Garry Wills is one of the most respected writers on religion today. He is the author of Saint Augustine's Childhood, Saint Augustine's Memory, and Saint Augustine's Sin, the first three volumes in this series, as well as the Penguin Lives biography Saint Augustine. His other books include “Negro President”: Jefferson and the Slave Power, Why I Am a Catholic, Papal Sin, and Lincoln at Gettysburg, which won the Pulitzer Prize.

In 1800 Thomas Jefferson won the presidential election with Electoral College votes derived from the three-fths representation of slaves slaves who could not vote but were still partially counted as citizens. Moving beyond the recent revisionist debate over Jefferson's own slaves and his relationship with Sally Hemings, Garry Wills instead probes the heart of Jefferson's presidency and political life, revealing how the might of the slave states remained a concern behind his most important policies and decisions. Jefferson's foil was Thomas Pickering, who along with the Federalists fought the president and the institutions that supported him. In an eye-opening, ingeniously argued expos, Wills restores Pickering and his allies" dramatic struggle to our understanding of Jefferson, the creation of the new nation, and the evolution of our representative democracy.