A Perfect Coincidence: The Extraordinary Friendship and Astonishing Deaths of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson

“This book is a delight, a sparkling work of narrative nonfiction.” —Wall Street Journal

A revelatory new look at the long and complex relationship between Founding Fathers Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, who died on the same historic day—exactly fifty years after the adoption of the Declaration of Independence.

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 vividly 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.

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 fueled the conviction that America was a land of miracles.

This book is essential reading for anyone interested in the Revolutionary War era, the creation of the United States, and the enduring power—yet terrible fragility—of American democracy.