A01=Francis D. Cogliano
A01=Peter S. Onuf
Author_Francis D. Cogliano
Author_Peter S. Onuf
Category=DNBH
Category=JPHL
Category=NH
Category=NHB
Category=NHK
constitution
declaration of independence
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
federalism
forthcoming
founder
founding father
leadership
monticello
nationalism
plantation
president
republic
revolution
slavery
thomas jefferson
us history
us president
virginia
Product details
- ISBN 9781324098072
- Weight: 480g
- Dimensions: 160 x 236mm
- Publication Date: 09 Jun 2026
- Publisher: W W Norton & Co Ltd
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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Fifty years after signing the Declaration of Independence, John Adams reassured the nation from his deathbed, “Thomas Jefferson survives”. Unaware that Jefferson had died hours earlier, Adams was in a larger sense correct: Jefferson had been immortalised in the American imagination. Today, Jefferson has effectively become a partisan talisman—jettisoned by the left for his moral failings, embraced and repurposed by the right as an avatar of white nationalism. Dissatisfied with the reductive clichés that now define Jefferson’s legacy, Peter S. Onuf and Francis D. Cogliano restore the founding father to his historical context, elucidating how Jefferson’s understanding of history shaped his responses to the crises of his time, how he conceived of the physical entity that became the United States and how he articulated a new national identity in 1776. Through their search for understanding, Onuf and Cogliano demonstrate not only why Jefferson matters but how his wisdom can be applied today.
Peter S. Onuf and Annette Gordon-Reed’s “Most Blessed of the Patriarchs” was praised as:
"An important book…[R]ichly rewarding. It is full of fascinating insights about Jefferson." —Gordon S. Wood, The New York Review of Books
“A fresh and layered analysis...” –Peter Baker, The New York Times Book Review
Peter S. Onuf is the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Professor Emeritus at the University of Virginia. He is the New York Times best–selling author or coauthor of fourteen books, including, with Annette Gordon–Reed, “Most Blessed of the Patriarchs.” He lives in Connecticut and Maine. Francis D. Cogliano is the author of A Revolutionary Friendship: Washington, Jefferson, and the American Republic. A fellow of the Royal Historical Society, Cogliano is professor of American history at the University of Edinburgh. Annette Gordon-Reed is the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard University. The author of Pulitzer Prize-winning The Hemingses of Monticello, she lives in New York and Cambridge, Massachusetts.
