Britain and the American Dream (1740–1776)

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness

From the Sunday Times bestselling author of Endeavour

[An] absorbing book... Moore has a keen eye for the sort of eloquent detail that enlivens biography, and he expertly evokes Franklin's transformation from proud artisan to member of a new American elite. He's particularly good on the quirkiness of Franklin's early adulthood . . . Moore [is] a crisp writer and adept at narrative sweep

[An] engaging and thoroughly reader-friendly book... [Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness] is about how a crazed, paranoid kind of political rhetoric was spread from the England of Wilkes to the America of Franklin and Paine, making rebellion possible. This part of the story is not just convincing but, to a modern reader, positively chilling

In his engaging narrative history Peter Moore argues that Jefferson's celebrated words provide the key to understanding... a vibrant, enlightened Anglo-American culture of the eighteenth century

A timely reminder that the origins of the three big ideas in the American Dream lay mainly in Great Britain, with a lively account of the principal actors and episodes in the developing drama, and Benjamin Franklin in the starring role: a great read

With deft insights and in clear prose, Moore restores the cosmopolitan origins of an American Revolution meant to liberate human potential. In this eloquent book, that revolution becomes more global and enduring and less parochial and limited

ALAN TAYLOR, Pulitzer Prize winning author of American Revolutions

Building on the pioneering work of Bernard Bailyn and John Brewer, Peter Moore offers a gripping account of the way in which British pamphlet wars of the 1760s fuelled American debates about independence. Mixing famous Founders with lesser known figures, especially Franklin's long-time friend the Tory printer and publisher William Strahan, Moore's book brings out the hidden roots of the Declaration of Independence

STELLA TILLYARD, author of The Great Level

Rollicking... The book's compulsive readability is a tribute to Moore's skill at cracking open the pre-revolutionary period and reanimating the contingencies that eventually drove the settlers to embrace independence. Can be read as a refutation of originalism, or the contention that we should still live in a world governed by the putative beliefs of the Founding Fathers

History is best written by the losers. In Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, Peter Moore... shows how Britain exported its highest ideals to the Americans who rejected it

Moore offers a rich and immersive intellectual history of the American Revolution... This is a pleasure

Like Jenny Uglow's The Lunar Men and Leo Damrosch's The Club, Moore's vibrant group biography brings to life the intellectual and political currents, in Britain and Colonial America, that gave rise to the phrase "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,"... An energetic and meticulously researched history

Tracing this 'American Dream' through the writings of such English contemporaries as Samuel Johnson, Thomas Paine, the historian Catharine Macaulay, and the politician John Wilkes, Moore reminds us that the ideals embodied in the Declaration of Independence are by no means bounded to our shores

The vivid descriptions of people, modes of communication, and social life are fascinating and give this well-researched history the readability of fiction

With flair and insight, Peter Moore takes one of the most famous and deceptively simple lines in history - a line that founded a nation and changed the world. He digs into it, to unearth a wealth of unexpected influences and connections, a trove of gripping stories, and a vibrant company of characters. A wonderfully absorbing and stimulating book

SARAH BAKEWELL, author of At The Existentialist Cafe

What a scintillating read. Atmospheric yet analytical, well-paced yet deeply probing, Moore's book delivers striking new perspectives with the stylistic grace of the Founding Fathers. I loved it

DAISY DUNN, author of Not Far From Brideshead

The British empire of the eighteenth century blazed with the world-changing ideas and projects of thinkers and writers... Peter Moore captures this intellectual ferment in a fascinating narrative

ROBERT A. GROSS, author of The Minutemen and Their World

In bringing five participants vividly to life, Moore gives us a warmly human account of the birth of American democracy. How pleasing that deep scholarship can be so enjoyable and thought-awaking

MARTIN LATHAM, author of The Bookseller's Tale

Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness is that rarest of things: an ambitious history of ideas that is also deeply intimate and humane. Peter Moore has an eye for the kind of sparking detail that drags you into the past by the shirt collar. A work of astonishing insight, pathos, and literary elegance

In prose as fluid and engaging as Jefferson's own, Peter Moore reveals how cherished American ideals originated not from the end of one Founding Father's pen but through conversations across the Atlantic between men and women thinking and writing about how to make the world a better place

Kathleen DuVal, author of Independence Lost

Deft, engaging and vivid, Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness explores a vibrant, surprising and sometimes extraordinary period of history. Moore writes with such humanity and verve - I loved it

[A] thrilling and expansive narrative

MIKE JAY, author of Mescaline: A Global History of the First Psychedelic

Peter Moore is a writer, journalist and tutor in creative writing at the University of Oxford. He is the author of five works of history, including the Sunday Times bestsellers The Weather Experiment and Endeavour. His latest book is A Dangerous Game, a new biography of Thomas Cochrane.

