Thomas Jefferson: Draftsman of a Nation |
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You Are Here: Home > History Books > Thomas Jefferson > Item 72
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Thomas Jefferson: Draftsman of a Nation
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by Natalie S. Bober
Sales Rank: 769362
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$7.20
At Amazon
on 6-16-2008.
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Features
Reading level: Young Adult
Cover Type: Hard Cover with 376 pages
Published by: University of Virginia Press March 15, 2007
Written in: English
ISBN 10 Number: 0813926327
ISBN 13 Number: 978-0813926322
Book Dimensions:
9.2 x 6.3 x 1 inches
Weighs: 1.4 pounds
Product Review
"Bober has taken on an extremely vital, but difficult, task: writing a history that speaks to young people, black and white alike, in a way that is respectful to both cultures. Hits all the relevant points that young readers should know about the third president, while adding new perspectives that are always nuanced. The detail is rich and her presentation is elegant."--Annette Gordon-Reed, New York Law School, author of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy
Product Description
Thomas Jefferson's was one of history's greatest voices for the importance of individual freedom. His eloquence on this fundamental right became the cornerstone of our nation and a central theme of the Enlightenment. And yet, Jefferson presided over a society that depended on Slavery and was himself the holder of numerous slaves. How are students of history to reconcile this contradiction in the third president? Now celebrated biographer and historian Natalie Bober presents a life of Jefferson that does not evade this difficult question. Bober explores the slave community that built and maintained his home, Monticello--and what their lives under Jefferson tell us about him and about Slavery as an early American institution.
To assess fully what Jefferson might mean to our time, we must first understand what it meant to be a man of his own time. From the first page, the world he inhabited is made vivid--and so, too, is Jefferson himself, standing before us as a freckled and, for the eighteenth century, very tall young man. Bober follows him through a life in which the presidency was just one of many accomplishment. As designer of Monticello, he was one of the great architects of his era; as founder of the University of Virginia, he was one of the nation's early champions of higher education. His greatest legacy is perhaps as author of the Declaration of Independence, a nearly unrivaled instance of words giving tangible meaning to life. The Jefferson revealed here is distinguished by his often contradictory nature but also by his optimism, his curiosity, his exceptional sense of history (including the history still to be made).
While primarily aimed at young readers, the book is a substantial work of scholarship, based on several years research of primary-source materials (including black oral history) and the most current writings, and like Bober's earlier works should attract students of history of all ages. This book faces the fact that Jefferson was a flawed human being--and insists that this does not disqualify him as a hero.
Reader Reviews
"The most important thing to remember about Thomas Jefferson is that he taught us the power of the word. He taught us that ideas matter -- that words beautifully shaped can reshape lives. Jefferson distilled into one remarkable sentence the essence of our creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness...' Indeed, in the words he wrote he changed the shape of our country and became one of the most notable champions of freedom and enlightenment in recorded history. He had a vision of what the world should be. "Jefferson speaks not only to Americans today but to people the world over -- particularly in the emerging democracies of Europe. In a sense, his words are responsible for the most liberal reforms, including the eventual end of slavery, the civil rights movement, and the suffrage of women. "Even before his death, the language of the Declaration was appropriated by new claimants -- freed Blacks, abolitionists, early advocates of women's rights -- until it received decisive transformation by Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg, when he said: 'We are a nation dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.' Thomas Jefferson wrote that proposition." --from the Author's Note Having been the oldest grandson -- and (once upon a time) a very well-behaved one at that -- I was regularly dropped off at my paternal grandparents' house on Mulberry Avenue in Garden City for some weekends during the school year and for a week at a time in the summer. The entrance to Hemlock Park was perhaps 25 steps from their back door, and I typically divided my time between The Park, and my grandfather's upstairs office overlooking The Park. One day during the summer that followed the first coming of the Beatles, being a point in time when I was reading well enough to regularly consume an entire Beverly Cleary or Carolyn Haywood book in an evening, my grandfather, Rex, set up one of those portable card tables with the round metal fold-down legs, set out a yellow legal pad and sharpened pencils, and brought out a book that, at the time, appeared large enough to literally crush a small child. It was a compilation of the writings of Thomas Jefferson. I was encouraged to sit down at the card table for the purpose of reading and taking notes on the Autobiography portion of the enormous book. Because I lived for pleasing my grandfather, I spent large portions of that week doing exactly that. And what I learned of that autobiography's author caused me to forever since maintain an affinity for all things Thomas Jefferson, a guy whose world-altering reading and writing abilities were complemented by the hundreds of diverse hands-on talents he also acquired during a lifetime that began, as Bober writes in THOMAS JEFFERSON: DRAFTSMAN OF A NATION: "When William Randolph took his friend Peter Jefferson to visit his Uncle Isham, Peter met Isham's seventeen-year-old daughter Jane. Tall, slender, graceful, and elegant, she had a cheerful disposition and a fine mind. Two years later, on October 19, 1739, she and Peter were married. He was thirty-two; she was nineteen. She brought with her many slaves from her father's plantation. With this union, Peter Jefferson, an man without family prestige or social pretense, became identified with one of the leading families in Virginia. In eighteenth-century Virginia there were two distinct groups: the aristocracy, typified by Isham Randolph; and the yeomanry, who were, for the most part, industrious, belligerently independent, and instinctively democratic. The marriage of Jane Randolph to Peter Jefferson joined the two classes. Of these two strains would come the unique mosaic that was Thomas Jefferson." Back in my Book Buyer days, I read a paperback reprint of Natalie Bober's 1988 Jefferson biography, THOMAS JEFFERSON: MAN ON A MOUNTAIN. I enjoyed it so much that I continued on to read her biography of Abigail Adams. A few years later, when Bober's COUNTDOWN TO INDEPENDENCE: A REVOLUTION OF IDEAS IN ENGLAND AND HER AMERICAN COLONIES, 1760-1776 was published, it easily made it onto my Richie's Picks Best of 2001 list. Now Bober has done something rarely seen in trade publishing: a do-over. As the author states in her Author's Note, "History is an argument without end." Theories in which Bober believed two decades ago, regarding Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, were essentially proven false by DNA testing. And so armed with new knowledge and a new perspective, the author has now written a new biography of this most complex of forefathers. "Peter Jefferson had been an example of industry and responsibility, but it was his love of learning more than anything else that was his legacy to his son. The only thing Thomas Jefferson wrote about his father -- almost sixty-four years later, when he was seventy-seven -- reveals what was most important to him throughout his life: '...being of strong mind, sound judgment, and eager after information, he read much and improved himself.' Books would become for his son the means to 'improve himself,' the keys to unlock the mystery of any subject he wanted to learn. Books would become the passion that ruled and shaped his life." In wrestling anew with the question of how such an amazing man of ideas could create those immortal words about all men being created equal and, at the same time, condone slavery, Natalie Bober combines her skill for impeccable research with an unsurpassed ability to turn history into captivating story. And while that might sound cliche, the fact is that we are lucky if we discover a handful of YA nonfiction titles in a year that are immersed simultaneously in research and story to the degree found in THOMAS JEFFERSON: DRAFTSMAN OF A NATION. Thomas Jefferson provided my first real inspiration to write about ideas and to internalize the ideals upon which America was founded. It has been truly fulfilling to, once again, spend a couple of days reading and writing about him.
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Thomas Jefferson: Draftsman of a Nation
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Updated on 6-16-2008.
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