In the Hands of the People

Fred Sanders and Edoardo Ballerini highlight a full-cast narration--punctuated with musical interludes--in this stirring presentation of Jefferson on America and Americans on Jefferson. In these exquisitely chosen texts, Jefferson is passionate and prescient, insisting on a free press and freedom of religion, even foreseeing foreign enemies who might subvert the electoral process. A slaveholder, the architect of Monticello is praised by Martin Luther King, Jr., and receives credit from Frederick Douglass, as well. "Wherever the people are well informed," Jefferson wrote in 1789, "they can be trusted with their own government, [and] whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights." Or not. B.H.C. � AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine