This book, especially its subtitle, reads like a 5mg melatonin gummy: it will put you to sleep. However, I was pleasantly surprised to find that The Pursuit of Happiness was an extremely well researched background into the lives of those who crafted the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation (RIP), and the Constitution. Did you know that our Founding Fathers invested in real estate, went for daily walks to get some exercise, and ran book clubs? The book club I founded in San Francisco is named after Benjamin Franklin’s group from the eighteenth century: Junto Club. I love when author’s provide insight into the daily lives of historical giants because it acts as a reminder that we as a society are not that different—although the Founding Father’s were not concerned with social media viewership, they did care deeply about their standing in society, their looks, and their manor of dressing.

One of the more epiphanic aspects of The Pursuit of Happiness was how all of our Founding Fathers read the same books. Jeff Bezos was not around in the 1700’s to offer same day shipping for thousands of different books; instead, libraries were highly curated art installations that held wisdom older than most governments. Akin to online influencers mimicking each other’s viral posts, our Founding Fathers were gathering around to concurrently read Plato and Cicero. Today, it is popular for people to post a day in the life video explaining their daily routine from waking up to winding down at night (proud to say that I have not participated in this). Funny enough, Benjamin Franklin and others alike did the same thing, albeit on paper—they wrote to their pupils encouraging them to spend many hours studying philosophy, eating a healthy meal, spend many more hours studying the law, and going for a walk in the evening. Clothing styles come back into fashion every few decades; lifestyle routines recirculate every few centuries.

Because the study of history is simply an explanation of how we got to where we are—the past teaches us of the present—books like The Pursuit of Happiness are an important building block into our understanding of who America is. The city of Rome was allegedly founded by two brothers who were raised by a wolf, one of whom later committed fratricide. Whether or not the story is pure fiction, the idea that the ancient city began its foundation through murder set the tone for the next millennium—Roman’s craved violence and bloodshed. Luckily, the experiment that is America was crafted through a more democratic bureaucracy because the Founding Fathers utilized their pen instead of the sword. Nevertheless, America is far from perfect (obviously) and Rosen, when writing The Pursuit of Happiness, did not shy away from the fact that many of our Founding Fathers, as they wrote about the freedoms afforded to Americans, continued to own slaves. Just as Rome’s love for violence began as its founding, America’s framework was designed with purposeful, systemic racial inequalities. Although the past can be ugly, there are so many important lessons from our founding period as to how we can continue to do better. While The Pursuit of Happiness was written for early American history nerds like me, everyone can glean lessons from Rosen’s book.