Bestselling historian Peter Moore traces how Enlightenment ideas were exported from Britain and put into practice in America - where they became the most successful export of all time, the American Dream 
 
'Absorbing... fascinating... eloquent' THE TIMES 
'Engaging and thoroughly reader-friendly' TELEGRAPH 
'Wonderfully absorbing and stimulating' SARAH BAKEWELL 
 
Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is frequently evoked today as shorthand for the American Dream. But this is a line with a surprising history. Rather than being uniquely American, the vision it encapsulates – of a free and happy world – owes a great deal to British thinkers too. 
 
Centred on the life of Benjamin Franklin, featuring figures like the cultural giant Samuel Johnson, the groundbreaking historian Catharine Macaulay, the firebrand politician and revolutionary activist Thomas Paine, this book looks at the generation that preceded the Declaration of Independence in 1776. It takes us back to a vital moment in the foundation of the West and tells a whole new story about the birth of the United States of America – and some of the key principles by which we live to this day. 
 
 
'Deft insights and in clear prose' ALAN TAYLOR 
'A gripping account' STELLA TILLYARD 
'Rollicking...compulsive readability' WASHINGTON POST 
'A great read' LADY HALE

The Ship and the Attitude that Changed the World

Endeavour

The Sunday Times bestselling biography of Captain Cook’s recently discovered ship

An inventive biography of one of the most famous ships of all time – an alluring combination of history, adventure and science

**THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER** 
 
An inventive biography of one of the most famous ships of all time - recently discovered off the coast of America- Endeavour is an alluring combination of history, adventure and science. 
 
 
 From Johnson's Dictionary to campaigns for liberty, the Enlightenment was an age of endeavours. It was also the name given to a commonplace, coal-carrying vessel bought by the Royal Navy in 1768 for an expedition to the South Seas. 
 
No one could have guessed that Endeavour would go on to become the most significant ship in the history of British exploration. 
 
 Endeavour famously carried Captain James Cook on his first great voyage, but her complete story has never been told before. Here, Peter Moore sets out to explore the different lives of this remarkable ship - from the acorn that grew into the oak that made her, to her rich and complex legacy. 
 
'Fascinating and richly detailed... Peter Moore has brought us an acute insight into the ship that carried some of the most successful explorers across the world. A fine book that's definitely worth exploring' MICHAEL PALIN

Mr Moore is a dazzling new arrival: a witty, intelligent and hugely entertaining writer

A joy of a biography, offering up a blizzard of maritime and political fascinations... Moore has written a book that makes the case for his little ship both compelling and irrefutable

Moore uses Endeavour as a window to the age of enlightenment. Like the period it recounts, this book has enormous energy, creativity and self-confidence. It's a feast of endless exotic dishes, all delivered with immense style

Beautifully constructed, his book is not just the history of a single vessel, but a window into the intellectual and political life of the age of enlightenment, from the thrill of botanical discovery to the horror of Cook's last moments on the beaches of Hawaii

A dazzling combination of science and adventure, lyrically evocative descriptions of lush tropical landscapes and salt-stung seascapes, and a portrait of an age…an absolute joy from start to finish, and surely my history book of the year

Fascinating and richly detailed... Peter Moore has brought us an acute insight into the ship that carried some of the most successful explorers across the world. A fine book that’s definitely worth exploring

Endeavour is an extraordinary book about an unlikely ship that defined an age... Like the age it recounts, it is a book of energy, creativity and self-confidence

Pays brilliant tribute to what was arguably the most significant ship in the history of British exploration

Bold and imaginative... the same brave wind that filled Endeavour's sails blows through this book and it is hard to resist

Moore’s richly detailed book is an engrossing love letter to a work, an attitude and a ship: it is an endeavour that honours Endeavour, without denying the death and destruction that followed in her wake

