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Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness
- Britain and the American Dream
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 17 hrs and 16 mins
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Publisher's summary
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." 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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From his early career as a printer and journalist to his scientific work and his role as a founder of a new republic, Benjamin Franklin has always seemed the inevitable embodiment of American ingenuity. But in his youth, he had to make his way through a harsh colonial world, where he fought many battles with his rivals, but also with his wayward emotions. Taking Franklin to the age of 41, when he made his first electrical discoveries, Bunker goes behind the legend to reveal the sources of his passion for knowledge.
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Good Book but LOTS of Names
- By Tim on 10-31-19
By: Nick Bunker
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Thomas Paine
- Enlightenment, Revolution, and the Birth of Modern Nations
- By: Craig Nelson
- Narrated by: Paul Hecht
- Length: 15 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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John Adams told Thomas Jefferson that “history is to ascribe the American Revolution to Thomas Paine.” Thomas Edison called him “the equal of Washington in making American liberty possible.” He was a founder of both the United States and the French Revolution. He invented the phrase, “The United States of America.” He rose from abject poverty in working-class England to the highest levels of the era’s intellectual elite. And yet, by the end of his life, Thomas Paine was almost universally reviled.
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This man should be a household name!
- By Darlene Davis on 11-21-11
By: Craig Nelson
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The Regency Years
- During Which Jane Austen Writes, Napoleon Fights, Byron Makes Love, and Britain Becomes Modern
- By: Robert Morrison
- Narrated by: Chris MacDonnell
- Length: 13 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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The Victorians are often credited with ushering in our current era, yet the seeds of change were planted in the years before. The Regency (1811-1820) began when the profligate Prince of Wales - the future King George IV - replaced his insane father, George III, as Britain's ruler. Around the regent surged a society steeped in contrasts: evangelicalism and hedonism, elegance and brutality, exuberance and despair. The arts flourished at this time with a showcase of extraordinary writers and painters such as Jane Austen, Lord Byron, the Shelleys, John Constable, and J. M. W. Turner.
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What a time!
- By BK on 06-18-19
By: Robert Morrison
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The Modern Scholar
- The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin
- By: Professor H.W. Brands
- Narrated by: H.W. Brands
- Length: 7 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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This course examines the life of Benjamin Franklin and his influence on both American and world history. He remains the model of the American thinker - a man who was interested in nearly everything, and who pursued those interests with an admirable and contagious passion. To study Franklin's life is to learn not only the history of a single man, but to understand some of the most monumental changes in all of human history.
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Love it
- By Holly on 02-20-16
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Oliver Wendell Holmes
- A Life in War, Law, and Ideas
- By: Stephen Budiansky
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean
- Length: 16 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Holmes twice escaped death as a young Union officer in the Civil War when musket balls barely missed his heart and spinal cord. He lived ever after with unwavering moral courage, scorn for dogma, and an insatiable intellectual curiosity. Named to the Supreme Court by Theodore Roosevelt at age 61, he served for nearly three decades, writing a series of famous, eloquent, and often dissenting opinions that would prove prophetic in securing freedom of speech, protecting the rights of criminal defendants, and ending the Court's reactionary resistance to social and economic reforms.
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Top-Notch Biography
- By Jean on 08-01-19
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Ben Franklin: Inventing America
- Sterling Point Books
- By: Thomas Fleming
- Narrated by: A. C. Fellner
- Length: 4 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Perhaps more than even Washington, Jefferson, or Adams, Ben Franklin is the Founding Father who best exemplifies the authentic American spirit and values. Eminent historian Thomas Fleming paints a lively portrait of this self-made man blessed with a wealth of talents: a best-selling author, the most important newspaper publisher in America, and a world-renowned scientist and inventor before he took on the task of becoming the true "Father" of American independence.
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Amazing and Inspiring
- By Kindle Customer on 11-26-11
By: Thomas Fleming
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American Rebels
- How the Hancock, Adams, and Quincy Families Fanned the Flames of Revolution
- By: Nina Sankovitch
- Narrated by: Suzie Althens
- Length: 15 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Nina Sankovitch’s American Rebels explores, for the first time, the intertwined lives of the Hancock, Quincy, and Adams families, and the role each person played in sparking the American Revolution. American Rebels explores how the desire for independence cut across class lines, binding people together as well as dividing them -rebels versus loyalists - as they pursued commonly held goals of opportunity, liberty, and stability. Nina Sankovitch's new audiobook is a fresh history of our revolution that makes listeners look more closely at Massachusetts.
