Joseph J. Ellis, American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson (Vintage Books, 1998).

Joe Ellis is an Adams scholar, deeply skeptical about Jefferson and clearly annoyed by the Cult of Jefferson. He has written a fascinating and irreverent study of Jefferson. His zeal to deride Jefferson's air-headedness and his constitutional evasiveness sometimes goes too far, I think, but the book is one of the most amusing and entertaining ever written about Jefferson and there is clearly a good deal of affection in Ellis's portrait. The last chapter is sublime.

Annette Gordon-Reed, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy (University Press of Virginia, 1998).

Everything you ever wanted to know about this business. Gordon-Reed makes no final judgement, but she explores the evidence, all of it circumstantial, with masterful impartiality.

Dumas Malone, Thomas Jefferson and His Time (6 volumes) (Little, Brown & Co., 1948-1989).

Dumas Malone is a hagiographer. He has a hard time acknowledging that Jefferson had a dark side. His massive, definitive apologia is the standard text for all scholars working on Jefferson. The last volume, The Sage of Monticello, is a masterful portrait of Jefferson in retirement. Malone's adoration for Jefferson is so great that in recent years revisionist historians have been criticizing Malone almost as much as Jefferson.

Forest McDonald, The Presidency of Thomas Jefferson (American Presidency Series) (University Press of Kansas, 1987).

Forest McDonald is no friend to Jefferson, but this is one of the best books written about Jefferson in our time. This study of Jefferson's two terms as president is insightful, concise, and fair-minded. Everyone who studies Jefferson should read the opposition press. McDonald is the best of the Jefferson detractors.

Merrill D. Peterson, Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation: A Biography (Oxford University Press, 1986).

Merrill Peterson is the greatest living Jefferson Scholar. His work has set the standard of excellence in the last four decades. Not only has he edited several anthologies of Jefferson's writings, he has written a seminal book, The Jefferson Image in the American Mind (University Press of Virginia 1998), which is the best one-volume biography ever written about Jefferson. If you have time to read only one book about Jefferson, this has to be it. Peterson is never wrong, and though he is reluctant to judge Jefferson, he does not shrink from the dark side and the inconsistencies. And the book is well written, too.

Proving that Meriwether Lewis carried as much "Jeffersonian" as physical baggage to the Pacific Ocean.

Ambrose, Stephen. Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West. Simon & Schuster, 1996.

The best one-volume story of the expedition, espically strong on the last sad days of Meriwether Lewis.

Betts, Robert. IN Search of York: the Slave Who Went to the Pacific with Lewis and Clark. Associate University Press, 1985.

There was a black man on the expedition. It was a multicultural affair.

Chuinard, Eldon. Only One Man Died: The Medical Aspects of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. A.H.Clark, 1979.

Three, actually, if you count Indians.

Furtwagler, Albert. Acts of Discovery: Visions of America in the Lewis and Clark Journals. University of Illinois Press 1997.

Quirly and extremely insightful.

Hawke, David Freeman. Those Tremendous Mountains: The Story of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Norton 1980.

The most readable short account of the expedition.

Jackson, Donald. Thomas Jefferson and the Stony Mountains: Exploring the West from Monticello. University of Illinois Press, 1981.

An excellent account of Jefferson's heroic, bookish exploration of the West.

Ronda, James. Lewis and Clark Among the Indians. University of Nebraska Press, 1984.

The finest book ever written about the Lewis and Clark expedition, and the only one to take Native America seriously.

Steffen, Jerome. William Clark: Jeffersonian Man on the Frontier. University of Oklahoma, 1977.

Adequate and solid.

Editions:

Blakeless, John. The Adventures of Lewis and Clark. Houghton and Mifflin, 1962.

Best short edition.

Bergen, Frank, ed. The Journals of Lewis and Clark. Penguin, 1995.

Superb on the natural history of the expedition.

De Voto, Bernard, ed. The Journals of Lewis and Clark. Houghton and Mifflin, 1953.

Excellent introduction and commentary.

Moulton, Gary, ed. The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. 10 vols. University of Nebraska Press, 1983-1996.

The definitive scholarly edition of all the Lewis and Clark papers.

A new comprehensive Bibliography from Lewis and Clark University:
The Literature of The Lewis and Clark Expedition, A Bibliography and Essays Essays by Stephen Dow Beckman, Bibliography by Doug Erickson, Jeremy Skinner, and Paul Merchant, Portland, OR, Lewis and Clark College: 2003.

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Bob Aegerter, Revised - April 2, 200D31