This book revolves around the character, ideals, and reasons behind the unique accomplishments of our third President. He believed that the greatest of these was being the writer of the Declaration of Independence, authoring the Virginia statue for religious freedom, and founding the University of Virginia. Yet history shows other achievements that we hold just as great - his public service to the nation as Governor of Virginia, minister to France, Secretary of State, Vice-President, and President. As President he was instrumental in the Louisiana Purchase, the Lewis & Clark expedition,
Throughout the author endeavors to show the conflicts that Jefferson has between his own ideals and the political realities of the time.
Here was a man who abhorred inequality but possessed slaves.. A man who wanted to preserve the culture of the Native Americans but sponsored the Lewis & Clark expedition to ease expansion to the west, a patriot that strove for freedoms of equality, religion and the press. but reacted when his own transgressions were brought to light.
The book is very difficult to read because it is interspersed with illustrations, cartoons of the era, and hypertexts of special passages. The man appears in the book to be a paradox - thinking one way ad behaving another. Constantly in debt for purchases beyond his finances, he sells his entire book collection to the Library of Congress and then begins to start another library.
Thomas Jefferson was a great man for the time that he lived but I cannot believe that he deserves all the accolades that resound the years.
The book was very difficult to read because it is interspersed with illustrations, cartoons of the era, and hypertexts of special passages. I believe that it would have been much better if the illustrations had been grouped at the end of the book or even in the middle not as they were. ( )