This text, first published in 1960, presents a study of Thomas Jefferson's posthumous reputation, and its influence on American imagination and political thought from the 1820s to the 1930s. It examines how Jefferson's reputation rose and fell and what this shows about America's evolving culture.

Since its publication in 1960, The Jefferson Image in the American Mind has become a classic of historical scholarship. In it Merrill D. Peterson charts Thomas Jefferson's influence upon American thought and imagination since his death in 1826. Peterson's focus is "not primarily with the truth or falsity of the image either as a whole or in its parts, but rather with its illuminations of the evolving culture and its shaping power. It is posterity's configuration of Jefferson. Even more, however, it is a sensitive reflector, through several generations, of America's troubled search of the image of itself."