Author talk with Fred Kaplan

Fred Kaplan is the author of John Quincy Adams: American Visionary and Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer, which was named A Best Book of the Year by the New York Times and the Washington Post.

He is the author of biographies of Henry James, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, & Gore Vidal. Professor Kaplan is currently writing Difficult Friendships: Jefferson and the Adams Family. A former New Yorker, he lives in East Boothbay, Maine

About the Book:

In this unique biography, Fred Kaplan emphasizes Thomas Jefferson’s genius with language and his ability to use the power of words to inspire and shape a nation. A man renowned for many talents, writing was one of the major activities of the statemen’s life, though much of his best, most influential writing—with the exception of the letters he wrote up to his death, numbering approximately 100,000—was done by 1789, when Jefferson was just forty-six. All of his works demonstrate his remarkable intelligence, prescient wisdom, and literary flair and reveal the man in all his complex and controversial brilliance.