Biography of a Dangerous Idea: A New History of Race from Louis XIV to Thomas Jefferson is an engaging investigation that retraces the misunderstood history of the birth of race through the lives and ideas of thirteen pivotal figures. Moving from the gilded halls of Versailles to the slave plantations of the Caribbean, from the court of the Mughal Empire to the drawing rooms of Jefferson’s Monticello, this sweeping narrative reveals how the Enlightenment’s audacious quest for knowledge became entangled with systems of empire and oppression.