Declaration: The Nine Tumultuous Weeks When America Became Independent, May 1-July 4, 1776 (Simon & Schuster America Collection)

Fascinating, beautiful, eloquent and timely ... this is how men accomplish greatness when ambitions rise above greed and the shared good of the common all replaces privileges for an elite few. Hogeland outlines the clash between two great ideas; the Tory, or conservative, commitment to the status quo of banks, business and property; and the Whig, or democratic, rights of workers, farmers and the militias. The focus is on one topic -- the right to be independent of a government that ignored the best interests of the people and instead supported an old and unresponsive Establishment. Hogeland deftly outlines two powerful forces for independence; the Southern aristocratic desire for a kingless state and the Northern quest for virtuous and least corruptible government based on town meetings. The differences, resolved from May 1 to July 2, 1776, overcame the Virginia opposition to independence which otherwise would have doomed the colonies. Without union, the British could have pitted colonies against each other to crush the conflict which had begun the spring of 1775. Delegates who debated independence or reconciliation met under the immediate threat of a British invasion fleet carrying at least 13,000 Hessian mercenaries. In contrast to much of today's anti-government greed, the men who advocated independence included Benjamin Rush, who later became the chief doctor of the Continental Army, and who wanted "to improve diet and reduce drinking among the American poor, to help them rise from squalor by bettering themselves." Pennsylvania's new constitution "... regulated monopolies ... refused to charter a bank they believed served the rich at the expense of the poor ... pushed back against predatory credit and foreclosure, forcing the lending class to accept discounted payments. Herman Husband, a preacher and Pennsylvania assembly member in 1776, "... wanted taxes on income and wealth, and he wanted them to be progressive. He wanted a public program to make old people financially secure." These were among the people who created independence. They varied from radical populists who sought democracy for the people to John Adams, an elite lawyer from Massachusetts who "wanted above all to prevent democratic populism there ... in the end Adams succeeded." Such was the diversity of independence; the issues they debated are still at the heart of American politics, and this book is a superb introduction to those arguments, passions and triumphs.

I have only just leapt through the book but it looks like it is going to be every bit of interesting history that I was looking for. I am currently doing my second read of 1776 and I believe the book Declaration, the Nine Weeks when America became Independant is going to be a perfect companion to 1776. I believe these are two books that should be required reading for every person in high school or college. I have studied history all my life and what I found out about the people of our country is that most of them don't know the history of our country. It is a magnificent history of men and women and a search for freedom. Read the books, I know you will enjoy them.

Good copy and came on time. Just what I wanted.

This book is quite simply a must read. In a concise, straightforward, and readable style, the author has provided us with what really transpired leading unto and through the Declaration of Independence. As always, the truth is more compelling than the legends and myths, and this author has in a journalistic style simply reported the facts, and the players. How do 13 disparate colonies reach agreement to take on the mightiest of military forces? Well, read this book of these extraordinary actions and people. BTW: the usual names appear appropriately, but what you will find is the names of the high impact people that you may not have heard about before. Further, and as extraordinary, you will learn of the painful sacrifices and compromises made by individuals to better the cause greater than the individual. Upon reading the latter, you will undoubtedly say to yourself "hmmmm", yes the petulant children in Washington running our government and country into the ground should be made to read every word of this book before any further action is taken. For the most part you will read about educated men during the time period covered, but there were a majority of men who were not educated in the formal sense. These folks of the 1770s took on the mightiest of armadas and armies and created a nation for which they only had faith in the future that it would all work out. Yet the current crop of elected officials which are greater in numbers and education cannot even balance a budget. This book really must be read to understand what really happened and how greater an accomplishment it was than all of the myths and legends combined. Truly extraordinary.

I've been a fan of William Hogeland's other books and was thus prepared to like this one too, but "like" doesn't begin to express my enthusiasm. I felt that I wasn't reading history but experiencing it, and it wasn't at all the history of the Declaration of Independence that I'd been taught. Rather, I was in the middle of a tumultuous cliffhanger, with the outcome of independence for the colonies in doubt right down to the last hours. Ken Burns and Hollywood, take note of this book! Here are vivid portraits of our forefathers--John Adams, Samuel Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and many others who have somehow not had their crucial roles emphasized in most histories--and these are very dramatic renderings, the shortcomings and foibles as well as the amazing talent and courage.Yes, this is a page-turner that reads almost like fiction, but Hogeland has certainly not used poetic license in his presentation. There's none of the guesswork that you get in some popularizations of history--"John Adams must have been feeling..." or "Perhaps he was encouraged by...." In fact, there are nearly sixty pages of notes at the end explaining not just which sources Hogeland used for nearly every paragraph of the text but also why he chose this particular version when two or more sources disagree. Add to that almost ten pages of the sources he consulted and you realize that while this book reads like a novel, it is a work of real scholarship.What a wonderful way to relearn--actually unlearn and then relearn--American history. I can't recommend this book highly enough.