Throughout his adult life Thomas Jefferson dispensed academic and educational advice to younger relatives, friends and protégés. For fifty years he based his ideas on a ‘course of reading’ that he had developed during the 1760s after he completed his own studies at William and Mary. Jefferson recommended that students should read across a range of subjects because ‘Variety relieves the mind, as well as the eye, palled with too long attention to a single object.’ According to Jefferson's plan, the period from sunrise until eight o'clock in the morning should be devoted to the study of the natural sciences, ethics and religion. From eight o'clock until noon, students should read law. The hour from noon to one in the afternoon should be given over to politics. ‘In the Afternoon’, Jefferson counseled, ‘Read History’. From sunset until bedtime the followers of this ambitious program could relax with belles-lettres, criticism, rhetoric and oratory. Students who followed Jefferson's program would devote most of their time to two subjects – the law and history.

Jefferson read widely in history throughout his life, believing that it was an essential subject. In his retirement he professed to be disgusted with current affairs and claimed a preference for history.