Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America

The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America

Rosen, Jeffrey

Paperback

Historical FiguresGeneral World HistoryRevolutionary Period (1775-1800)

Publisher Price: $20.00

PREORDER - Expected ship date September 2, 2025

ISBN10: 1668002485
ISBN13: 9781668002483
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: Sep 2 2025
Pages: 368
Weight: 0.68
Height: 0.96 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.38
Language: English
A New York Times bestseller and an enriching...brilliant (David W. Blight, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Frederick Douglass) examination of what the pursuit of happiness meant to our nation's Founders and how that famous phrase defined their lives and became the foundation of our democracy.

The Declaration of Independence identified the pursuit of happiness as one of our unalienable rights, along with life and liberty. Jeffrey Rosen, the president of the National Constitution Center, profiles six of the most influential founders--Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton--to show what pursuing happiness meant in their lives, and to give us the best and most readable introduction to the ideas of the Founders that we have (Gordon Wood, author of Power and Liberty).

By reading the classical Greek and Roman moral philosophers who inspired the Founders, Rosen shows us how they understood the pursuit of happiness as a quest for being good, not feeling good--the pursuit of lifelong virtue, not short-term pleasure. Among those virtues were the habits of industry, temperance, moderation, and sincerity, which the Founders viewed as part of a daily struggle for self-improvement, character development, and calm self-mastery. They believed that political self-government required personal self-government. For all six Founders, the pursuit of virtue was incompatible with enslavement of African Americans, although the Virginians betrayed their own principles.

Immensely readable and thoughtful (Ken Burns), The Pursuit of Happiness is more than an elucidation of the Declaration's famous phrase; it is a revelatory journey into the minds of the Founders, and a deep, rich, and fresh understanding of the foundation of our democracy.

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