Thomas Jefferson

"The most talked-about president in America's history, Thomas Jefferson commands both praise and condemnation. He is regularly quoted when people speak of natural rights, but the contradiction between the Declaration of Independence's evocation of 'the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness' and its author's being a slave-holder troubles us more than ever before. Looking at Jefferson's presidency helps us to understand this puzzle as well as his amazing accomplishment in washing out the elite traditions of the nation's colonial past from the expansive democracy he so decisively shaped."—Joyce Appleby on Thomas Jefferson

"A portrait of our most controversial Founding Father as a genuine radical . . . Thomas Jefferson was alone among his revolutionary peers in anticipating the advent of American democracy and striving to assure its peaceful birth, the author writes: 'He resisted the notion that political equality was a chimera and strove to root out the last monarchical remnants from American culture,' a project that set him in constant opposition to his privileged peers and particularly in opposition to the Federalist Party, the political organ of their class. Appleby takes quite seriously Jefferson's boast that his election represented 'as real a revolution in the principles of our government as that of 1776 was in its form'; furthermore, she reckons with some amazement that no American with such a radical bent has met with quite the same level of electoral approval as did Jefferson, though it could be argued that we have never achieved his vision of a liberal, democratic America in which the governors and governed alike possessed 'rationality, the drive for self-improvement, the capacity to work independently and to cooperate without coercion.' Jefferson was a dreamer, impractical and torn by contradictions, Appleby allows; what is remarkable is that a man of such resolute devotion to liberty could have emerged from his class and position, even if his notion of liberty kept it the province of white men. For all that, Appleby insists again and again, Jefferson was a true radical whose polished words were not mere rhetorical exercises. When he said, 'I like a little rebellion from time to time. It clears the atmosphere,' he meant it. A useful slap against the reactionaries who today claim descent from Jeffersonian ideals."—Kirkus Reviews

"Jefferson's tarnished reputation receives a slight boost in Appleby's interpretation of his presidency, part of a series about the presidents that includes Robert Remini's excellent John Quincy Adams. Appleby analyzes Jefferson's belief that his election in 1800 was comparable to 1776 in revolutionary import, a task she embarks on through extended comparison with the outlook of the Federalist whom Jefferson and the Republicans ousted. After the tumults of the 1780s, which in part motivated the formulation of the new Constitution, the Federalists regarded themselves as having rescued America from democratic excess. More optimistic about human nature, Jefferson was unworried by democracy—for white men, at least—and his presidency has proved enduringly interesting, significant, and contradictory; hence the oscillations of his reputation. Appleby fluidly unites evidence and argument not just to narrate Jefferson's eight years in office but to persuade readers of the importance of the democratic example he set. Hers is a fine, expert brief on the controversies surrounding, as Joseph Ellis memorably titled his biography, the American Sphinx."—Gilbert Taylor, Booklist

"Appleby has succeeded in writing as good a brief study of this complex man as is imaginable. Another in a series on the American chief executives edited by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., her elegant book is a liberal's take on the complex, sphinx-like founder of American liberalism. Appleby convincingly argues that the third president's greatest legacies were limited government (breached, however, by the opportunism that characterized his own presidency) and the great expansion of democracy . . . She fully explains the man's sorry record and tortured views on slavery and race. Providing along the way a short, up-to-date history of the early 19th-century nation, she also concisely surveys the day's great issues—voting, democracy, political parties, commerce, westering and religion."—Publishers Weekly