Fun fact: Thomas Jefferson used to be my favorite founding father. In my twenties it changed to Washington but that’s another story.

I’ve always been interested in Jefferson, since I was a kid. I think one my first book reports was on him when we had to do a biography. This book came out in 2012, I think but I didn’t get around to it until 2020. It had been on my radar for several years but Jon Meacham’s books are thick and I wasn’t entirely sold on them until I listened to his book about Andrew Jackson. After that I decided to give some of his other books a try.

Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power explores Jefferson’s ability to be both philosopher and politician. Philosophers think and politicians maneuver, and Jefferson was one of the rare men who could do both. Meacham presents Jefferson’s world as he saw it, and what shaped him in his formative years as a boy and a young man. He was interested in and passionate about many things, including but not limited to science, architecture, gardens, books, his friends, family and women. Jefferson loved his home, Monticello, and the city of Paris, but he loved his country most of all and he was constantly looking for ways to achieve what he would consider a founding principle: creation, survival, and success of popular government.

This book takes us through his time as a leader – marshalling ideas (and cohorts), learning from mistakes, forming coalitions in a bitterly partisan time and a time of economic upheaval. Meacham presents Jefferson as possibly the most successful leader of the early American republic with possibly the most widely ranging influence – he championed individual liberty but recognized the new nation’s promise lay in progress, he argued for a small executive branch but he bought the Louisiana Territory, plus he wrote the Declaration of Independence and he established the University of Virginia. He had the usual complicated relationship with race, as did many men of his time.

I enjoyed this book greatly. I especially appreciated the look at Jefferson’s formative years, where you could begin to see that traits that would so clearly appear later on. Meacham does a commendable job explaining one of our most enigmatic founders, and the book is well researched.

Fun fact: My favorite quote from this book was “Jefferson found himself in a debate with a seven year old.” I just started laughing when I heard it read. The context was that Jefferson had to convince his daughter, Polly, to come to Paris with him and her sister, Patsy. Polly didn’t want to go.

Tagged: authors: jon meacham, books: thomas jefferson: the art of power, genre: biography, genre: history, genre: non-fiction