Much has been made of the Founders' debt to Enlightenment thinking, but they owed even more to the ancient Greeks and Romans, suggests Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Thomas Ricks. The first four presidents came to their classical knowledge differently: Washington absorbed it from the elite culture of his day; Adams from the rhetoric of Rome; Jefferson immersed himself in classical philosophy; and Madison spent years studying the ancient world like a political scientist. In examining how and what they studied, Ricks is able to draw arresting and fresh portraits of statesmen we thought we knew.