As more and more Americans become convinced of the need to devolve power away from Washington and back to the states and localities, our Jeffersonian inheritance once more becomes intensely relevant. By providing us with this marvelous collection of new interpretive essays, Gary McDowell and Sharon Noble put us all in their debt.Thomas Jefferson was one of the greatest Americans, yet suffered from typical American faults. This fine collection looks for the man, and the nation, in Jefferson's ideas, bringing new studies of his thought and influence.. . . this volume proves that serious, urbane scholarship on the Sage of Monticello can still be produced and published. The editors are to be commended for a fine volume of high quality that should grace many university, college, and private libraries.Wide ranging and insightful........outstanding for the diversity of topics it covers and the high quality of its essays that brilliantly frame and explore the many compartments and contradictions of the Virginian politician.A wonderfully rich collection of fresh, controversial, and deeply thought provoking essays on Jefferson.The book presents an extremely nuanced portrait of Jefferson as an 'apostle of liberty'.An international collection of the world's most distinguished historians and political philosophers takes a fresh look at the political, legal, and philosophical contributions of Thomas Jefferson. The insightful essays analyze and illuminate the sophisticated layers of the political and legal thought of America's most influential and intellectually complex Founder. With contributors that include Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Morton Frisch, Paul Rahe, James Stoner, Robert K. Faulkner, John Zvesper, Howard Temperly, Robert A. Rutland, Raoul Berger, Colin Bonwick, Peter Parish, Jeffrey Sedgwick, J. R. Pole, Richard King, and Jean M. Yarborough, this is essential reading for historians and political philosophers.Gary L. McDowell is professor of American studies and director l£g