Thomas Jefferson

“What we need is a balanced reassessment of Jefferson’s thought and attitudes on God and religion. Thomas S. Kidd, a professor of history at Baylor, gives us that in his crisply written life Thomas Jefferson: A Biography of Spirit and Flesh.”—Barton Swaim, Wall Street Journal

Chosen by Wall Street Journal as one of “10 Books to Read on Faith in the Modern World”

“[An] excellent, timeless biography. . . . Balanced and judicious.”—Collin Garbarino, World, Book of the Year for 2022

“Set aside everything you think you know about Thomas Jefferson and religion, and read this book. Thomas Jefferson: A Biography of Spirit and Flesh is the definitive account. It is well written, well researched, judicious, and entirely convincing.”—Timothy Larsen, Wheaton College

“At long last, we have a biography of Thomas Jefferson that treats the enigmatic founder as more than just a living symposium of ideas or as a living museum of hypocrisies. In this long-awaited book, Thomas Kidd, one of the world’s most respected historians, portrays for us a compellingly complicated human being—who through both genius and will, and despite grave flaws, gave us a country we could not recognize apart from him. For people all across the ideological spectrum, this biography will be the starting point for countless new arguments and ideas.”—Russell Moore, chair of theology, Christianity Today

“I don’t know a scholar more able than Thomas Kidd to bring breadth, depth, and moral clarity to a treatment of a figure as significant and complicated as Thomas Jefferson—and to do so with vivid, compelling prose that will engage a broad audience of readers.”—Karen Swallow Prior, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary

“Kidd has written a unique work—‘a narrative of Jefferson’s moral universe’—that will make an outstanding contribution to scholarship on Jefferson.”—James Byrd, Vanderbilt Divinity School

“In ‘trying to untangle the thicket of Jefferson’s moral, philosophical, and theological commitments, in the context of his time, not ours, while avoiding both ‘patriotic apologetics’ and ‘iconoclastic destruction,’ Thomas Kidd gives us the Thomas Jefferson we need right now.”—Kevin R. C. Gutzman, author of Thomas Jefferson—Revolutionary: A Radical’s Struggle to Remake America