Download or read book The Inner Jefferson written by Andrew Burstein and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Analyzes Jefferson's thoughts and deeds as reflected in seventy years of correspondence

Download or read book Dear Companion written by Kelly Joyce Neff and published by Hampton Roads Publishing. This book was released on 1997-01-01 with total page 636 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Martha (Patty) Jefferson is often seen as little more than a background figure overshadowed by her husband's political, literary, and scientific achievements. Dear Companion, by contrast, vividly depicts a wife, mother, and busy mistress of a plantation. We come to know the Jeffersons as a young couple very much in love and share in all the joys and sorrows of their ten-year marriage. Although presented as historical fiction, this biography is actually reconstructed from the author's past-life recall. Ms. Neff's intense familiarity with the period enables her to bring wonderfully to life a time and family that will be forever of interest to all Americans.

Download or read book Jefferson s Secrets written by Andrew Burstein and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2006-03-21 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thomas Jefferson died on July 4, 1826, leaving behind a series of mysteries that captured the imaginations of historical investigators-an interest rekindled by the recent revelation that he fathered a child by Sally Hemmings, a woman he legally owned-yet there is still surprisingly little known about him as a man. In Jefferson's Secrets Andrew Burstein focuses on Jefferson's last days to create an emotionally powerful portrait of the uncensored private citizen who was also a giant of a man. Drawing on sources previous biographers have glossed over or missed entirely, Burstein uncovers, first and foremost, how Jefferson confronted his own mortality; and in doing so, he reveals how he viewed his sexual choices. Delving into Jefferson's soul, Burstein lays bare the president's thoughts about his own legacy, his predictions for American democracy, and his feelings regarding women and religion. The result is a moving and surprising work of history that sets a new standard, post-DNA, for the next generation's reassessment of the most evocative and provocative of this country's founders.

Download or read book The Mind of Thomas Jefferson written by Peter S. Onuf and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2012-10-05 with total page 437 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Mind of Thomas Jefferson, one of the foremost historians of Jefferson and his time, Peter S. Onuf, offers a collection of essays that seeks to historicize one of our nation’s founding fathers. Challenging current attempts to appropriate Jefferson to serve all manner of contemporary political agendas, Onuf argues that historians must look at Jefferson’s language and life within the context of his own place and time. In this effort to restore Jefferson to his own world, Onuf reconnects that world to ours, providing a fresh look at the distinction between private and public aspects of his character that Jefferson himself took such pains to cultivate. Breaking through Jefferson’s alleged opacity as a person by collapsing the contemporary interpretive frameworks often used to diagnose his psychological and moral states, Onuf raises new questions about what was on Jefferson’s mind as he looked toward an uncertain future. Particularly striking is his argument that Jefferson’s character as a moralist is nowhere more evident, ironically, than in his engagement with the institution of slavery. At once reinvigorating the tension between past and present and offering a new way to view our connection to one of our nation’s founders, The Mind of Thomas Jefferson helps redefine both Jefferson and his time and American nationhood.

Download or read book The Private Jefferson written by Henry Adams and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Both exhibition and book celebrate the society's 225th year. Distributed for the Massachusetts Historical Society

Download or read book Thomas Jefferson written by Fawn M. Brodie and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 1974 with total page 612 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An ambitious, perceptive portrayal of a complex man, this bestselling biography breaks new ground in its exploration of Jefferson's inner life. "Brodie has humanized Jefferson without in the least diminishing him".--Wallace Stegner. Photos.

Download or read book Inventing America written by Garry Wills and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2017-02-15 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From one of America's foremost historians, Inventing America compares Thomas Jefferson's original draft of the Declaration of Independence with the final, accepted version, thereby challenging many long-cherished assumptions about both the man and the document. Although Jefferson has long been idealized as a champion of individual rights, Wills argues that in fact his vision was one in which interdependence, not self-interest, lay at the foundation of society. "No one has offered so drastic a revision or so close or convincing an analysis as Wills has . . . The results are little short of astonishing" —(Edmund S. Morgan, New York Review of Books)

Download or read book Most Blessed of the Patriarchs Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imagination written by Annette Gordon-Reed and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2016-04-13 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times Bestseller Named one of the Best Books of the Year by the San Francisco Chronicle Finalist for the George Washington Prize Finalist for the Library of Virginia Literary Award A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice Selection "An important book…[R]ichly rewarding. It is full of fascinating insights about Jefferson." —Gordon S. Wood, New York Review of Books Hailed by critics and embraced by readers, "Most Blessed of the Patriarchs" is one of the richest and most insightful accounts of Thomas Jefferson in a generation. Following her Pulitzer Prize–winning The Hemingses of Monticello¸ Annette Gordon-Reed has teamed with Peter S. Onuf to present a provocative and absorbing character study, "a fresh and layered analysis" (New York Times Book Review) that reveals our third president as "a dynamic, complex and oftentimes contradictory human being" (Chicago Tribune). Gordon-Reed and Onuf fundamentally challenge much of what we thought we knew, and through their painstaking research and vivid prose create a portrait of Jefferson, as he might have painted himself, one "comprised of equal parts sun and shadow" (Jane Kamensky).

