Pun Salad

Spoiler: the "greatest sentence ever written" is the second one in the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

But you may have figured that out already.

The author, famed biographer Walter Isaacson, takes a scalpel and a microscope to the GSEW, looking at its most important bits, devoting a (short) sub-essay to each: "We"; "self-evident" truths; "all men"; "created equal"; "endowed by their Creator"; "certain unalienable rights"; and "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." His analyses are brief and mostly on-target. He's pretty rough on the sexism inherent in the "all men" phraseology: yeah, they probably did mean just the guys; sorry, ladies. And he spends some time looking at how Thomas Jefferson's first draft contained plenty of anti-slavery rhetoric, stripped out at the insistence of the delegates from southern colonies. This, despite TJ's own sordid history as an enslaver himself. This inherent contradiction would take a lot of bloodshed to remedy. And, of course, many would argue that it's still a work in progress.

Isaacson gets into iffier territory once he's done looking at the GSEW, veering into the notions of "common ground" and the "American Dream". He considers them to be "at the heart" of the Declaration's declarations. That is, at best, debatable. His prose is earnest, but kind of hand-waving. I'd like to know what Bernard Bailyn had to say about this. (That book's on my to-be-read list, I swear I'm gonna get to it some day.)

Finally, there are appendices: his description of the Declaration's drafting process; excerpts of Locke's Second Treatise, Rousseau's Social Contract, Jefferson's original first draft, and the finished Declaration, as declared. (I'd say that Rousseau's inclusion is kind of a mistake here, but…)

It's very short, Amazon counts 80 pages total, and they are small pages. Might be a good graduation gift for your thoughtful high-schooler!