"Most Blessed of the Patriarchs": Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imagination - Tapa dura

They neither indict nor absolve Jefferson; instead, they aim to make sense of his contradictions for modern sensibilities...A fascinating addition to the Jefferson canon. Gordon-Reed and Onuf, both highly reputable Jefferson scholars, strive to understand Jefferson's outlooks over his long life...Gordon-Reed and Onuf's keen and fresh approach to Jefferson and his ideas will engage history buffs. With characteristic insight and intellectual rigor, Annette Gordon-Reed and Peter Onuf have produced a powerful and lasting portrait of the mind of Thomas Jefferson. This is an essential and brilliant book by two of the nation's foremost scholars--a book that will, like its protagonist, endure.--Jon Meacham, author of Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power A peerless team, Annette Gordon-Reed and Peter Onuf pierce the mysteries of Jefferson's character and at last offer a compelling explanation of how the republican statesman and plantation patriarch could coexist in a single soul. Jefferson's flaw was not hypocrisy but conviction, his unswerving belief in paternalism as empowering and beneficent.--Danielle Allen, author of Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality This inspired collaboration takes us as close as we're likely to get to the way Thomas Jefferson understood himself and his times. Not content with clich s about a man who made his world anew, Gordon-Reed and Onuf show us the world that made the man.... Here is Jefferson as he might have painted his own image, a self-portrait comprised of equal parts sun and shadow.--Jane Kamensky, author of Copley: A Life in Color

Thomas Jefferson is still presented today as an enigmatic figure, despite being written about more than any other Founding Father. Lauded as the most articulate voice of American freedom, even as he held people in bondage, Jefferson is variably described as a hypocrite, an atheist and a simple-minded proponent of limited government. Now, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and leading Jefferson scholar team up to present an absorbing and revealing character study that finally clarifies the philosophy of Jefferson. The authors explore what they call the "empire" of Jefferson's imagination-his expansive state of mind born of the intellectual influences and life experiences that led him into public life as a modern avatar of the enlightenment, who often likened himself to an ancient figure-"the most blessed of the patriarchs".