Long journey with Mr. Jefferson

Book excerpt: The magisterial collaboration over half a lifetime between historian Dumas Malone and his subject, Thomas Jefferson, is the basis for William G. Hyland Jr.'s compelling Long Journey with Mr. Jefferson. Malone, the courtly and genteel historian from Mississippi, spent thirty-eight years researching and writing the definitive biography of the man who invented the United States of America. Hyland provides a surprising portrait of the man many consider America's greatest historian, recording in detail Malone's struggle to finish his towering six-volume work on Jefferson through excruciating pain and then blindness at the age of eighty-three. Hyland includes Malone's previously unpublished correspondence with such notables as John F. Kennedy, Harry S. Truman, George H. W. Bush, Felix Frankfurter, and Fawn Brodie. Readers are treated to an exclusive look at private family documents and Malone's unfinished memoir, which reflects on history, social commentary, and his life's accomplishments. Offering much more than most biographies, this book imparts extensive insight into Malone's earlier years in Mississippi and Georgia, and how they shaped his character. Through interviews with Malone's intimates, family members, rivals, and subordinates, Hyland generates a true portrait of the man behind the intellect and the myth.