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b'In 1784, Thomas Jefferson was a broken man. Reeling from the loss of his wife and humiliated from a political scandal during the Revolutionary war, he needed to remake himself. And to do that, he traveled. Traipsing through Europe, Jefferson saw and learned as much as he could, ultimately bringing his knowledge home to a young America. He wrote a travelogue called \\u201cHints to Americans Traveling in Europe.\\u201d

Jefferson documented his trip in order to educate the infant nation on cutting-edge techniques in agriculture and architecture. He included sketches of buildings with Roman domes and columns, which he thought should be incorporated into America\\u2019s buildings to celebrate one of the ancient world\\u2019s greatest democracies. But he also indulged in European luxury and spent a gilded carriage\\u2019s worth on wine, ivory-handled knives, and porcelain statuettes, and (most odd) an organ for teaching songs to birds.


More than two hundred years later, Derek Baxter, a devotee of American history, decided to follow in his footsteps and see what he could learn from the Founding Father. Baxter is today\\u2019s guest and author of \\u201cIn Pursuit of Jefferson: Traveling Through Europe With the Most Perplexing Founding Father.\\u201d He stumbled on Jefferson\\u2019s travelogue and used it as a roadmap, embarking on a new journey, following Jefferson to the same French wineries and rivers, even eating period-accurate food at Monticello. The goal was to figure out how to make sense of Jefferson and the multitude of contradictions in his life, the most debated being that he was a slaveholder who also wrote a world-historical testament to freedom.

This is an unflinching look at a founding father, and a moving personal journey. We explore how we can be better moving forward only by first looking back.'