Download or read book Nature s Man written by Maurizio Valsania and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although scholars have adequately covered Thomas Jefferson's general ideas about human nature and race, this is the first book to examine what Maurizio Valsania terms Jefferson's "philosophical anthropology"--philosophical in the sense that he concerned himself not with describing how humans are, culturally or otherwise, but with the kind of human being Jefferson thought he was, wanted to become, and wished for citizens to be for the future of the United States. Valsania's exploration of this philosophical anthropology touches on Jefferson's concepts of nationalism, slavery, gender roles, modernity, affiliation, and community. More than that, Nature's Man shows how Jefferson could advocate equality and yet control and own other human beings. A humanist who asserted the right of all people to personal fulfillment, Jefferson nevertheless had a complex philosophy that also acknowledged the dynamism of nature and the limits of human imagination. Despite Jefferson's famous advocacy of apparently individualistic rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, Valsania argues that both Jefferson's yearning for the human individual to become something good and his fear that this hypothetical being would turn into something bad were rooted in a specific form of communitarianism. Absorbing and responding to certain moral-philosophical currents in Europe, Jefferson's nature-infused vision underscored the connection between the individual and the community.

Download or read book Thomas Jefferson s Garden Book 1766 1824 written by Edwin Morris Betts and published by . This book was released on 2013-10 with total page 760 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a new release of the original 1944 edition.

Download or read book Letters from the Head and Heart written by Andrew Burstein and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2002 with total page 104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The letters of a person . . . form the only full and genuine journal of his life, noted Thomas Jefferson, who wrote nearly 20,000 letters in his own lifetime. Andrew Burstein invites readers to rediscover Jefferson through an exploration of his most enduring public and private writings. Among the public documents examined are two of Jefferson's best-known contributions to American history, the Declaration of Independence and his first inaugural address. On a more personal level, we read the written dialogue between Jefferson and his dying wife, Martha, as well as tender letters written to his daughters and grandson. Also included are thought-provoking letters written to friends and fellow thinkers, highlighted by extracts from the famous correspondence between the aging Jefferson and John Adams. Burstein's lively analysis confirms Jefferson as a writer of both style and substance. In his letters, we see a writer whose words at once convey the eighteenth-century world in which he lived and yet still speak to the modern world with powerful relevance and wisdom.

Download or read book Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings written by Stephen O'Connor and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017-05-02 with total page 624 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Dazzling. . . The most revolutionary reimagining of Jefferson’s life ever.” –Ron Charles, Washington Post Winner of the Crook’s Corner Book Prize Longlisted for the 2016 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize A debut novel about Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, in whose story the conflict between the American ideal of equality and the realities of slavery and racism played out in the most tragic of terms. Novels such as Toni Morrison’s Beloved, The Known World by Edward P. Jones, James McBride’s The Good Lord Bird and Cloudsplitter by Russell Banks are a part of a long tradition of American fiction that plumbs the moral and human costs of history in ways that nonfiction simply can't. Now Stephen O’Connor joins this company with a profoundly original exploration of the many ways that the institution of slavery warped the human soul, as seen through the story of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings. O’Connor’s protagonists are rendered via scrupulously researched scenes of their lives in Paris and at Monticello that alternate with a harrowing memoir written by Hemings after Jefferson’s death, as well as with dreamlike sequences in which Jefferson watches a movie about his life, Hemings fabricates an "invention" that becomes the whole world, and they run into each other "after an unimaginable length of time" on the New York City subway. O'Connor is unsparing in his rendition of the hypocrisy of the Founding Father and slaveholder who wrote "all men are created equal,” while enabling Hemings to tell her story in a way history has not allowed her to. His important and beautifully written novel is a deep moral reckoning, a story about the search for justice, freedom and an ideal world—and about the survival of hope even in the midst of catastrophe.

Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Jefferson written by Frank Shuffelton and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-01-22 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An accessible introduction to the life and work of Jefferson aimed at students of American history and literature.

