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skitch41's review
5.0
An amazing political history of Thomas Jefferson's presidency. In a sense, the title is misleading. It should read "History of the United States and Europe during the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson," as a good portion of Adams's narrative is devoted to events in Europe that had a direct impact on the U.S. This book is not for passing fans of history though. It is over 1200 pages long and has some of the the most minute details of political and international history to grace such a large narrative. But for those major league history buffs (such as myself), the joy of reading Adams's history is not just the undercurrent of irony that surrounds a man who pledged to peace and instead left a nation on the edge of war; pledged to small government, but instead expanded it beyond his predecessor's dreams. It is also in the amount of details on U.S.-European relations he is able to include without dragging the overall narrative into drudgery. Definitely one of the best histories of an American presidency I have ever read.
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