Praise for Light and Liberty

Merrill D. Peterson

Professor of History, Emeritus
University of Virginia

"Light and Liberty: Reflections on the Pursuit of Happiness places before the reader an extraordinary distillation of the thought and wisdom of Thomas Jefferson. It captures the essential spirit of the man by creating from Jefferson’s voluminous writings an amazing synthesis of his heart and mind under thirty-four headings that range from Faith and Happiness to Peace and Truth. Not surprising, the longest chapter – the theme of the whole – is Liberty. It is an amazing synthesis, at once illuminating and uplifting.

"Historians have often found Jefferson a difficult man to harmonize and sum up. He was, after all, tightly woven into many and diverse threads of history during an eventful life of eighty-three years. Eric S. Petersen’s Light and Liberty pays no heed to shifting historical contexts. The thought is here in all its variety but not the interstices of action. Readers may pause to ask themselves on occasion, how American is this or that idea in the twenty-first century? Or how relevant is another Jeffersonian maxim in our own time, especially in the light of his own standard: “the earth was made for the living and not the dead”? But such questions only add to the reader’s enjoyment of this inspired book."

Professor Merrill D. Peterson held the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation chair in history at the University of Virginia for a quarter century before retiring in 1987. A leading Jefferson scholar and biographer, his “Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation” and “The Jefferson Image in the American Mind” remain standards in the field. Merrill also authored and edited a dozen other books on Jefferson, his writings and his times, and served as an emeritus trustee of the Foundation.