The above title is a quote from Merrill Peterson’s not at all tedious—at least to this reader—The Jefferson Image in the American Mind (1960). Not precisely a lost classic but not a popular citation of late in cutting-edge scholarship either, the book is as interesting for the model of scholarship that it represents as it is for its content: The Jefferson Image is, above all, useful, privileging collation over interpretation. While not as miscellaneous as something like Merle Curti’s The Growth of American Thought (which Paul Murphy luminously revisited very recently here on the blog), The Jefferson Image works because Read more