Gordon-Reede, Annette - "Most Blessed of the Patriarchs" Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imagination
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Thomas Jefferson is often portrayed as a hopelessly enigmatic figure―a riddle―a man so riven with contradictions that he is almost impossible to know. Lauded as the most articulate voice of American freedom and equality, even as he held people―including his own family―in bondage, Jefferson is variably described as a hypocrite, an atheist, or a simple-minded proponent of limited government who expected all Americans to be farmers forever.
Now, Annette Gordon-Reed teams up with America's leading Jefferson scholar, Peter S. Onuf, to present an absorbing and revealing character study that dispels the many clichés that have accrued over the years about our third president. Challenging the widely prevalent belief that Jefferson remains so opaque as to be unknowable, the authors―through their careful analysis, 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).
Annette Gordon-Reed A renowned law professor and scholar of American history, Gordon-Reed has taught at the New York Law School and at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. She has published six books, among them The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (2008), which won numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize in history and the National Book Award for nonfiction. |