Thomas Jefferson has inspired countless books that explore his brilliant career, his political philosophy, and his extraordinary accomplishments as a gifted leader. Endlessly inquisitive, he was both a tireless writer and one of the most cosmopolitan men of his age. Yet this collection of Jefferson's reflections on his wide-ranging travels reveals a new side of the man.

Eloquent and powerful, Thomas Jefferson's letters and travel diaries from his years abroad as the U.S. minister to France spill onto the pages of this volume in wonderful detail, covering the full range of his interests and passions. Editor Anthony Brandt has sifted through the myriad of writings from this rich period of Jefferson's career to present not only the politician and diplomat but Thomas Jefferson the lover, the father, the farmer, the architect, the man about town, the scientist, the visionary. Jefferson emerges at the end a fully dimensional man, with all his virtues, his flaws, and his extraordinary brilliance fleshed out, standing vividly before us. Thomas Jefferson formulated many of America's highest ideals. Here we see the man himself, and glimpse the world through his eyes.