Tom Chaffin

In a narrative both panoramic and intimate, Chaffin captures the four-decade friendship of Thomas Jefferson and the Marquis de Lafayette. Thomas Jefferson first met the Marquis de Lafayette in 1781, when the young French-born general was dispatched to Virginia to assist Jefferson, then the state's governor, in fighting off the British. The two could not have seemed more different. When Jefferson moved to Paris three years later as a diplomat, speaking...

"Charles Darwin--alongside Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein--ranks among the world's most famous scientists. In popular imagination, he peers at us from behind a bushy white Old Testament beard. This image of Darwin the Sage, however, crowds out the vital younger man whose curiosities, risk-taking, and travels aboard HMS Beagle would shape his later theories and served as the foundation of his scientific breakthroughs. Though storied, the Beagle's...