"This is the best so far of an already superbly distinguished series which will constitute when finished one of the finest historical biographies of our time." --New York Review of Books
"In the grand design of Mr. Malone's comprehensive biography, the present volume maintains the magnificent quality of the preceding ones and in one sense outstrips them by fulfilling an urgent need in American scholarship....Henceforth no one will dare to pronounce on any aspect of it, without having studied closely this [biography] of a great President by a great historian." --New York Times Book Review
The fourth volume of this Pulitzer Prize-winning biography vividly recounts Jefferson's eventful first presidential term. Though characterized by calmer seas than his second presidential voyage, Jefferson's first years in office find him confronting a nation deeply divided following the administrations of Washington and Adams, and many subsequent conflicts. He acquires the vast territory of Louisiana for the United States, challenges the growing power of the federal judiciary, and continues to press his opposition to the Hamiltonian doctrine of an overriding central government, assumes the unchallenged leadership of his party, and is universally acknowledged as the preeminent American patron of science and general learning.
