Dust jacket notes: "This discerning study of a man and an era reveals the influences which created the most extraordinary mind in the early days of the Republic. As Max Eastman says, 'I think John Dos Passos has done a great service to his country and the free world by lending his talents to this task. He has revived the heart and mind of Jefferson, not by psycho-analytical lucubrations or soulful gush, but in the main by telling story after story of those whose lives and thoughts impinged upon his. And Jefferson's mind and heart are so livingly related to our problems today that the result seems hardly to be history.' This is no ordinary biography. Mr. Dos Passos has woven all quotations from Jefferson's writings and conversations and those of his contemporaries into the text to form an unbroken story. Since he has let his characters speak in their own words, the reader gets the impression of actually living in the period instead of merely reading about it...."