Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), one of America’s most important Founding Fathers, was the third president of the United States, the founder of the University of Virginia, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, and the author of Notes on the State of Virginia. Annette Gordon-Reed is a New York Times–bestselling historian and the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard University. Her books include The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family, which won the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy, and (with Peter S. Onuf) Most Blessed of the Patriarchs: Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imagination.