Category: Biography

Copyright/published Year: 1999 by Viking Studio

ISBN: 0670889334

Binding: cloth

Description: A companion book to a Library of Congress bicentennial ì exhibition, with an introduction by Garry Wills; a narrative with ì more than 150 illustrations, two thirds in color and essays by ì scholars on Jefferson's life and thought.

April 2000 will launch a panoply of events celebrating the ì Library of Congress's 200th anniversary, the star of which will ì be the exhibition Thomas Jefferson: Genius of Liberty. Featuring ì more than 150 valuable and historic items and a rare public ì display of the Jefferson library that is the nucleus of the ì Library's collections, both the exhibition and its companion book ì will seek out the complex character, ideals, and motivations ì behind the mythic founding achievements of this brilliant son of ì the Enlightenment.

The book's lively narrative, illuminated by Jefferson's own ì words, weaves back and forth between the public career--delegate ì to the Continental Congress, author of the Declaration of ì Independence and other calls to liberty, governor of Virginia, ì two-term president--and his life at his beloved plantation and ì house, Monticello. Commentaries on manuscripts explore the ì conflicts between his public ideals, political realities, and his ì private life, including the recent controversial evidence of a ì long liaison with his slave Sally Hemings. From his worldview to ì his family relationships, Thomas Jefferson provides a new and ì intimate sense of the man historians have only recently begun to ì extricate from the lofty abstractions that have born his name. ì

The Essayists:
Garry Wills's Lincoln at Gettysburg won a Pulitzer Prize and the ì National Book Critics Circle Award.
Joseph J. Ellis is the author of the National Book Award-winning ì American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson;
Annette Gordon-Reed of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An ì American Controversy;
Pauline Maier of American Scripture: Making the Declaration of ì Independence;
Charles A. Miller of Jefferson and Nature: An Interpretation; ì

Peter S. Onuf was the editor of Jeffersonian Legacies.

Condition Information

This book is new.