An authoritative well documented book on Thomas Jefferson and how he contributed to American intellectual history.
The volume is too subtle, too rich in ideas for anyone to do justice to it in a brief summary, too heavily documented and too carefully wrought for anyone to dismiss its thesis, no matter how uncongenial he may find it. It is a major contribution not only to Jefferson studies but to American intellectual history, and the publishers probably do not claim too much for it when they say that it may necessitate a very considerable revision of conceptions of our intellectual heritage. The product of an original and distinguished mind, which moves through its material with poise and assurance, the volume suggests many of the qualities of such an illuminating work as Carl Becker's Heavenly City of the Eighteenth Century Philosophers. All who work in the history of ideas will find themselves deeply in Mr. Boorstin's debt.
—Richard Hofstadter
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