NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY
"The New York Times Book Review - The Washington Post -
Entertainment Weekly - The Seattle Times - St. Louis Post-Dispatch
- Bloomberg Businessweek"
In this magnificent biography, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of
"American Lion" and "Franklin and Winston" brings vividly to life
an extraordinary man and his remarkable times. "Thomas Jefferson:
The Art of Power" gives us Jefferson the politician and president,
a great and complex human being forever engaged in the wars of his
era. Philosophers think; politicians maneuver. Jefferson's genius
was that he was both and could do both, often simultaneously. Such
is the art of power.
Thomas Jefferson hated confrontation, and yet his understanding of
power and of human nature enabled him to move men and to marshal
ideas, to learn from his mistakes, and to prevail. Passionate about
many things--women, his family, books, science, architecture,
gardens, friends, Monticello, and Paris--Jefferson loved America
most, and he strove over and over again, despite fierce opposition,
to realize his vision: the creation, survival, and success of
popular government in America. Jon Meacham lets us see Jefferson's
world as Jefferson himself saw it, and to appreciate how Jefferson
found the means to endure and win in the face of rife partisan
division, economic uncertainty, and external threat. Drawing on
archives in the United States, England, and France, as well as
unpublished Jefferson presidential papers, Meacham presents
Jefferson as the most successful political leader of the early
republic, and perhaps in all of American history.
The father of the ideal of individual liberty, of the Louisiana
Purchase, of the Lewis and Clark expedition, and of the settling of
the West, Jefferson recognized that the genius of humanity--and the
genius of the new nation--lay in the possibility of progress, of
discovering the undiscovered and seeking the unknown. From the
writing of the Declaration of Independence to elegant dinners in
Paris and in the President's House; from political maneuverings in
the boardinghouses and legislative halls of Philadelphia and New
York to the infant capital on the Potomac; from his complicated
life at Monticello, his breathtaking house and plantation in
Virginia, to the creation of the University of Virginia, Jefferson
was central to the age. Here too is the personal Jefferson, a man
of appetite, sensuality, and passion.
The Jefferson story resonates today not least because he led his
nation through ferocious partisanship and cultural warfare amid
economic change and external threats, and also because he embodies
an eternal drama, the struggle of the leadership of a nation to
achieve greatness in a difficult and confounding world.
Praise for "Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power"
"This is probably the best single-volume biography of Jefferson
ever written."--Gordon S. Wood
" "
"A big, grand, absorbing exploration of not just Jefferson and his
role in history but also Jefferson the man, humanized as never
before."--"Entertainment Weekly"
" Meacham] captures who Jefferson was, not just as a statesman but
as a man. . . . By the end of the book . . . the reader is likely
to feel as if he is losing a dear friend. . . . An] absorbing
tale.""--The Christian Science Monitor"
"This terrific book allows us to see the political genius of Thomas
Jefferson better than we have ever seen it before. In these
endlessly fascinating pages, Jefferson emerges with such vitality
that it seems as if he might still be alive today."--Doris Kearns
Goodwin
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