Chatto snaps up latest from historian Peter Moore

Writer and historian Peter Moore's history of “the epoch-defining European ideas that helped found the United States of America”, has been snapped up by Chatto & Windus. 

Becky Hardie, deputy publishing director at the Vintage imprint, acquired UK, Commonwealth and Europe, excluding Canada, from Annabel Merullo at Peters, Fraser and Dunlop. The "major new book" is slated for publication in 2022.

Taking its title from the United States Declaration of Independence, “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness will be a sweeping history of the epoch-defining European ideas that helped found the United States of America,” Chatto said. “These ideas established a set of guiding principles that has reverberated across the world ever since. Several key thinkers of the age, including Samuel Johnson, Thomas Paine, Catharine Macaulay, Thomas Jefferson and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, will feature in the book.“

Moore said: “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness’ is such a luminous line. It catches the optimism and energy of the Enlightenment like no other. It’s instantly associated with Thomas Jefferson and 1776. But I want to use it much more broadly as a guide to the hopes and dreams of a generation. Chatto & Windus has been a superb publisher for me over the past decade. I'm delighted to be continuing as part of their excellent non-fiction list.”

Moore is a writer, journalist and lecturer, who has written Sunday Times top 10 bestsellers Endeavour: The Ship and the Attitude that Changed the World (Chatto) and The Weather Experiment: The Pioneers who Sought to see the Future (Vintage). He teaches on Oxford University’s Master of Studies in Creative Writing and has been a Gladstone Library Writer in Residence and a Winston Churchill Fellow. He also presents a podcast for History Today, “Travels Through Time’. 

Hardie added: “It has been wonderful to watch Peter’s growing success, and we couldn’t be happier to have a new book with him. Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness promises to be his biggest and best book yet, an enthralling history of ideas, combining the unvarnished reality of individual lives with exhilarating storytelling.”