At first blush, "Madison and Jefferson" seems to pitch an overstated thesis. Although it is true -- as the authors argue -- that too much has been made of the founding fathers' noble politics, recent biographers such as Joseph J. Ellis and novelists such as Gore Vidal have provided more astringent views of Jefferson's conniving and Madison's maneuvering for power. Even so, beginning with the book's title, Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg have reconstituted our understanding of Madison's vital role in furthering Jefferson's political fortunes, as well as his own.

Burstein and Isenberg note that generations of historians and biographers have repeated bromides and boilerplate that have obscured Madison the man and the politician. But here, for the first time, he takes center stage as political operative, kingmaker, legislator and, best of all, fully realized human being. The person his contemporaries sometimes called "little Madison" (he stood perhaps 5 feet 4 to Jefferson's 6 feet 2), was indeed a policy wonk in today's parlance. But he was also a shrewd opportunist who used Jefferson to serve his own ends, just as Jefferson used him.

That the two men never fell out seems to result from the early bond they formed as Virginians. They lived just 25 miles from each other and, more important, both found that their first thoughts always returned to the refrain, "How will this play in Virginia?" In other words, for all their dedication to the new nation state, they remained fervent states' rights advocates -- although Madison, much more than Jefferson, recognized the need for a strong central government and a forceful chief executive. One of the ironies of history is that Jefferson became precisely the Madisonian model of a president that Jefferson, in theory, opposed, while posterity has viewed Madison as a weak commander in chief (he fled the White House during the War of 1812), a verdict that Burstein and Isenberg seek to refute.

Why, then, has Madison not received his due? After all, short men have triumphed both during their own times and in historical perspective. Madison tended to be more reserved than Jefferson, and he could not summon up the sort of charm Jefferson could lay on with a trowel. In short, Madison did not try to burnish his image. Burstein and Isenberg contend that the main reason posterity has put Madison in Jefferson's shadow is because the former did not have the latter's "need for historical vindication." Rarely does fame come without vigorous efforts at self-promotion. John Adams understood as much. So did Benjamin Franklin. Meanwhile, Madison can still seem littler than life -- as he does in a recent amusing novel that included a postage stamp portrait of him with this caption: "James Madison -- actual size."

Carl Rollyson is a biographer and journalism professor at Baruch College, City University of New York.