Meacham has read the scholarly literature on Jefferson-some of it critical-but doesn’t let enough of this debate intrude on the storytelling, which nearly always puts Jefferson in the best possible light.Įarly in the book, Meacham shows that he has fallen under the Jeffersonian spell. There is some meat in the book, but finding it requires dexterity and doggedness-checking the endnotes after every ten pages or so to see what is missing from the passing panorama. But Meacham has chosen storytelling over analysis, offering up a genial but meandering narrative. Since Jefferson is generally perceived more as a philosopher-king than a Tammany pol, such an examination, coming from a highly regarded biographer and political commentator, should yield fresh insights into the Sphinx. THE SUBTITLE OF Jon Meacham’s massive new life of Thomas Jefferson promises a probing exploration of how-he-did-it-the ways and means of power politics.
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