The most famous phrase in American history once looked quite different. "The preservation of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness" was how Thomas Jefferson put it in the initial draft of the Declaration of Independence, before the first ampersand was scratched out, along with "the preservation of." That final revision to the iconic formulation was, in fact, the last in a long chain of revisions stretching across the Atlantic and back. The precise contours of these three rights have never been pinned down, and yet in making those words into rights, Jefferson captured the hopes (and debates) of not only a group of rebel-statesmen, but also a generation of British thinkers who could barely imagine a country like the United States of America. Peter Moore's Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness tells the true story of what may be the most successful import in US history: the "American dream." Centered on the friendship between Benjamin Franklin and the British publisher William Strahan, and featuring figures including the cultural giant Samuel Johnson, the groundbreaking historian Catharine Macaulay, the firebrand politician John Wilkes, and the revolutionary activist Thomas Paine, this book looks at the generation that preceded the Declaration in 1776. Everyone, it seemed, had "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" on their mind; Moore shows why, and reveals how these ideals made their way across an ocean and started a revolution.