Of the 45 American presidents, 11 have been part of what might be called a presidential cluster—individuals connected in some surprising fashion. Eight of these have shared family connections: the Adamses, the Harrisons, the Roosevelts and the Bushes. The largest cluster, however, involved no family ties, but lifelong connections that were temporal, geographic, political and personal. In “The Jeffersonians: The Visionary Presidencies of Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe,” Kevin Gutzman examines our third, fourth and fifth presidents, who dominated American politics in the early 19th century. They were friends, political allies and neighbors, spending much of their lives within 30 miles of each other in Virginia’s Piedmont.