Moore’s approach is lavishly digressive… A rollicking yarn

Endeavour was more than merely the first English vessel to reach New Zealand and Australia's east coast. She was also a floating laboratory, a vast seed-bank and an international observatory...the spirit of Enlightenment under sail

Peter Moore’s elegant and entertaining new book offers us a fascinating biography of the Endeavour, using it as a window onto the broader world of the mid-18th-century English Enlightenment...a deeply satisfying book. It represents an intelligent, diverse, fresh and challenging approach to writing the history of exploration

This narrative of the ship commanded by Captain Cook is illuminated by imagination and creativity. Particularly brilliant is the depiction of its context in 18th-century Britain, where the culture of intellectual enquiry we know as the Enlightenment prompted the Admiralty to support Cook, and he was accompanied by botanists, astrologers, artists and cartographers

What a truly remarkable book this is…entirely fresh and original…shows how this stalwart, unpretentious, little coal bark came to embody the Age of Exploration, of Enlightenment, of Empire, and of Revolution

Professor Iain McCalman, author of Darwin's Armada and The Reef: A Passionate History, from Captain Cook to Climate Change

[An] extraordinary story… [and] a fascinating period of history

Endeavour’s… story… [will] rarely be more engagingly recorded than here

Engrossing detail… written in an engaging literary style… [a] fine book

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER. An inventive biography of one of the most famous ships of all time – an alluring combination of history, adventure and science. 
 
‘HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEAR’ Christopher Hart, Sunday Times 
 
From Johnson’s Dictionary to campaigns for liberty, the Enlightenment was an age of endeavours. ‘Endeavour’ was also the name given to a commonplace, coal-carrying vessel bought by the Royal Navy in 1768 for an expedition to the South Seas. No one could have guessed that Endeavour would go on to become the most significant ship in the history of British exploration. 
 
Endeavour famously carried Captain James Cook on his first great voyage, but her complete story has never been told before. Here, Peter Moore sets out to explore the different lives of this remarkable ship – from the acorn that grew into the oak that made her, to her rich and complex legacy. 
 
‘Fascinating and richly detailed... Peter Moore has brought us an acute insight into the ship that carried some of the most successful explorers across the world. A fine book that’s definitely worth exploring’ MICHAEL PALIN

The Pioneers who Sought to see the Future

The Weather Experiment

This is the story of our greatest obsession: a gripping account of the sailors, scientists and inventors who sought to understand the weather

Richly researched, exciting... It is both scientific and cultural history, of prizewinning potential and as fresh and exhilarating throughout as a strong sea breeze.

Superbly researched and grippingly written... Moore is at least as interested in the personalities and their rivalries, and the sheer spendour and catastrophies of weather itself - storms and shipwrecks, heatwaves and floods (all vividly described) - as by the science. And he weaves it together, deftly picking up threads left dangling in earlier chapters, darting across continents, embracing swashbuckling sea captains and fastidious bureaucrats, penny-pinching politians and mad inventors, with as sharp an eye for eccentricity, absurdity and tragedy as for genius. The result is a panorama of the entire Victorian era.

The Weather Experiment is a genuinely gripping read and demonstrates how scientific ideas can come ahead of the time

Moore is the rare science writer who can describe dew point so poetically you feel you’re with him in a twinkling field of white clover on a cool summer morning… Evocative and full of wisdom for modern times.

The Weather Experiment is not the first book to have been written about FitzRoy…but Moore’s achievement is to imbue him and his work with palpable narrative life, while surrounding him with a large supporting cast of contemporaries

A skilful, detailed account of a complex story, in which scientific advances are far from inevitable in a world of flawed humans and bad luck... Moore's engaging, often surprising work of storytelling, written with such care and pleasure, is a fine tribute

Thought-provoking… Rich and informative … Arnold Toynbee once railed against the view that ‘History is just one damned thing after another’. Recording weather data day in, day out must feel like one damn temperature reading after another. Yet Moore has skilfully converted decades of routine monotony into a gripping tale of derring-do.

Elegantly constructed … The Weather Experiment surprises constantly, often by weaving together the famous and the obscure

Prepare for turbulence in this history of Britain’s seminal contribution to weather forecasting

This biography is an impressive achievement

Moore’s enthusiasm for his subject and the astonishing audacity of those long ago storm chasers make the book a deeply enjoyable read.

