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Summary, Analysis & Review of Jon Meacham's Thomas Jefferson by Instaread
- Narrated by: Jeff Jorgensen
- Length: 28 mins
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Summary, Analysis & Review of Jon Meacham's Thomas Jefferson by Instaread
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Publisher's summary
Jon Meacham's Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power is a biography that focuses on Thomas Jefferson's abilities as a practical politician. Meacham argues that Jefferson was a pragmatist who was willing to adjust his philosophical principles as necessary to preserve the United States.
Thomas Jefferson was born in 1743 to Peter Jefferson, a wealthy, influential Virginia planter, and Jane Randolph, also of an influential Virginia family. Jefferson's father died when he was 14.
At 16, Jefferson attended the College of William and Mary, where he cultivated the intellectual curiosity and the interest in philosophy that he retained his entire life. He was particularly influenced by George Wythe, who taught him law and helped to inspire Jefferson's wide reading and his taste for luxuries.
Please note: This is a summary, analysis and review of the book and not the original book.
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-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 463
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 461
Over the course of his life, James Madison changed the United States three times: First, he designed the Constitution, led the struggle for its adoption and ratification, then drafted the Bill of Rights. As an older, cannier politician, he cofounded the original Republican party, setting the course of American political partisanship. Finally, having pioneered a foreign policy based on economic sanctions, he took the United States into a high-risk conflict, becoming the first wartime president and, despite the odds, winning.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Cogently organized, meticulously balanced
- By Diana Black Kennedy on 06-15-18
By: Noah Feldman
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Revolutionary Characters
- What Made the Founders Different
- By: Gordon S. Wood
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 10 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 182
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 106
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 105
Gordon Wood's wondrous accomplishment here is to bring these men and their times down to earth and within our reach, showing us just who they were and what drove them. In so doing, he shows us that although a lot has changed in two hundred years, to an amazing degree the virtues these founders defined for themselves are the virtues we aspire to still.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Wood clearly dislikes Adams
- By Michael on 01-15-07
By: Gordon S. Wood
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The Problem of Democracy
- The Presidents Adams Confront the Cult of Personality
- By: Nancy Isenberg, Andrew Burstein
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 22 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 44
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 40
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 40
John and John Quincy Adams: rogue intellectuals, unsparing truth-tellers, too uncensored for their own political good. They held that political participation demanded moral courage. They did not seek popularity (it showed). They lamented the fact that hero worship in America substituted idolatry for results; and they made it clear that they were talking about Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson. When John Adams succeeded George Washington as President, his son had already followed him into public service and was stationed in Europe as a diplomat.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Very insightful and rewarding adding understanding
- By William on 05-12-19
By: Nancy Isenberg, and others
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Henry Clay
- The Man Who Would Be President
- By: James C. Klotter
- Narrated by: James Anderson Foster
- Length: 19 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 49
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 45
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Story5 out of 5 stars 44
Charismatic, charming, and one of the best orators of his era, Henry Clay seemed to have it all. He offered a comprehensive plan of change for America, and he directed national affairs as Speaker of the House, as Secretary of State to John Quincy Adams - the man he put in office - and as acknowledged leader of the Whig party. As the broker of the Missouri Compromise and the Compromise of 1850, Henry Clay fought to keep a young nation united when westward expansion and slavery threatened to tear it apart. Yet, despite his talent and achievements, Henry Clay never became president.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Wonderful book by a talented writer and historian
- By Timothy on 08-24-18
By: James C. Klotter
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The Birth of Modern Politics
- Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, and the Election of 1828
- By: Lynn Hudson Parson
- Narrated by: Milton Bagby
- Length: 10 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 84
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 65
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Story4 out of 5 stars 66
The 1828 presidential election, which pitted Major General Andrew Jackson against incumbent John Quincy Adams, has long been hailed as a watershed moment in American political history. It was the contest in which an unlettered, hot-tempered southwestern frontiersman, trumpeted by his supporters as a genuine man of the people, soundly defeated a New England "aristocrat" whose education and political resume were as impressive as any ever seen in American public life.
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4 out of 5 stars
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a very good popular history book
- By D. Littman on 01-29-10
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The Lost Founding Father
- John Quincy Adams and the Transformation of American Politics
- By: William J. Cooper
- Narrated by: Richard Poe
- Length: 16 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 45
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 42
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 41
Why has John Quincy Adams been largely written out of American history when he is, in fact, our lost Founding Father? Overshadowed by both his brilliant father and the brash and bold Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams has long been dismissed as hyper-intellectual. Viciously assailed by Jackson and his populist mobs for being both slippery and effete, Adams nevertheless recovered from the malodorous 1828 presidential election to lead the nation as a lonely Massachusetts congressman in the fight against slavery.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Edifying
- By Jean on 01-15-18
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The American Political Tradition
- And the Men Who Made It
- By: Richard Hofstadter, Christopher Lasch - foreword
- Narrated by: Kaleo Griffith
- Length: 17 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 35
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 30
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Story5 out of 5 stars 28
The American Political Tradition is one of the most influential and widely read historical volumes of our time. First published in 1948, its elegance, passion, and iconoclastic erudition laid the groundwork for a totally new understanding of the American past. By writing a "kind of intellectual history of the assumptions behind American politics", Richard Hofstadter changed the way Americans understand the relationship between power and ideas in their national experience. Hofstadter was able to articulate, in a single work, a historical vision that inspired and shaped an entire generation.
