As Samuel Johnson had his Boswell, Thomas Jefferson had his Henry Stephens Randall. Like Johnson's biographer, Randall undertook his study of the third president of the United States with a singular devotion and diligence. Although Randall's biography is certainly not the classic work that Boswell's is, it nevertheless brings its highly interesting subject alive and presents, insofar as was possible during the heightened sectional conflict of the mid-nineteenth century, an objective analysis of one of the most important figures of the early American republic. At the time that Randall wrote his biography, the understanding of Jefferson's life and career had become so distorted by political enemies that it was difficult to discern the "real" Jefferson and his political beliefs. Randall was able to restore some of the luster to Jefferson's name and in the process fashioned a biography that, while ponderous, was the standard study for a century...