Moore writes about this band of ad hoc scientists with brio, and it’s hard not to be awed and charmed by their united quest to prove that earth’s atmosphere was not chaotic beyond comprehension, that it could be studied, understood and, ultimately, predicted … Detailed and insightful, this book is as relevant as ever in this era of rapid climate change.

Rich and enlightening, I’ll never look at a dewy morning in the same way again.

For illuminating a byway of scientific history that many scarcely knew existed we must thank Peter Moore, whose superbly researched an grippingly written book is more than a dusty account of early meteorologists

Moore does an excellent job of telling the story of meteorological advances

A compelling journey through the early history of weather forecasting, bringing to life the personalities, lives and achievements of the men who put in place the building blocks required for forecasts to be possible.

Enthralling history of weather forecasting… Moore’s book records the adventure, drama and occasional tragedy involved in bringing us the calm reassurance of the nightly weather forecast.

Superbly researched and gripping book… He darts across continents, embracing swashbuckling sea captains and fastidious bureaucrats, penny-pinching politicians and mad inventors, with as sharp an eye for absurdity and tragedy as for genius.

The Sunday Times bestseller. An astonishing account of the sailors, scientists and inventors who sought to understand the weather. 
 
**Book of the Week on Radio 4** 
 
'Gripping' The Times 
 
'Exhilarating' Sunday Times 
 
In an age when a storm was evidence of God’s wrath, pioneering meteorologists had to fight against convention and religious dogma to realise their ambitions. But buoyed by the achievements of the Enlightenment, a generation of mavericks set out to unlock the secrets of the atmosphere. 
 
Meet Luke Howard, the first to classify the clouds, Francis Beaufort, quantifier of the winds, James Glaisher, explorer of the upper atmosphere by way of a hot air balloon, Samuel Morse, whose electric telegraph gave scientists the means by which to transmit weather warnings, and at the centre of it all Admiral Robert FitzRoy: master sailor, scientific pioneer and founder of the Met Office. 
 
Peter Moore’s exhilarating account navigates treacherous seas, rough winds and uncovers the obsession that drove these men to great invention and greater understanding.

Being a True and Detailed History of the Most Barbarous and Inhumane Murder at Oddingley and the Quick and Awful Retribution

Damn His Blood

Pining for the next thing after Kate Summerscale's Suspicions of Mr Whicher and Mrs Robinsons Disgrace? Look no further. Mr Whicher's Victorian inheritor: this is pacy true crime at its very best - a gripping read with a twist in the tale on a story that has never been told before. This is Squire Haggard meets Midsomer Murders.

Written in the vein of Kate Summerscale's The Suspicions Of Mr Whicher, Moore's story is in many ways more compelling

A terrific read. First class research, beautifully written, a true thriller about an extraordinary story

The  clever thing is how deftly Peter Moore tells his story. At the time,  the murders were a sensation so there are plenty of historical  documents, but he has arranged the details in a way that shows a very canny eye for story-telling

The brutal murder of the Reverend George Parker in the rural village of Oddingley on Midsummer's Day in 1806 - shot and beaten to death, his body set on fire and left smouldering in his own glebe field - gripped everyone from the Home Secretary in London to newspapermen across the country. It was a strange and stubborn case. The investigation lasted twenty-four years and involved inquests, judges and coroners, each more determined than the last to solve Oddingley's most gruesome crime - or crimes, as it turned out. 
 
With a cast of characters straight out of Hardy, Damn His Blood is a nail-biting true story of brutality, greed and ruthlessness which brings an elusive society vividly back to life.

Peter Moore

This is surely the definitive account of this extraordinary man. Moore does not shy away from the dark side [of Cochrane]… but in doing so he makes the story only more compelling… compulsively readable… I have not enjoyed a book more for a long time

Gripping... A Dangerous Game must surely be the last word on a man who was once a national hero

I could only wish Patrick O'Brian was alive to have read this

The brilliant, dashing, outrageous Thomas Cochrane, who inspired so many works of thrilling fiction, has received a fitting tribute; Peter Moore’s A Dangerous Game unfolds the events of this amazing life with a verve worthy of the man.

