DEBORAH TREFTS
Staff Writer
This past week, the extraordinary collaboration of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson in 1776 was extolled by Chautauqua Institution’s cast of “America at 250” speakers.
The continuing interactions of these indispensable founding fathers during the half-century that followed — and the uncanny circumstances of their deaths — reinforced a prevalent conviction about America’s “divine favor” and are the basis of another remarkable story.
Acclaimed historian, author and journalist Jim Rasenberger will share this story at the Chautauqua Women’s Club’s Contemporary Issues Forum. At 3 p.m. Saturday in the Hall of Philosophy, he will give a lecture titled, “Adams and Jefferson: Friendship, Rivalry and the Most ‘Perfect Coincidence’ in American History.”
Rasenberger is the author of A Perfect Coincidence: The Extraordinary Friendship and Astonishing Deaths of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, which Scribner published in May 2026 “to coincide with the 250th anniversary of the United States and the 200th anniversary of the men’s deaths.”
“One of the messages of Adams and Jefferson is that of reconciliation,” Rasenberger said. “They met in the Second Continental Congress and worked together in a ‘perfect coincidence’ of thought and action. Adams was the chief advocate and Jefferson the chief author of the Declaration of Independence. … They went to France together and were close. But a deep partisan divide occurred when they returned to the United States and they became bitter enemies. Then they corresponded. …”
Born the youngest of five children with four older sisters, Rasenberger grew up in Washington, D.C. There, his father, a young attorney, had done advance work for John F. Kennedy during his campaign and presidency.
The Bicentennial sparked Rasenberger’s interest in history: “When I was 13, I read my first serious history books,” he said. “One was on Adams, and one on Jefferson — Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History, by [Fawn McKay] Brodie. And I watched an early [PBS] ‘Masterpiece’-like series, ‘The Adams Chronicles.’ So I was always really interested in Adams and Jefferson.”
He continued: “I used to go to Monticello, which was nearby. I remember just loving it. I think Jefferson particularly appeals to boys because he was an inventor. During the 1970’s, slavery was an aside. Not until later was there recognition of the hypocrisy. Now at Monticello, it’s taken more seriously.”
At Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, Rasenberger majored in philosophy rather than history or English because he knew he would always read history and literature.
“Philosophy gives you a framework,” he said. “It teaches you how to think. It’s not opaque, arcane, BS-y. It teaches you how to remove your prejudices and strip down your argument to the core.”
Initially, Rasenberger wanted to be a novelist, but then he “realized it wasn’t (his) thing.”
During his early 20s and his 30s, he said he did some screenwriting. “That tells you how to structure your story — how to think and structure. … I wrote something that got attention and (the agent) William Morris was interested. You spend your time writing it, but you don’t have ownership. You’re a writing hack. … You’re writing on spec or assignment. I wrote for Vanity Fair for a while, while trying to write fiction.”
By his late 30s, Rasenberger was frustrated with screenwriting. “I wrote New York City history for The New York Times. I was late blooming. I loved doing it and they gave me free rein for the ‘City’ section, which no longer exists. I wrote a piece on the ironworkers — Mohawk Indians and Newfoundlanders.”
High Steel: The Daring Men Who Built the World’s Greatest Skyline became Rasenberger’s first book, published in 2004.
“I started it in 2000, and was writing it when 9/11 happened,” he said. “Before then, these guys were close (to each other), and who was [I]? After 9/11, we became closer, and I got to know them quite well. They came from families of ironworkers — fourth or fifth generation — who had put up the World Trade Center. Then after 9/11, they had to cut it down.”
Ever since then, Rasenberger has “been writing books and … kept on with journalism.” The latter includes “offering thoughtful perspectives on history, culture and the forces that shape our world” for The New York Times and Smithsonian magazine.
“And I’ve been ghost writing memoirs for wealthy people … who all want NDAs,” he said. “… It’s a really nice side gig that’s allowed me to write my histories. My books do take a lot of time; … years of work. And I put a lot of time into the memoirs; I want them to be good.”
America, 1908: The Dawn of Flight, the Race to the Pole, the Invention of the Model T, and the Making of a Modern Nation was Rasenberger’s second book, published in 2007.
“It came out of the first book in many ways,” he said. “A lot of what I was writing about was expressions of ingenuity. The Wright brothers began to fly publicly in the U.S. and France, … Teddy Roosevelt sent a great white fleet of 16 battleships around the world … American exceptionalism was expressed. All of my books are about bigger, better, faster, higher.”
While working on America, 1908, Rasenberger said he “… kept running into Chautauqua — it was so prevalent, not just as a town, but as a movement.”
His book, Brilliant Disaster: JFK, Castro, and America’s Doomed Invasion of Cuba’s Bay of Pigs, came out in 2011. “The Bay of Pigs is the flip side,” he said. “You see the U.S. doing something it should not have done. You see it all the time in American history. … We went into Vietnam right after the Bay of Pigs with the exact same people in charge.”
Rasenberger has a personal connection to the Bay of Pigs invasion: “My father was one of the young attorneys brought in after (it). Castro took more than 1,000 men as prisoners. They were trapped on the beaches. My father negotiated with RFK. JFK and RFK very much wanted to get them out.”
Published in 2020, Revolver: Sam Colt and the Six-Shooter that Changed America came about because Rasenberger was “looking to do a biography, and as an East Coaster, I wanted to write about the West.” At a funeral, a friend suggested he write about Colt.
“I said, ‘No, I’m not a gun guy.’ (But) Colt was the innovator in mass production of interchangeable parts. The role of the revolver in the 1840s and ‘50s, in the era of Manifest Destiny, was really important in opening up the West. (Yet Colt) had never been written about.”
For three years, Rasenberger traveled every other weekend from his home in New York City to Hartford, Connecticut, to read Colt’s non-digitized, handwritten letters.
“He was a fascinating guy,” he said. “Unfortunately, many people — particularly women readers — saw it as a gun book. But it’s really not. It’s a different way of writing about American history.”
On Saturday afternoon, Rasenberger will focus on his latest book, A Perfect Coincidence, about “the intertwined lives and simultaneous deaths of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson on July 4, 1826.”
This is the lens through which he will be inviting Chautauquans “to reflect on legacy, leadership and the enduring complexity of the American experiment.”
