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	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Marie Arendt
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Politics & government

DECLARING INDEPENDENCE

Edward J. Larson

Why 1776 Matters

The approaching 250th anniversary of 1776 calls for a new reckoning with the ideals and sacrifices that animated.

The self-evident truths of 1776 hover over America's divisions - as inspiring ideals, as measures of how far the nation still must come, as the hypocrisy of slaveholders, as intrusions on local traditions. The revolutionary politics of 1776 turned from securing the rights of Englishmen to establishing the authority of an independent nation. The battlefields of 1776 cast the military mould for the war years to come and gave an enduring symbol of gritty determination. Drawing together the eloquence of Jefferson and the insistence of Paine, the strategies of generals and the audacious tactics of armies on the move and the powerful political movement that transformed colonies into states, this history of 1776 is a leading scholar's distillation of the pivotal events that must be reckoned with two hundred and fifty years after the nation's birth.

Edward J. Larson, a Pulitzer Prizewinning historian, has written several acclaimed works on early America, most recently a study of liberty and slavery at the founding, American Inheritance. He teaches at Pepperdine University, and lives near Los Angeles, California.

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Book Published 2025-11-01 by W.W. Norton & Company

Comments

Larson's eloquent and illuminating Declaring Independence ranks as the indispensable history to read as Americans prepare for our 250th anniversary as a nation.

A profound account of a pivotal year, 1776, with special emphasis on the generative state constitutions and state declarations of rights that took shape that year. If you want to understand America - all of it, deeply, widely, then, now, and in between - read Larson.

Timely and timeless.

Declaring Independence is a brilliant illumination of the self-evident truths that inspired America's revolutionary war against the tyrannical British monarchy. On the eve of our 250th anniversary, if we are to reclaim our founding ideals of democratic self-government and rule by law, we should begin by pouring over every studied page of Edward Larson's anniversary gift to America.

At a time when the guardrails of our democracy are being tested, it is vitally important to understand the foundations of American government. Larson has written a magnificent book that explains how pivotal 1776 was for liberty, equality, and democracy. This beautifully written history is stunning in its lessons for today.