By: Richard Hofstadter, and others
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Thomas Jefferson
- A Biography of Spirit and Flesh
- By: Thomas S. Kidd
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 11 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 57
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 51
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 51
Thomas Jefferson was arguably the most brilliant and inspiring political writer in American history. But the ethical realities of his personal life and political career did not live up to his soaring rhetoric. Indeed, three tensions defined Jefferson’s moral life: democracy versus slavery, republican virtue versus dissolute consumption, and veneration for Jesus versus skepticism about Christianity. In this book, Thomas S. Kidd tells the story of Jefferson’s ethical life through the lens of these tensions.
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3 out of 5 stars
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This version is the standard non in depth bio
- By Fred F on 03-28-24
By: Thomas S. Kidd
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Jefferson
- Architect of American Liberty
- By: John B. Boles
- Narrated by: Michael Johnson
- Length: 24 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 249
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 219
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 219
From an eminent scholar of the American South, the first full-scale biography of Thomas Jefferson since 1970. Not since Merrill Peterson's Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation has a scholar attempted to write a comprehensive biography of the most complex Founding Father. In Jefferson, John B. Boles plumbs every facet of Thomas Jefferson's life, all while situating him amid the sweeping upheaval of his times. We meet Jefferson the politician and political thinker - as well as Jefferson the architect, scientist, bibliophile, paleontologist, musician, and gourmet.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Makes Jefferson Human
- By MichaelBuffalo on 06-23-20
By: John B. Boles
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Washington's Farewell
- The Founding Father's Warning to Future Generations
- By: John Avlon
- Narrated by: John Avlon
- Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 280
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 247
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 249
George Washington's Farewell Address was a prophetic letter from a "parting friend" to his fellow citizens about the forces he feared could destroy our democracy: hyper-partisanship, excessive debt, and foreign wars. Once celebrated as civic scripture, more widely reprinted than the Declaration of Independence, the Farewell Address is now almost forgotten. Its message remains starkly relevant. In Washington's Farewell, John Avlon offers a stunning portrait of our first president and his battle to save America from self-destruction.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Very well written and performed
- By Michael Reading on 03-02-17
By: John Avlon
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The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution: 1763-1789
- By: Robert Middlekauff
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 26 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,240
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,046
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,041
The first book to appear in the illustrious Oxford History of the United States, this critically-acclaimed volume - a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize - offers an unsurpassed history of the Revolutionary War and the birth of the American republic.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Strong History Rich With Behind The Scenes Details
- By John on 10-06-11
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Agony and Eloquence
- John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and a World of Revolution
- By: Daniel L. Mallock
- Narrated by: Jonathan Yen
- Length: 14 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 67
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 60
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Story4 out of 5 stars 60
The drama of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson is the foundational story of America - courage, loyalty, hope, fanaticism, greatness, failure, forgiveness, love. Agony and Eloquence is the story of the greatest friendship in American history and the revolutionary times in which it was made, ruined, and finally renewed. In the wake of Washington's retirement, longtime friends Thomas Jefferson and John Adams came to represent the opposing political forces struggling to shape America's future.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great Listen
- By Kyle B. on 03-12-21
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The Fiery Trial
- Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery
- By: Eric Foner
- Narrated by: Norman Dietz
- Length: 18 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 519
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 427
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 428
Eric Foner gives us the definitive history of Abraham Lincoln and the end of slavery in America. Foner's Lincoln emerges as a leader, one whose greatness lies in his capacity for moral and political growth through real engagement with allies and critics alike. This powerful work will transform our understanding of the nation's greatest president and the issue that mattered most.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Great Book about a Monstrous Injustice
- By Cynthia on 07-29-13
By: Eric Foner
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James Madison
- By: Richard Brookhiser
- Narrated by: Norman Dietz
- Length: 10 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 262
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 223
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Story4 out of 5 stars 222
Eminent historian Richard Brookhiser presents a vivid portrait of James Madison, the “Father of the Constitution” and one of America's greatest statesmen.
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4 out of 5 stars
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OK book but not a biography
- By Joel Mayer on 08-05-12
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Abraham Lincoln
- A Presidential Life
- By: James McPherson
- Narrated by: John McDonough
- Length: 1 hr and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 82
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 61
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 62
In this compelling biography, McPherson follows Abraham Lincoln from his early frontier days to his turbulent years in the White House. This concise yet comprehensive account reveals why Lincoln still remains a quintessential American icon.
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3 out of 5 stars
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In depth
- By Pat on 04-23-12
By: James McPherson