[Avid Reader Press] The inspiring story of the Declaration of Independence—the first to take us from its drafting by Thomas Jefferson to today—charting the many lives of a document that captures the soul of America and has united generations around its defiant ideals, published for the 250th anniversary of America’s founding. Quiet and politically untested, Thomas Jefferson was not the obvious choice to draft a statement of principles explaining why the American colonies were breaking ties with the King of England. His soaring rhetoric would inspire generations of Americans to live up to the founders’ dreams. National Treasure is the gripping story of our most revered founding relic, as a physical object and a set of ideals that have made America what it is today. An award-winning historian, Michael Auslin take us from the boarding house in Philadelphia where Jefferson put quill to paper to the Declaration’s covert signing, dissemination in the doldrums of the revolutionary war, and long, harrowing, and ul