By Michael R. Maharrey
May 6, 2017
This is not your typical biography. There have been countless books written on Jefferson, but Gutzman tills a lot of new ground in this one. Instead of following the typical birth to death approach you find in most biographies, Gutzman focuses on Jefferson’s thought and how it influenced the shaping of America.
Gutzman breaks the book down into five key areas of Jefferson’s political philosophy: federalism, slavery and race relations, Native American policy, freedom of conscience/religion and education. Through this approach, Gutzman covers the high points of Jefferson’s public life, from the drafting of the Declaration of Independence to his fight for religious freedom, to the founding of the University of Virginia. Gutzman takes the reader on an intriguing journey through Jefferson’s mind that relies heavily on original source documents.
It’s clear from reading the book that Gutzman spent countless hours pouring over Jefferson’s papers. Many of the citations were familiar to me from my from my own studies, but Gutzman also brought a lot of more obscure
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sources to light. I’m certain even those who have studied Jefferson deeply will find new insights in this book.
Because he relies heavily on Jefferson’s own words, we see not only remarkable threads of consistency in his thought throughout his life, we also catch a glimpse of Jefferson’s evolution as a thinker. Gutzman also doesn’t hesitate to point that sometimes Jefferson’s actions diverged from his ideals.
Gutzman contends that Jefferson was, in fact, a…