The Declaration of Independence, the most revered document to have been issued from the pen of Thomas Jefferson, contains both soaring rhetoric and serious constitutional arguments that the colonists had been making for over a decade. And Jefferson’s other writings similarly evince both a striking literary style and serious thought. In His Masterly Pen, Fred Kaplan admirably captures the former, but dismisses the latter.
I enjoyed reading and arguing with this book. The prose is engaging and the narrative style is well paced. Most readers with an interest in Jefferson will find it intriguing and provocative, but they should be warned that this is not a historical biography. It is rather a literary interpretation of Jefferson’s paper trail from his earliest forays in writing until his last compositions near death, and that distinction matters.
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