “uncommonly elegant, incisive, and often poetic primer on America’s cardinal text” (David M. Kennedy).
Customer Reviews
Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Eqaulity
Danielle Allen has written an important, revealing and pertinent analysis of the Declaration of Independence ("DOI"), which set the basis for our government and, subsequently, other governments as well. The meaning of, "all men are created equal," the relationship between equality and freedom, that governments should advance our pursuit of happiness but can only do so through debate and discussion with our input are shown to be part of the DOI's recipe for improving and changing governments. The removal of Jefferson's paragraph on slavery, the changes and contributions of Richard Henry Lee, Adams, Franklin, the Continental Congress and even the document's printers including an apparently erroneous period after the words, "pursuit of happiness," reveal the democratic process through which the DOI was written.
Our Declaration would be an easier read if it was half as long.
To eat an apple to bleed to pray I thank god and the USA.
Thank you United States of America. *AppSteve.Apple