Review of \u3ci\u3eThomas Jefferson and the Changing West: From Conquest to Conservation\u3c/i\u3e, James P. Ronda, ed.

Thomas Jefferson would have liked the idea of this book (if not all the essays themselves) since the American West was a canvas on which he loved to paint. Obvious links to western history can be found in Jefferson\u27s 1803 purchase of the Louisiana Territory and his central role in launching the subsequent expedition of Lewis and Clark. Of more subtle relevance was Jefferson\u27s propensity to construct worlds in his imagination, usually filled with sturdy yeomen laboring virtuously on freehold farms carved out of a continental wilderness that he preferred to think of as empty and inviting. Hence the monument to Jefferson a thousand miles west of Monticello in the Gateway Arch at St. Louis. And hence the 1994 conference for which these essays were conceived to address the enduring significance of our third president to the West-and perhaps vice versa