THOMAS JEFFERSON

THOMAS JEFFERSON: THE ART OF POWER is a rich, unprecedented biography of America’s third President, an original thinker and master politician who helped to create and sustain the American republic. Jon Meacham brings to life the complete man, from birth to his last days—through the Revolutionary War and his years as President.

We see the Founding Father who steered the states to nationhood, wrote the Declaration of Independence, and as a master politician President, doubled the size of America through the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. Jefferson is an American colossus, but also a deeply human man, complicated and full of contradictions—both intellectual and personal, philosophical and political. This biography (the first full one in 15 years) casts him in a whole new light. Meacham has drawn on archives in America, the UK and France, as well as the unpublished Jefferson papers, recovering and revealing the amazing, charming, and engaging Jefferson who has been so long obscured by competing caricatures. More than any other powerful early American, 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. Flawed, contradictory, and elusive, Jefferson was at heart a politician, a man engaged in the wars of his times. This is the life of perhaps the most famous but little-understood Founder, a book that takes Jefferson all in all. Slavemaster and sage, hypocrite and hero, Jefferson was quintessentially human yet transcended his limitations to become the father of a tradition of liberty that has gradually extended around the globe. Jon Meacham is the author of three New York Times bestselling works of history: FRANKLIN AND WINSTON, AMERICAN GOSPEL, and most recently, a biography of President Andrew Jackson, AMERICAN LION (Random House, 2008)—for which he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. AMERICAN LION has more than 500,000 copies in print in hardcover and more than 250,000 in paperback. It was also named one of the best books of 2008 by the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Chicago Tribune. Meacham is a regular guest on TV programs Morning Joe, Charlie Rose, Meet the Press, and others.