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Author: Daniel J. Boorstin
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 1993-08-15
Total Pages: 324
ISBN-13: 9780226064970
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn this classic work by one of America's most widely read historians, Daniel J. Boorstin demonstrates why and how, on the 250th anniversary of his birth, Thomas Jefferson continues to speak to us.
Author: Susan R. Stein
Publisher: Abrams
Published: 1993-05-15
Total Pages: 480
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThomas Jefferson was, by any reckoning, one of the most remarkable men ever to have crossed America's political stage. In 1776 he drafted the Declaration of Independence, and throughout the Revolution and in the posts he held thereafter - governor of Virginia, minister to France, secretary of state, vice president, and president - Jefferson's responsibilities were enormous and his accomplishments profound. Yet during those years he also was able to design his own house, Monticello, the magnificent Palladian mansion in central Virginia, and later to establish the University of Virginia and to plan its principal buildings. And, through all this, Jefferson made purchases for a lifetime. Needing to furnish not only Monticello but also the ministerial residence in Paris - the Hotel de Langeac - and the President's House in Washington, Jefferson bought with consummate taste and an extraordinary eye for the newest in American, English, and French styles. Fascinated by science and the growing field we now call "technology", Jefferson procured or had built devices for copying letters, telescopes for exploring the stars, and even dumbwaiters to minimize dependence on servants at mealtimes. He was keenly curious about his native land and devoted to promoting its virtues, and he acquired examples of its fossils, flora, and fauna and studied its indigenous peoples. Determined that the former colonies should both enjoy their cultural patrimony and preserve their own history, he purchased original paintings and had copied what could not be bought. He commissioned busts of his intellectual heroes, as well as of the heroes of the American struggle for independence. The Worlds of Thomas Jeffersonassembles more than 150 of the objects Jefferson acquired - the first time they have been seen together since the contents of Monticello were dispersed at his death. This astonishing collection reveals the limitless range of his curiosity and the acuteness of his taste, portraying not only Jefferson the statesman but also Jefferson the architect, amateur scientist, connoisseur, farmer, and historian. The articles pictured and described range from priceless historical treasures, such as the lap desk on which the Declaration of Independence was composed, to the personal and homely, such as the wrist strap and dumbbell Jefferson was obliged to use after an injury; from precious objects of art, such as Gilbert Stuart's portraits of Jefferson, to the shards of porcelain found in excavations at Monticello; from the finely worked silver tumblers known as the "Wythe-Jefferson Cups" to the Mandan buffalo robe that was part of his collection of Native American artifacts; from the great Entrance Hall clock he designed for Monticello to the silk damask-upholstered chairs he purchased in Paris. In all, it is a collection that mirrors both the mind of America's greatest statesman and the tastes and styles of the time in history when the American people secured their own independence and offered the world an example of a free people in a democratic state. The Worlds of Thomas Jefferson is written by Susan R. Stein, curator of Monticello, who provides an introduction placing Jefferson's acquisitions within the context of his political career, family life, and intellectual pursuits. In the catalogue each object is described individually with details about its history as well as its importance toJefferson.
Author: Peter S. Onuf
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
Published: 2011-10-19
Total Pages: 329
ISBN-13: 0813931827
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThomas Jefferson read Latin and Greek authors throughout his life and wrote movingly about his love of the ancient texts, which he thought should be at the core of America's curriculum. Yet at the same time, Jefferson warned his countrymen not to look to the ancient world for modern lessons and deplored many of the ways his peers used classical authors to address contemporary questions. As a result, the contribution of the ancient world to the thought of America's most classically educated Founding Father remains difficult to assess. This volume brings together historians of political thought with classicists and historians of art and culture to find new approaches to the difficult questions raised by America's classical heritage. The essays explore the classical contribution to different aspects of Jefferson’s thought and taste, as well as examining the significance of the ancient world to America in a broader historical context. The diverse interests and methodologies of the contributors suggest new ways of approaching one of the most prominent and contested of the traditions that helped create America's revolutionary republicanism. Contributors:Gordon S. Wood, Brown University * Peter S. Onuf, University of Virginia * Michael P. Zuckert, University of Notre Dame * Caroline Winterer, Stanford University * Richard Guy Wilson, University of Virginia * Maurie D. McInnis, University of Virginia * Nicholas P. Cole, University of Oxford * Peter Thompson, University of Oxford * Eran Shalev, Haifa University * Paul A. Rahe, Hillsdale College * Jennifer T. Roberts, City University of New York, Graduate Center * Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy, University of Virginia
Author: Forrest McDonald
Publisher: Lawrence : University Press of Kansas
Published: 1976
Total Pages: 226
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe aim of the American Presidency Series is to present historians and the general reading public with interesting, scholarly assessment of the various presidential administrations. These interpretive surveys are intended to cover the broad ground between biographies, specialized monographs, and journalistic accounts.
Author: Peter S. Onuf
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
Published: 2012-10-05
Total Pages: 437
ISBN-13: 0813934230
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn 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.
Author: Leslie Greene Bowman
Publisher: Rizzoli Publications
Published: 2021-09-28
Total Pages: 210
ISBN-13: 0847865223
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis visually stunning volume explores Monticello, both house and plantation, with texts that present a current assessment of Jefferson’s cultural contributions to his noteworthy home and the fledgling country. Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), third president of the United States, designed his Virginia residence with innovations that were progressive, even unprecedented, in the new world. Six acclaimed arts and cultural luminaries pay homage to Jefferson, citing his work at Monticello as testament to his genius in art, culture, and science, from his adaptation of Palladian architecture, his sweeping vision for landscape design, his experimental gardens, and his passion for French wine and cuisine to his eclectic mix of European and American art and artifacts and the creation of the country’s seminal library. Each writer considers the important role, and the painful reality, of Jefferson’s enslaved workforce, which made his lifestyle and plantation possible. This book, illustrated with superb photography by Miguel Flores-Vianna, is a necessary addition to the libraries of those who love historical architecture and landscape design, art and cultural history, and the lives of prominent Americans.
