Trending
WHEELING - The Ohio County Public Library’s next Lunch With Books program will be "National Treasure" with Michael Auslin.
This program will begin at noon on Tuesday, Sept. 1, at the library in downtown Wheeling.
The Declaration of Independence became the supreme expression of the American ideal and unity while guiding us along the often-bumpy road on the way to a more perfect Union. It is also a thrilling adventure story and a fond look at the marriage of civics and commerce that has kept the Declaration in the hearts and minds of Americans.
An award-winning historian, Auslin takes us from the boarding house in Philadelphia where Thomas Jefferson put quill to paper to the Declaration's long, harrowing and ultimately hallowed afterlife. Through war and peace, expansion and urbanization, and demographic change and social reform, the Declaration has remained, in the words of President Gerald R. Ford, the "Polaris of our political order -- the fixed star of freedom."
As Jefferson had hoped, the principles enshrined in the Declaration became a beacon to the world. But what lessons should we take from it today? Can this statement of ideals in whose name the signers pledged their lives and sacred honor bring a disparate nation together? As we gather to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the founders' bold experiment in democracy, Auslin reminds us that this enduring document was not just a call for freedom and equality but an eloquent statement of the principles that bind us together.
Auslin is the Payson J. Treat Distinguished Research Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Previously, he was an associate professor of history at Yale. He wrote "National Treasure" as a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Library of Congress's John W. Kluge Center and an American Heritage Partners Fellow at the Society of the Cincinnati's American Revolution Institute. He writes a Substack, The Patowmack Packet, on Washington, D.C., past and present, and lives in Virginia.