With its varied statements regarding liberty and equality, America’s glorious Declaration of Independence has been the center of sociopolitical debates and demands within and without the country ever since it was proclaimed 250 years ago. In Ted Widmer’s new work, “The Living Declaration: A Biography of America’s Founding Text,” which is both a study and a commemoration of the document, he guides readers through the decades of those debates and demands.
Library of America, the book’s publisher, made a well-timed choice for America’s 250th birthday for several reasons, one of them quite tragic. The foreword is written by Gordon S. Wood, who was America’s leading scholar on early America before he was tragically killed after being struck by a car in June. Wood’s words are—as they always have been—powerful, accurate, and heartfelt. His opening sentence sets the tone of Widmer’s book: “To be an American is not to be someone, but to believe in something.”
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