Democracy and History: Isaiah Thomas and Thomas Jefferson

Peter S. Onuf is the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Virginia. He retired in 2012 after teaching at the University of Virginia for more than twenty years. Onuf is also senior fellow at Monticello’s Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies. A leading scholar of Thomas Jefferson and the early American republic, Onuf is the author, co-author, and editor of numerous books, including (as author) Jefferson’s Empire: The Language of American Nationhood (2001), The Mind of Thomas Jefferson (2007), and (as editor) Jeffersonian Legacies (1993). He was also a co-host with Brian Balogh and Edward Ayers of the weekly public radio program and podcast Backstory with the American History Guys. At AAS he was the Mellon Distinguished Scholar in Residence in 2017-18; he was elected to membership in 1994.