Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), the third president of the United States, left a vast literary legacy in the form of journal entries, notes, addresses, and seventy thousand letters. Jefferson remains one of the country's most extraordinary figures; as well as president he was a brilliant statesman, architect, scientist, naturalist, educator, and public servant. At a dinner for Nobel Prize recipients, John F. Kennedy said that his guests were "the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered at the White House, with the possible exception of when...