"A request in 1780 by the French legation to the United States to learn more about the newly formed thirteen states of America stimulated in Jefferson, as he later described it, a "mysterious obligation for making me much better acquainted with my own country than I ever was before." Written during his first term as governor of Virginia, Notes on the State of Virginia is at once a scientific discourse, an attempt to define America, and an examination...

Thomas Jefferson is often portrayed as a hopelessly enigmatic figure -- a riddle -- a man so riven with contradictions that he is almost impossible to know. Lauded as the most articulate voice of American freedom and equality, even as he held people -- including his own family -- in bondage, Jefferson is variably described as a hypocrite, an atheist, or a simple-minded proponent of limited government who expected all Americans to be farmers forever....