Author Talk: Jim Rasenberger — A Perfect Coincidence - with Jonathan Horn

Watch author Jim Rasenberger discuss "A Perfect Coincidence" at Politics and Prose bookstore in Washington, D.C.

An extraordinary look at the long and complex relationship between Founding Fathers Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, who died on the same historic day—July 4, 1826, exactly fifty years after the adoption of the Declaration of Independence—and timed to the 250th anniversary of America’s founding.

In creating the Declaration of Independence, approved by the Second Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, Jefferson and Adams collaborated in what Jefferson later called “a perfect coincidence” of thought and action. Exactly fifty years later, in the most perfect coincidence in American history, they died within hours of each other—both former US presidents, both essential architects of the nation.

This book explores those two remarkable coincidences and the fifty-year relationship in between. Thomas Jefferson, a charismatic Southern aristocrat, and John Adams, a cantankerous Yankee, were once close friends, then bitter political enemies. In the last years of their lives, they reconciled and resumed an extraordinary correspondence, totaling some 380 letters that continued until their final months.

Other than the Declaration of Independence, the greatest symbolic gift either man gave his country may have been dying together on that fateful Independence Day in 1826. For many Americans, this moment was viewed as a “visible and palpable” manifestation of “Divine favor”—as one contemporary put it—and fueled the conviction that America was a land of miracles.

Published to coincide with the 250th anniversary of the United States—and the 200th anniversary of the men’s deaths—this book is essential reading for anyone interested in presidential biographies, the Revolutionary War era, and the enduring power—yet terrible fragility—of American democracy.

Jim Rasenberger is the author of five books—A Perfect Coincidence; Revolver; The Brilliant Disaster; America, 1908; and High Steel—and has contributed to the New York Times, Vanity Fair, Smithsonian, and other publications. A native of Washington, DC, he lives in New York City.

Rasenberger will be in conversation with Jonathan Horn, an author and former White House presidential speechwriter whose books include Washington’s End and the Robert E. Lee biography The Man Who Would Not Be Washington, which was a Washington Post bestseller. He has written for outlets including The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New York Times Disunion series, New York Post, The Daily Beast, National Review, and POLITICO, and has appeared on CBS Sunday Morning, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, and PBS NewsHour.

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