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Inventing America

Jefferson's Declaration of Independence

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Inventing America

By: Garry Wills
Narrated by: Tom Weitzel
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About this listen

 From acclaimed historian Garry Wills, author of Lincoln at Gettysburg, a celebrated re-appraisal of the meaning and the source of inspiration of The Declaration of Independence, based on a reading of Jefferson's original draft document.

Inventing America upended decades of thinking about The Declaration of Independence when it was first published in 1978 and remains one of the most influential and important works of scholarship about this founding document.  Wills challenged the idea that Jefferson took all his ideas from John Locke. Instead, by focussing on Jefferson's original drafts, he showed Jefferson's debt to Scottish Enlightenment philosophers such as Lord Kames and Francis Hutcheson, and even the metaphysics of Aristotle. Wills's close reading of the previously overlooked drafts of the Declaration have altered and deepened the meaning and consequences of the single most important document that contintues to define America. Americas Political Science Politics & Government Revolution & Founding United States World Inventing America

Critic reviews

“No one has offered so drastic a revision or so close or convincing an analysis as Wills has. . . . The results are little short of astonishing.” —Edmund S. Morgan, The New York Review of Books

“The best and most thorough analysis of the Declaration ever written.” —David Brion Davis, The New York Times Book Review

“A scintalling tour de force of historical detective work.” —Time
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