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"From the great historian of the American Revolution, NYT-bestselling and Pulitzer-winning Gordon Wood, comes a majestic dual biography of two of America's most enduringly fascinating figures, whose partnership helped birth a nation, and whose subsequent falling out did much to fix its course. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams could scarcely have come from more different worlds, or been more different in temperament. Jefferson, the optimist with enough faith in the innate goodness of his fellow man to be democracy's champion, was an aristocratic Southern slaveowner, while Adams, the overachiever from New England's rising middling classes, painfully aware he was no aristocrat, was a skeptic about popular rule and a defender of a more elitist view of government. They worked closely in the crucible of revolution, crafting the Declaration of Independence and leading, with Franklin, the diplomatic effort that brought France into the fight. But ultimately, their profound differences would lead to a fundamental crisis, in their friendship and in the nation writ large, as they became the figureheads of two entirely new forces, the first American political parties. It was a bitter breach, lasting through the presidential administrations of both men, and beyond"--

A Pulitzer Prize-winning historian of the American Revolution explains why it remains the most significant event in our history. In a series of elegant and illuminating essays, Wood explores the ideological origins of the revolution--from ancient Rome to the European Enlightenment--and the founders' attempts to forge an American democracy

The author argues that the Framers of the Constitution & other early national leaders were capable -- in a way that has never since been replicated in American history -- of living mutually in the world of ideas & ideals as well as that of political realities. However, it does us no good simply to wonder at their talent & intellect, he argues. Rather, we should try to understand what allowed them to balance public life & private intellect so that we might try to emulate that balance in our own lives. He suggests that the centrality of writing to their lives -- & the fact that they believed that they needed only to appeal to rational readers and not to the masses -- was part of what allowed them to achieve this balance. This balance also arose from the fact that they saw themselves organically linked to everyone else in their society -- something that politicians no longer feel, and one of the primary reasons why politicians are no longer public intellectuals. D. Knaff