Author: Christopher Hitchens
Publisher: HarperCollins UK
Published: 2007
Total Pages: 208
ISBN-13: 0007213727
DOWNLOAD EBOOKHitchens brings the character of Jefferson to life as a man of his time and also as a symbolic figure beyond it. Conflicted by power, Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence and acted as Minister to France yet yearned for a quieter career in the Virginia legislature. Predicting that slavery would shape the future of America's development, this professed proponent of emancipation continued to own human property. He negotiated the Louisiana Purchase with France, doubling the size of the nation, and authorized the Lewis and Clark expedition, opening up the American frontier. The Barbary War, a lesser-known chapter of his political career, led to the building of the U.S. Navy and the fortification of America's reputation regarding national defense. In the background is the fledgling nation's struggle for independence, formed in the crucible of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, and, in its shadow, the deformation of that struggle in the excesses of the French Revolution.
Author: Joseph J. Ellis
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 1998-11-19
Total Pages: 463
ISBN-13: 0375727469
DOWNLOAD EBOOKNATIONAL 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.
Author: Kevin R. C. Gutzman
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2017-01-31
Total Pages: 305
ISBN-13: 1250010802
DOWNLOAD EBOOK"In this lively and clearly written book, Kevin Gutzman makes a compelling case for the broad range and radical ambitions of Thomas Jefferson's commitment to human equality." - Alan Taylor, Pulitzer Prize winning author of American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750-1804 Though remembered chiefly as author of the Declaration of Independence and the president under whom the Louisiana Purchase was effected, Thomas Jefferson was a true revolutionary in the way he thought about the size and reach of government, which Americans who were full citizens and the role of education in the new country. In his new book, Kevin Gutzman gives readers a new view of Jefferson—a revolutionary who effected radical change in a growing country. Jefferson’s philosophy about the size and power of the federal system almost completely undergirded the Jeffersonian Republican Party. His forceful advocacy of religious freedom was not far behind, as were attempts to incorporate Native Americans into American society. His establishment of the University of Virginia might be one of the most important markers of the man’s abilities and character. He was not without flaws. While he argued for the assimilation of Native Americans into society, he did not assume the same for Africans being held in slavery while—at the same time—insisting that slavery should cease to exist. Many still accuse Jefferson of hypocrisy on the ground that he both held that “all men are created equal” and held men as slaves. Jefferson’s true character, though, is more complex than that as Kevin Gutzman shows in his new book about Jefferson, a revolutionary whose accomplishments went far beyond the drafting of the Declaration of Independence.
Author: Jon Meacham
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2012-11-13
Total Pages: 833
ISBN-13: 0679645365
DOWNLOAD EBOOKNAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • The Washington Post • Entertainment Weekly • The Seattle Times • St. Louis Post-Dispatch • Bloomberg Businessweek In this magnificent biography, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of American Lion and Franklin and Winston brings vividly to life an extraordinary man and his remarkable times. Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power gives us Jefferson the politician and president, a great and complex human being forever engaged in the wars of his era. Philosophers think; politicians maneuver. Jefferson’s genius was that he was both and could do both, often simultaneously. Such is the art of power. Thomas Jefferson hated confrontation, and yet his understanding of power and of human nature enabled him to move men and to marshal ideas, to learn from his mistakes, and to prevail. Passionate about many things—women, his family, books, science, architecture, gardens, friends, Monticello, and Paris—Jefferson loved America most, and he strove over and over again, despite fierce opposition, to realize his vision: the creation, survival, and success of popular government in America. Jon Meacham lets us see Jefferson’s world as Jefferson himself saw it, and to appreciate how Jefferson found the means to endure and win in the face of rife partisan division, economic uncertainty, and external threat. Drawing on archives in the United States, England, and France, as well as unpublished Jefferson presidential papers, Meacham presents Jefferson as the most successful political leader of the early republic, and perhaps in all of American history. The father of the ideal of individual liberty, of the Louisiana Purchase, of the Lewis and Clark expedition, and of the settling of the West, Jefferson recognized that the genius of humanity—and the genius of the new nation—lay in the possibility of progress, of discovering the undiscovered and seeking the unknown. From the writing of the Declaration of Independence to elegant dinners in Paris and in the President’s House; from political maneuverings in the boardinghouses and legislative halls of Philadelphia and New York to the infant capital on the Potomac; from his complicated life at Monticello, his breathtaking house and plantation in Virginia, to the creation of the University of Virginia, Jefferson was central to the age. Here too is the personal Jefferson, a man of appetite, sensuality, and passion. The Jefferson story resonates today not least because he led his nation through ferocious partisanship and cultural warfare amid economic change and external threats, and also because he embodies an eternal drama, the struggle of the leadership of a nation to achieve greatness in a difficult and confounding world. Praise for Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power “This is probably the best single-volume biography of Jefferson ever written.”—Gordon S. Wood “A big, grand, absorbing exploration of not just Jefferson and his role in history but also Jefferson the man, humanized as never before.”—Entertainment Weekly “[Meacham] captures who Jefferson was, not just as a statesman but as a man. . . . By the end of the book . . . the reader is likely to feel as if he is losing a dear friend. . . . [An] absorbing tale.”—The Christian Science Monitor “This terrific book allows us to see the political genius of Thomas Jefferson better than we have ever seen it before. In these endlessly fascinating pages, Jefferson emerges with such vitality that it seems as if he might still be alive today.”—Doris Kearns Goodwin