CAROLINE ALEXANDER, author of The Endurance and The Bounty

A master historian and storyteller meets a truly extraordinary subject. The result is history that explodes off the page

An extraordinary biography... a brilliant, pacy and utterly enthralling account of one of the greatest characters in naval fiction. If you are a Hornblower fan, or a Jack Aubrey obsessive, this account of the man whose real life exploits inspired the greatest Age of Sail novelists is unmissable. As a lifelong devotee of Patrick O'Brian and CS Forester, I read this true-life account of Lord Cochrane's exploits with deep pleasure and the occasional moment of delighted recognition as the fictional and the real collided

ANTONIA SENIOR, author of Stalin's Apostles

With wonderfully balletic, graceful prose, Moore thrillingly brings Thomas Cochrane’s absurdly entertaining story to life. From the Napoleonic wars to Latin American revolutions, Moore vividly captures the brilliant, brave and brooding naval hero in all his complexity. A Dangerous Game is history and biography at its finest

EDWARD SHAWCROSS, author of The Last Emperor of Mexico

Thomas Cochrane’s life was almost absurdly eventful: a fearless warrior, a naval hero, a politician and an unlikely revolutionary, he was also a symbol of his turbulent and rumbustious age. Peter Moore’s gripping account perfectly encapsulates all of his vices and virtues. A triumph

RICHARD STRACHAN, author of Night Fire and The Unrecovered

A meticulously researched, widely accessible, highly entertaining and, at times, shocking book. Cochrane was, most definitely, the best kind of hero: purged, loved, misunderstood, dangerous, humble, and, importantly, always for the people

Thomas Cochrane's Life on the Edge

'Compelling... compulsively readable' THE TIMES 
'I wish Patrick O'Brian was alive to read this' NIKOLAI TOLSTOY 
'A master historian and storyteller... an extraordinary subject' MATTHEW PARKER 
 
The astonishing true story of Thomas Cochrane – naval hero, political radical and inspiration for Patrick O’Brian’s Jack Aubrey – whose audacity at sea, scandals on land and battles across empires make for a tale as thrilling as any novel. 
 
Cochrane’s life was even more remarkable than the fiction it inspired. A hero of the Napoleonic Wars, known for destroying the French Atlantic fleet in one explosive attack, he was an equally aggressive force in British politics as the radical MP for Westminster. 
 
Cochrane’s fortunes turned in 1814, when he was convicted of a fraud on the Stock Exchange. After escaping from prison, he later reinvented himself as a revolutionary admiral, helping the Chileans, Peruvians, Brazilians and Greeks in their struggles for independence. 
 
In A Dangerous Game, the Sunday Times-bestselling historian Peter Moore draws on newly uncovered materials to bring Cochrane vividly to life. Bold, rebellious and uncompromising, he saw the world as a contest to be won – at sea, in politics, even in scandal – and played it more dangerously than any man of his era. 
 
'Brilliant, pacy and utterly enthralling' ANTONIA SENIOR 
 
'A fitting tribute... unfolds the events of this amazing life with a verve worthy of the man' CAROLINE ALEXANDER, author of The Bounty 
 
'Moore vividly captures the brilliant, brave and brooding naval hero in all his complexity... history and biography at its finest' EDWARD SHAWCROSS, author of The Last Emperor of Mexico

Peter Moore

Praise for A Dangerous Game

This is surely the definitive account of this extraordinary man. Moore does not shy away from the dark side [of Cochrane]… but in doing so he makes the story only more compelling… compulsively readable… I ...

Gripping... A Dangerous Game must surely be the last word on a man who was once a national hero

I could only wish Patrick O'Brian was alive to have read this

This is surely the definitive account of this extraordinary man. Moore does not shy away from the dark side [of Cochrane]… but in doing so he makes the story only more compelling… compulsively readable… I ...

Gripping... A Dangerous Game must surely be the last word on a man who was once a national hero

I could only wish Patrick O'Brian was alive to have read this

This is surely the definitive account of this extraordinary man. Moore does not shy away from the dark side [of Cochrane]… but in doing so he makes the story only more compelling… compulsively readable… I ...

Gripping... A Dangerous Game must surely be the last word on a man who was once a national hero

I could only wish Patrick O'Brian was alive to have read this

Books by Peter Moore

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