As the historian Merrill Peterson noted in his classic study The Jefferson Image in the American Mind (1960), the popular image of Thomas Jefferson has undergone numerous permutations over the years. In his introduction to the book's 1998 reprinting, Peterson drew attention to the continuing interest in Jefferson as shown in recent historical fiction, films, and documentaries, by the renaming of the Library of Congress main building as well as an exhibition at the National Gallery of Art, and by president-elect William Jefferson Clinton's pre-inaugural pilgrimage to Monticello, as we...