Thomas Jefferson: Reputation and Legacy. By Francis D. Cogliano. Jeffersonian America. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2006. Pp. [xii], 276. $45.00, ISBN 978-0-8139-2619-3.)

Perhaps the best way to meet Thomas Jefferson is to look up the sweep of the Lawn toward the Rotunda at the University of Virginia. Few landscapes constructed by human beings are so aesthetically pleasing. Perfectly positioned and proportioned, Jefferson's "academical village" realizes an eighteenth-century obsession with balance and harmony. The Lawn does not overpower or astonish; it soothes and reassures. Characteristically Jeffersonian, it is an oasis of rationality cloaking the ...