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I loved this book!
- By John H on 06-22-20
By: Nina Sankovitch
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Amazing Grace
- William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery
- By: Eric Metaxas
- Narrated by: Johnny Heller
- Length: 10 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Amazing Grace tells the story of the remarkable life of the British abolitionist William Wilberforce (1759-1833). This accessible biography chronicles Wilberforce's extraordinary role as a human rights activist, cultural reformer, and member of Parliament. At the center of this heroic life was a passionate 20-year fight to abolish the British slave trade, a battle Wilberforce won in 1807, as well as efforts to abolish slavery itself in the British colonies.
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A Marvelous Story Gloriously Told
- By Douglas on 02-24-13
By: Eric Metaxas
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The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin
- By: Gordon S. Wood
- Narrated by: Peter Johnson
- Length: 10 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Central to America's idea of itself is the character of Benjamin Franklin. We all know him, or think we do: In recent works and in our inherited conventional wisdom, he remains fixed in place as a genial polymath and self-improver who was so very American that he is known by us all as the first American.
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I have good news and bad news
- By Ernie on 07-22-04
By: Gordon S. Wood
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Covered with Night
- A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America
- By: Nicole Eustace
- Narrated by: Laural Merlington
- Length: 14 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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On the eve of a major treaty conference between Iroquois leaders and European colonists in the distant summer of 1722, two White fur traders attacked an Indigenous hunter and left him for dead near Conestoga, Pennsylvania. This act of brutality set into motion a remarkable series of criminal investigations and cross-cultural negotiations that challenged the definition of justice in early America. Leading historian Nicole Eustace reconstructs the crime and its aftermath, bringing us into the overlapping worlds of white colonists and Indigenous peoples in this formative period.
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YES! I GET IT! I've read history before - JUST STOP!!!!! British settlers were arrogant jerks!! Aaaaaaaargh
- By Anonymous From MA on 06-02-22
By: Nicole Eustace
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First Principles
- What America's Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country
- By: Thomas E. Ricks
- Narrated by: James Lurie
- Length: 11 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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On the morning after the 2016 presidential election, Thomas Ricks awoke with a few questions on his mind: What kind of nation did we now have? Is it what was designed or intended by the nation's founders? Trying to get as close to the source as he could, Ricks decided to go back and read the philosophy and literature that shaped the founders' thinking, and the letters they wrote to each other debating these crucial works—among them the Iliad, Plutarch's Lives, and the works of Xenophon, Epicurus, Aristotle, Cato, and Cicero.
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Excellent book, opinionated epilogue.
- By Noetic Seeker on 01-23-21
By: Thomas E. Ricks
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What listeners say about Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- CarlH
- 03-21-24
Engaging story-telling
Unlike what the rather tendentious title of this might suggest, this is very accessible overview of the philosophical themes behind “The American Dream.” Moores book reads like a very good group biography of a selected thinkers, writers, and activists, all with roots in and ties to Britain, and particularly Benjamin Franklin. The narration was exceptionally good at making conversations come alive and the capturing the tone of written materials. So glad I picked this up and I highly recommend it.
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- Trebla
- 07-17-23
Fascinating story gets lost a bit in the details
Moore takes on a wonderful & difficult task of describing the environment and personalities encircling Ben Franklin as a way to describe the evolution of the man and the Revolution. This is an important piece of any history, the environment, which is too often lost in tales of The Man. My quibble would be the time spent on minutia (a 6 or 8 paces duel?) which diluted the the picture he painted. Near excellent.
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- W Zuelzer
- 07-22-23
Review
Well done Worth listening Enjoyed nuance of speech from speaker
Story enlarged understanding of events of that time
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- Credible1
- 07-18-23
The untold story. Of the american revolution
A magnificent behind the scenes look. At the Genesis of the American revolotion and of the role played by the inimitable Founding father Ben Franklin.
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