A centuries-old secret document unravels the origin story of America and reveals the intellectual crime of the millennia in this “hugely entertaining” dive into our countrys history to discover the first, true Declaration of Independence (Andrew Roberts, author of Napoleon and Churchill.

In 1819, John Adams came across a stunning story in his hometown Essex Register that he described to his political frenemy Thomas Jefferson as one of the greatest curiosities and one of the deepest mysteries that ever occurred to meentitled the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence. The genuine sense of America at that moment was never so well expressed before, nor since. The story claimed that a full 14 months before Jefferson crafted his own Declaration of Independence, a misfit band of zealous Scots-Irish patriots, whiskey-loving Princeton scholars and a fanatical frontier preacher in a remote corner of North Carolina had become the first Americans to formally declare themselves free and independent from England.

Composed during a clandestine all-night session inside the Charlotte courthouse, the Mecklenburg Declaration, aka the MecDec, was signed on May 20, 1775a date thats still featured on the state flag of North Carolina. About a year later, in 1776, Jefferson is believed to have plagiarized the MecDec while composing his own, slightly more famous Declaration, and then covered the whole thing up. Which is why Adams always insisted the MecDec needed to be thoroughly investigated and more universally made known to the present and future generation.

With Whos Your Founding Father?, David Fleming picks up where Adams left off, leaving no archive, no cemetery, no bizarre clue or wild character (and definitely no Dunkin Donuts) unexplored while traveling the globe to bring to life one of the most fantastic, importantand controversialstories in American history.