Events - Event View

Note: In addition to reading and discussing Our Declaration in November, Book Club participants may wish to take advantage of an exciting opportunity to attend a free lecture by the author, the topic of which is "The Declaration of Independence Today."

Danielle Allen will be speaking at:
Viterbo University Fine Arts Center Main Theater
Thursday, October 21, 2021 at 7:00 pm.
For more information click here:  ~ Viterbo University Event   

Please note that there will be no Book Club meeting in the month of December.

“Danielle Allen lays bare the Declaration’s history and significance, returning it to its true and rightful owners—you and me.”
—Junot Díaz

In just 1,337 words, the Declaration of Independence changed the world, but curiously it is now rarely read from start to finish, much less understood. Unsettled by this, Danielle Allen read the text quietly with students and discovered its animating power. “Bringing the analytical skills of a philosopher, the voice of a gifted memoirist, and the spirit of a soulful humanist to the task, Allen manages to . . . find new meaning in Thomas Jefferson’s understanding of equality,” says Joseph J. Ellis about Our Declaration. Countering much of the popular perception, she restores equality to its rightful place, detailing the Declaration’s case that freedom rests on equality. The contradictions between ideals and reality in a document that perpetuated slavery are also brilliantly tackled by Allen, whose cogently written and beautifully designed book “is must-reading for all who care about the future as well as the origins of America’s democracy” (David M. Kennedy).