Friends Divided

"Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson" by Gordon S. Wood, winner of the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for History. ISBN 978-0-7352-2471-1. Copyright 2017. Hardcover with 502 pages including notes and index.

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 faith in the innate goodness of his fellow man to be democracy's champion, was an aristocratic Southern slave owner, while Adams, the overachiever from New England's rising middling classes, painfully aware he was no aristocrat, was a skeptic about popular rule and a defender of a more elitist view of government. They worked closely in the crucible of revolution, crafting the Declaration of Independence and leading, with Benjamin Franklin, the diplomatic effort that brought France into the fight. Ultimately, their profound differences would lead to a fundamental crisis, in their friendship and in the nation writ large, as they became the figureheads of two entirely new forces, the first American political parties. It was a bitter breach, lasting through the presidential administrations of both men, and beyond.

A Mount Vernon bookplate, signed by the author, is included with your purchase.