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"Gripping . . . . vibrant . . . A wonderfully absorbing and stimulating book." -- Sarah Bakewell, NBCC Award-winning author of How to Live and Humanly PossibleA 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.
