Gordon S Wood

"From the great historian of the American Revolution, NYT-bestselling and Pulitzer-winning Gordon Wood, comes a majestic dual biography of two of America's most enduringly fascinating figures, whose partnership helped birth a nation, and whose subsequent falling out did much to fix its course. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams could scarcely have come from more different worlds, or been more different in temperament. Jefferson, the optimist with enough...

Gordon Wood depicts not just a break with England, but the rejection of an entire way of life. A society with feudal dependencies, a politics of patronage, and a world view in which people were divided between the nobility and 'the Herd.' He shows how the theories of the country's founders became realities that sometimes baffled and disappointed them.

One of the half dozen most important books ever written about the American Revolution.--New York Times Book Review "During the nearly two decades since its publication, this book has set the pace, furnished benchmarks, and afforded targets for many subsequent studies. If ever a work of history merited the appellation 'modern classic,' this is surely one.--William and Mary Quarterly"{A} brilliant and sweeping interpretation of political culture in...

Presents biographical portraits of George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Thomas Paine, and other men known as the "founding fathers" of the United States.

"... includes the complete newspaper exchange between Novanglus (Adams) and Massachusettensis (loyalist Daniel Leonard), as well as extensive diary excerpts and characteristically frank personal letters"--Jacket.

"Traces John Adams's career from his leading role in the debate over independence, [...] to his tireless efforts to establish the fledgling government of the United States and supply its army in the filed, to his crucial diplomatic service in Europe [...]. It includes his hightly influential 1776 pamphlet Thoughts on Government, dozens of his characteristically frank and revealing personal letters, [...] extensive diary excerpts. "--Jacket.