num_pages: 802
description: In this magnificent biography the Pulitzer Prizewinning 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. Jeffersons 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 thingswomen his family books science architecture gardens friends Monticello and ParisJefferson 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 Jeffersons 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 Drawing on archives in the United States England and France as well as unpublished Jefferson presidential papers Meacham presents Jefferson as the most successful political leader of the early republic and perhaps in all of American history.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 humanityand the genius of the new nationlay 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 Presidents 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.
language: English
title: Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power
publisher: Random House