National Treasure: How the Declaration of Independence Made America with Michael Auslin

September 01, 2026
12:00pm - 1:00pm

As a final touchstone to the America 250 observations, the Library is pleased to announce that historian and author Michael Auslin, PhD, Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, will visit Lunch With Books on Tuesday, September 1 at noon to discuss his new book, National Treasure: How the Declaration of Independence Made America.

The book traces the Declaration’s journey from its drafting by Thomas Jefferson to its status as a national symbol, exploring how its ideals of liberty and equality have inspired generations and shaped the American experiment through war, political division, and cultural evolution. Published in May 2026, the book examines the document as both a physical artifact and a set of powerful ideas that have been used by diverse groups, from Abraham Lincoln to civil rights leaders, to define and challenge America.

Michael Auslin, PhD, is the Payson J. Treat Distinguished Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. 

A historian by training, Auslin is the author of the forthcoming history National Treasure: How the Declaration of Independence Made America. He also writes The Patowmack Packet, a Substack on Washington, DC, and American history. His prior books include Asia’s New Geopolitics: Essays on Reshaping the Indo-Pacific and The End of the Asian Century: War, Stagnation, and the Risks to the World’s Most Dynamic Region. He has been a longtime contributor to The Wall Street Journal and his writing appears in other leading publications including the Financial Times, The Spectator, Law & Liberty, and Foreign Policy. He comments regularly for US and foreign print and broadcast media. 

Previously an associate professor of history at Yale University, Auslin is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Among his honors are being named a distinguished visiting scholar at the Library of Congress John W. Kluge Center, the American Heritage Partners Research Fellow at the American Revolution Institute of the Society of the Cincinnati, a Fulbright Scholar, a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, and a German Marshall Fund Marshall Memorial Fellow. He serves on the board of the American Ditchley Foundation. 

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