FRIENDS DIVIDED, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson by Gordon S. Wood. Softbound, 502 pages. Jefferson & Adams could scarcely have come from more different worlds. Jefferson was an aristocratic southerner with enough faith in the innate goodness of his fellow man to be democracy’s champion, while Adams, the overachiever from New England’s rising middle class, was a skeptic of popular rule. Their profound differences would lead to a fundamental crisis in their friendship and in the nation writ large. It was a bitter breech, lasting through the presidencies of both men and beyond. But late in life, something remarkable happened: the two were nudged into reconciliation.    No. 703620