Download or read book Martha Jefferson written by William G. Hyland and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2015-02-26 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Martha Jeffersonis the first and only biography of Thomas Jefferson’s greatest love and true kindred spirit, who died an untimely death at the young age of thirty-three in 1782. Drawing on a wealth of newly probed sources—including family letters, documents, and the handwritten notes left by Jefferson’s famed biographer, Dumas Malone—William G. Hyland Jr. captures the charm, sophistication, and grace, as well as a profound sense of history, of this little known and elusive figure who, until now, has been a mere footnote to the story of America’s founding. Hyland brings us a conflicted and honest Martha Jefferson, who endured the Revolution as valiantly as some men—defending her very doorstep from raiding British troops—and presided over the domestic life of the Jeffersons’ “little mountain,” Monticello, during her husband’s long absences and historic rise to power. A revealing and insightful look at an often overlooked American woman, this book provides a unique and previously unexplored understanding of America’s Revolutionary Era, and the men and women upon whose bravery, talent, and resolve our nation was founded.

Download or read book Those who Labor for My Happiness written by Lucia C. Stanton and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our perception of life at Monticello has changed dramatically over the past quarter century. The image of an estate presided over by a benevolent Thomas Jefferson has given way to a more complex view of Monticello as a working plantation, the success of which was made possible by the work of slaves. At the center of this transition has been the work of Lucia "Cinder" Stanton, recognized as the leading interpreter of Jefferson's life as a planter and master and of the lives of his slaves and their descendants. This volume represents the first attempt to pull together Stanton's most important writings on slavery at Monticello and beyond. Stanton's pioneering work deepened our understanding of Jefferson without demonizing him. But perhaps even more important is the light her writings have shed on the lives of the slaves at Monticello. Her detailed reconstruction for modern readers of slaves' lives vividly reveals their active roles in the creation of Monticello and a dynamic community previously unimagined. The essays collected here address a rich variety of topics, from family histories (including the Hemingses) to the temporary slave community at Jefferson's White House to stories of former slaves' lives after Monticello. Each piece is characterized by Stanton's deep knowledge of her subject and by her determination to do justice to both Jefferson and his slaves. Published in association with the Thomas Jefferson Foundation.

Download or read book Jefferson s Demons written by Michael Knox Beran and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-05-11 with total page 533 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "I have often wondered for what good end the sensations of Grief could be intended." -- Thomas Jefferson Thomas Jefferson suffered during his life from periodic bouts of dejection and despair, shadowed intervals during which he was full of "gloomy forebodings" about what lay ahead. Not long before he composed the Declaration of Independence, the young Jefferson lay for six weeks in idleness and ill health at Monticello, paralyzed by a mysterious "malady." Similar lapses were to recur during anxious periods in his life, often accompanied by violent headaches. In Jefferson's Demons, Michael Knox Beran illuminates an optimistic man's darker side -- Jefferson as we have rarely seen him before. The worst of these moments came after his wife died in 1782. But two years later, after being dispatched to Europe, Jefferson recovered nerve and spirit in the salons of Paris, where he fell in love with a beautiful young artist, Maria Cosway. When their affair ended, Jefferson's health again broke down. He set out for the palms and temples of southern Europe, and though he did not know where the therapeutic journey would take him or where it would end, his encounter with the old civilizations of the Mediterranean was transformative. The Greeks and Romans taught him that a man could make productive use of his demons. Jefferson's immersion in the mystic truths of the Old World gave him insights into mysteries of life and art that Enlightenment philosophy had failed to supply. Beran skillfully shows how Jefferson drew on the esoteric lore he encountered to transform anxiety into action. On his return to America, Jefferson entered the most productive period of his life: He created a new political party, was elected president, and doubled the size of the country. His private labors were no less momentous...among them, the artistry of Monticello and the University of Virginia. Jefferson's Demons is an elegantly composed account of the strangeness and originality of one Founder's genius. Michael Knox Beran uncovers the maps Jefferson used to find his way out of dejection and to forge a new democratic culture for America. Here is a Jefferson who, with all his failings, remains one of his country's greatest teachers and prophets.

Download or read book American Sphinx written by Joseph J. Ellis and published by Vintage. This book was released on 1998-11-19 with total page 463 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER Following Thomas Jefferson from the drafting of the Declaration of Independence to his retirement in Monticello, Joseph J. Ellis unravels the contradictions of the Jeffersonian character. He gives us the slaveholding libertarian who was capable of decrying mescegenation while maintaing an intimate relationship with his slave, Sally Hemmings; the enemy of government power who exercisdd it audaciously as president; the visionarty who remained curiously blind to the inconsistencies in his nature. American Sphinx is a marvel of scholarship, a delight to read, and an essential gloss on the Jeffersonian legacy.