Thomas Jeffferson: The Art of Power by Jon Meacham

I recently finished reading/listening to Jon Meacham's Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power. I'm not going to write a full review of it, but let me briefly say that it was excellent. It is a quick and easy read, thanks to Meacham's excellent writing style. Meacham writes very differently from David McCullough. McCullough's books (at least those I have read) read like novels, whereas Meacham's read like a series of newspaper or magazine articles (not surprising, since Meacham's background is in journalism).

After reading McCullough's John Adams, I felt like I knew Adams quite well. After reading Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, however, I feel like I still barely know Jefferson. It is as if I have merely peeled away one layer of an onion. In all likelihood, this says more about the immense complexity of Jefferson's character than any deficiencies of Meacham's writing. I feel like if I am to truly understand Jefferson (to the extent that he even CAN be understood), I am going to have to read AT LEAST one more book about him. I plan to ready Joseph Ellis' American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson, but probably not until after I have gone through all the presidents.

If I could change one thing about this book, I would have Meacham focus more space on Jefferson's two terms as US president. Nevertheless, I highly recommend this book as a very good introduction to Jefferson.

Here is a passage from the book that well sums up Jefferson's presidency:

"{Jefferson] endures because we can see in him all the varied and wondrous possibilities of human experience--the thirst for knowledge, the capacity to create, the love of family and of friends, the hunger for accomplishment, the applause of the world, the marshaling of power, the bending of others to one's own vision. His genius lay in his versatility; his larger political legacy in his leadership of thought and of men.

"With his brilliance and his accomplishment and his fame he is immortal. Yet because of his flaws and his failures he strikes us as mortal, too--a man of achievement who was nonetheless susceptible to the temptations and compromises that ensnare all of us. He was not all he could be. But no politician--no human being--ever is.

"We sense his greatness because we know that perfection in politics is not possible but that Jefferson passed the fundamental test of leadership. Despite his shortcomings and all the inevitable disappointments and mistakes and dreams deferred, he left America, and the world, in a better place than it had been when he first entered the arena of public life."