American Scripture
Making the Declaration of Independence
by Pauline Maier
Should I read this?
Recommended by 1 source and appears in Revolutions, History, and Nonfiction.
Pauline Maier shows us the Declaration as both the defining statement of our national identity and the moral standard by which we live as a nation. It is truly "American Scripture," and Maier tells us how it came to be from the Declaration's birth in the hard and tortuous struggle by which Americans arrived at Independence to the ways in which, ...
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Why recommended
Recommended by 1 source and appears in Revolutions, History, and Nonfiction.
Recommended by notable people
People and public figures who have recommended this book.
Recommendation Signals
Recommendation proof is sourced from public posts, interviews, reading lists, and cited references.
Simon Schama
“Best book ever written on Declaration of Independence is the late ( and deeply missed) Pauline Maier’s 1997 wonderful, readable work American Scripture”
Appears In
Not sure if this is the right fit?
Consider Accidental Presidents by Jared Cohen. Recommended by 10 sources.
“Accidental Presidents offers eight narrative portraits of men who succeeded to the U.S. presidency without election, using anecdote-rich scenes and readable context to show how personality and circumstance interact with office power. It’s strongest as a set of self-contained stories that make succession stakes concrete for non-specialist readers; it does not prioritize dense archival argument or exhaustive methodology, so expect some interpretive generalizations and repeated themes across cases. Use it for fast historical orientation rather than scholarly deep-dives.”
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Each recommendation is collected from a public source — interviews, articles, or curated lists — and linked to its original URL. Books with many verifiable recommendations from respected people rank higher.
American Scripture
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