"Most Blessed of the Patriarchs""Most Blessed of the Patriarchs"
Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imagination
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Book, 2016
Current format, Book, 2016, First edition, Available .Book, 2016
Current format, Book, 2016, First edition, Available . Offered in 0 more formatsA noted historian and a leading Jefferson scholar clarify philosophical questions about the Founding Father to trace his youth and development through the inconsistencies attributed to his character and his old age.
A Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and a forefront Jefferson scholar clarify philosophical questions about the Founding Father to trace his youth and development through the inconsistencies attributed to his character and his old age, sharing insights into his intellectual influences and formative experiences.
This narrative account is accessible to general readers and students, yet detailed enough for scholars. The book delves into the paradoxes of Jefferson’s personality, character, and ambitions, and charts the development of his ideas, as revealed in his private life as well as his public life. Part 1 describes his early years and Part 2 covers his five years in Paris. Part 3 explains Jefferson’s views on race, slavery, and Christianity. The book includes b&w historical illustrations and documents, along with contemporary photos of locations. Author Annette Gordon-Reed wrote a Pulitzer Prize-winning book called The Hemingses of Monticello. Author Peter Onuf is Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Professor Emeritus at the University of Virginia and historian at the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies. Annotation ©2016 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)
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).Tracing Jefferson's philosophical development from youth to old age, the authors explore what they call the "empire" of Jefferson's imagination—an expansive state of mind born of his origins in a slave society, his intellectual influences, and the vaulting ambition that propelled him into public life as a modern avatar of the Enlightenment who, at the same time, likened himself to a figure of old—"the most blessed of the patriarchs." Indeed, Jefferson saw himself as a "patriarch," not just to his country and mountain-like home at Monticello but also to his family, the white half that he loved so publicly, as well as to the black side that he claimed to love, a contradiction of extraordinary historical magnitude."Most Blessed of the Patriarchs""Most Blessed of the Patriarchs"
A groundbreaking work of history that explicates Thomas Jefferson’s vision of himself, the American Revolution, Christianity, slavery, and race.
A Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and a forefront Jefferson scholar clarify philosophical questions about the Founding Father to trace his youth and development through the inconsistencies attributed to his character and his old age, sharing insights into his intellectual influences and formative experiences.
This narrative account is accessible to general readers and students, yet detailed enough for scholars. The book delves into the paradoxes of Jefferson’s personality, character, and ambitions, and charts the development of his ideas, as revealed in his private life as well as his public life. Part 1 describes his early years and Part 2 covers his five years in Paris. Part 3 explains Jefferson’s views on race, slavery, and Christianity. The book includes b&w historical illustrations and documents, along with contemporary photos of locations. Author Annette Gordon-Reed wrote a Pulitzer Prize-winning book called The Hemingses of Monticello. Author Peter Onuf is Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Professor Emeritus at the University of Virginia and historian at the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies. Annotation ©2016 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)
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).Tracing Jefferson's philosophical development from youth to old age, the authors explore what they call the "empire" of Jefferson's imagination—an expansive state of mind born of his origins in a slave society, his intellectual influences, and the vaulting ambition that propelled him into public life as a modern avatar of the Enlightenment who, at the same time, likened himself to a figure of old—"the most blessed of the patriarchs." Indeed, Jefferson saw himself as a "patriarch," not just to his country and mountain-like home at Monticello but also to his family, the white half that he loved so publicly, as well as to the black side that he claimed to love, a contradiction of extraordinary historical magnitude."Most Blessed of the Patriarchs""Most Blessed of the Patriarchs"
A groundbreaking work of history that explicates Thomas Jefferson’s vision of himself, the American Revolution, Christianity, slavery, and race.
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- New York : Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2016.
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