Meacham received the Pulitzer Prize for his 2008 biography of Andrew Jackson, and has also written about Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill as well as the civil rights movement and the influence of religion in. Jefferson’s critics still have something valid to say, even if their voices here are stilled. Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power is author Jon Meacham’s fifth and most recent book, having been published in late 2012. But in the end, as fine a rendering of the nation’s third president as this book may be, it comes too close to idolization. Wood 'Jon Meacham understands Thomas Jefferson. '-Walter Isaacson 'This is probably the best single-volume biography of Jefferson ever written.'-Gordon S. Meacham understandably holds Jefferson up as the remarkable figure he was. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review. Jon Meacham writes this in the epilogue to Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, and it is a perfect encapsulation of his noble work on one of our greatest Founding Fathers.

While he’s fully conversant with long-held skepticism about aspects of Jefferson’s character (his dissimulation, for instance) and his stance toward slavery, Meacham gives him the benefit of the doubt throughout (on, for example, his Revolutionary War governorship of Virginia and the draconian 1807 embargo). To Meacham, who won a Pulitzer for his American Lion, Jefferson was a philosopher/politician, and “the most successful political figure of the first half century of the American republic.” Those words only faintly suggest the inspirational tone of the entire work. Bernstein’s Thomas Jefferson. Like David McCullough’s John Adams (to which it can be seen as a counterpart), Meacham’s book is a love letter to its subject. Jon Meacham 4.02 Rating details 37,512 ratings 2,188 reviews 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. Another Jefferson biography (right on the heels of Henry Wiencek’s Master of the Mountain)! Fortunately, Meacham’s is a fine work, deserving a place high on the list of long biographies of its subject even if rivaled by such shorter ones as Richard B.

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