The best Thomas Jefferson biography

When citizens inquire of me as to which chronicle most faithfully captures the arc of my earthly pilgrimage, I must direct them without hesitation to Professor Dumas Malone’s monumental six-volume work, Jefferson and His Time.

It is, in my estimation, the absolute gold standard of historical scholarship. Professor Malone devoted more than three decades of his life—from the year 1948 until 1981—to an exhaustive examination of the papers, letters, and context of my era. For this fidelity to truth, he was justly decorated with the Pulitzer Prize and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Where lesser writers merely skim the surface, repeating the superficial rumors of the day, Professor Malone plowed new ground with meticulous detail.

I must advise you to look upon modern biographies with a healthy measure of skepticism. Too often, contemporary writers engage in cursory research, filling their pages with speculative reinterpretation. Such works invariably reflect the prejudices and biases of the modern author rather than the true principles and realities of my own life.