About the Author

Andrew Burstein is the Charles P. Manship Professor of History at Louisiana State University, USA. He is the author of Jefferson’s Secrets: Death and Desire at Monticello and the coauthor, with Nancy Isenberg, of Madison and Jefferson.

Reviews

Democracy's Muse engages with the small but robust scholarship on thememory of Jefferson and the American founding...the book's second section is where Burstein's insight really shines, as he hunts bigger game than how Jefferson has been invoked in the political realm...here Burstein uses Jefferson's image as a lens through which to consider the intersection of memory and the practice of contemporary political discourse, bringing to bear the author' sexpertise on the historical Jefferson and his savvy as an observer of contemporarypolitics for such outlets as Salon and Politico.--Andrew M. Schocket, Bowling Green State University

Democracy's Muse forces us to confront the past on its own terms and challenges us to ask the same of our political leaders.--Jeffrey Malanson, Indiana University

Democracy's Muse is a lively and opinionated look at Jefferson's latter-day admirers. You won't agree with everything Andrew Burstein says about them--but then they disagree so flamboyantly with each other.--Richard Brookhiser, author of Founders' Son: A Life of Abraham Lincoln

Andrew Burstein's book focuses tightly on the uses and abuses of Thomas Jefferson's legacy. 'The politically minded, ' he writes, 'choose to forget that [he] couldn't solve the most intractable problems of his own time; instead, they unearth a morally supportive quote and grant it universal power.'"... Does it really matter if politicians revise the Founders' story to suit their own needs? Burstein argue[s] compellingly that it does. Burstein observes that it is hard to challenge the politically sacred without being labeled unpatriotic. Therein, he says, 'lies tyranny over the mind'--the very tyranny that Jefferson warned against throughout his political life.... Eminently readable.-- "Wall Street Journal"

Burstein reviews both how presidents from Franklin Roosevelt to Barack Obama have harnessed the image and words of Thomas Jefferson to bolster their respective campaigns and initiatives and how recent scholars and schemers have grabbed hold of Jefferson's words and memory to do battle over questions of race, science, and religion.... Burstein writes engagingly, and, at times, quite entertainingly.-- "Daily Beast"

I feel confident in saying that Thomas Jefferson would've approved of Andrew Burstein's interpretation of his political afterlife in this book. I do so because--as Burstein so thoroughly and entertainingly chronicles--seemingly everybody else in American history has felt confident in saying Jefferson would've approved of whatever they were doing or saying about him.

Likely to be a landmark in Jefferson studies while making an original contribution to our understanding of the 'culture war' that has become such a toxic element of contemporary politics.--Francis D. Cogliano, University of Edinburgh, author of Thomas Jefferson: Reputation and Legacy

Reminiscent of Merrill Peterson's pathbreaking The Jefferson Image in the American Mind (1960), Democracy's Muse describes a Jefferson whose authority generations of liberals and conservatives have regularly cited, usually through cherry-picked quotes to advance their respective agendas.-- "CHOICE"