Noble E. Cunningham Jr. is Curators' Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Missouri, Columbia. With research and writing focused on the early national period of American history, his writings include In Pursuit of Reason: The Life of Thomas Jefferson (1987); The Process of Government under Jefferson (1976); The Image of Thomas Jefferson in the Public Eye (1981); Popular Images of the Presidency from Washington to Lincoln (1991); and The Presidency of James Monroe (1996). He has been a Guggenheim Fellow and a senior fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities.