Inventing America: Jefferson's Declaration of Independence

From one of America's foremost historians, Inventing America compares Thomas Jefferson's original draft of the Declaration of Independence with the final, accepted version, thereby challenging many long-cherished assumptions about both the man and the document. Although Jefferson has long been idealized as a champion of individual rights, Wills argues that in fact his vision was one in which interdependence, not self-interest, lay at the foundation of society. No one has offered so drastic a revision or so close or convincing an analysis as Wills has . . . The results are little short of astonishing (Edmund S. Morgan New York Review of Books ).