Product Description

Thomas Jefferson designed his own tombstone, describing himself simply as "Author of the Declaration of Independence and of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, and Father of the University of Virginia." It is in this simple epitaph that R.B. Bernstein finds the key to this enigmatic Founder--not as a great political figure, but as leader of "a revolution of ideas that would make the world over again." In Thomas Jefferson, Bernstein offers the definitive short biography of this revered American--the first concise life in six decades. Bernstein deftly synthesizes the massive scholarship on his subject into a swift, insightful, evenhanded account. Here are all of Jefferson's triumphs, contradictions, and failings, from his luxurious (and debt-burdened) life as a Virginia gentleman to his passionate belief in democracy, from his tortured defense of slavery to his relationship with Sally Hemings. Jefferson was indeed multifaceted--an architect, inventor, writer, diplomat, propagandist, planter, party leader--and Bernstein explores all these roles even as he illuminates Jefferson's central place in the American enlightenment, that "revolution of ideas" that did so much to create the nation we know today. Together with the less well-remembered points in Jefferson's thinking--the nature of the Union, his vision of who was entitled to citizenship, his dread of debt (both personal and national)--they form the heart of this lively biography. In this marvel of compression and comprehension, we see Jefferson more clearly than in the massive studies of earlier generations. More important, we see, in Jefferson's visionary ideas, the birth of the nation's grand sense of purpose.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #902334 in Books
• Published on: 2003-08-27
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 288 pages

From Publishers Weekly
And still they come, these biographies of Thomas Jefferson-so many, in fact, that it's sometimes hard to tell them apart. But not this one. Veteran historian Bernstein (Amending America, etc.) pulls off a remarkable feat: he writes of Jefferson and his "ambiguous legacies" with utter serenity, detachment and balance. He takes no sides and offers no particular arguments about the man. Instead, in prose of the utmost directness and clarity, Bernstein simply lays out the great founder's life in all its complexities, achievements and, at the end, ruin-by which he means not only Jefferson's late-life financial plight but also his sad conviction that a new generation had become unfaithful to "his" Revolution. The acid test these days for partisan or skeptical biographers of Jefferson is how to present his relationship with his slave Sally Hemings. In a characteristic example of his evenhandedness, Bernstein treats the controversy in a concise summary, then tells us what is now known of the relationship and what cannot yet be determined. One comes to trust the author as a guide, not a polemicist. In fact, it's precisely because Bernstein reveals nothing new and argues not at all that anyone wanting to brush up on Jefferson's life or gain exposure to the latest findings about it will find this book of huge value. It will be most valuable to those seeking an introduction to Jefferson's life and achievements. There's little doubt that the book will become the standard brief one-volume biography of someone who was "the leading spokesman for the revolution of ideas that changed... the face of America and the world."
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
If daunted by Dumas Malone's multivolume monument, or by Joseph Ellis' more manageable American Sphinx (1997), the biography reader has a more compact option in Bernstein's life of the third president. Bernstein proposes that his narrative is balanced among the clashing opinions of professional historians; we in the grandstands, however, can cheer Bernstein's offering as a capable, interpretive survey of Jefferson's long and verbose life. When it comes to selecting examples from Jefferson's prolific writings, Bernstein often relies on the most familiar phrases, such as the epitaph he prescribed for his tombstone or his final letter extolling the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Highly abrasive excerpts, such as Jefferson's assertions that blacks were inferior, Bernstein anchors in Jefferson's social status as a slaveholding country squire. Jefferson's inconsistencies, however, do not dominate; rather, the author strongly emphasizes Jefferson's democratic ideals and his practical enactment of them in his political career. However crowded the TJ shelf, libraries should allow room for Bernstein's compact, competent contribution. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
"R.B. Bernstein's Thomas Jefferson may be the best short biography of the founder ever written. One could spend whole books trying to explain the body of Jefferson's thought; indeed many scholars have. Wisely, Bernstein has chosen to show us ideas in action. Without saying it in so many words, Bernstein conveys that Jefferson was an enormously controversial figure and that his ideas, which we, like Abraham Lincoln, accept as "the definitions and axioms of free society" (p. 198), encountered continuous opposition. Sometimes less is more, and in this very fine biography, R.B. Bernstein has succeeded in showing Jefferson's greatness and complexity and the tumultuousness of the times."--Jan Ellen Lewis, Department of History, Rutgers University, Newark

"The best short biography of Jefferson ever written...highly recommended for those who want a brief and historically reliable account of this incredibly complicated character.... Authoritative, judicious, clearly written and remarkably complete."--Gordon S. Wood, The New York Times Book Review

"Bernstein's Jefferson is a brilliant success. There is nothing like it in the literature."--Peter Onuf, Thomas Jefferson Foundation Professor of History, University of Virginia

"Bernstein proposes that his narrative is balanced among the clashing opinions of professional historians; we in the grandstands, however, can cheer Bernstein's offering as a capable, interpretive survey of Jefferson's long and verbose life....The author strongly emphasizes Jefferson's democrat ic ideals and his practical enactment of them in his political career. However crowded the TJ shelf, libraries should allow room for Bernstein's compact, competent contribution."--Gilbert Taylor, Booklist

"Here, in just 200 pages of text, is an eminently readable, insightful and fair account of the life and times of the third president of the United States.... Bernstein's book [is] lucid, fascinating."--Roanoke Times

"His marvelous little book gives us an objective account of what made President Jefferson the looming figure he is and why he occupies a central place in our history. Mr. Bernstein's work is so complete, yet concise, that I'm tempted to call it 'the pocket Jefferson.' But that would not do. The notion of Mr. Jefferson--or of Mr. Bernstein's research--being pocket-sized is misleading. The book may be trim enough to fit inside a very large pocket, but it will fill your heart and mind."--New York Law Journal

"A capable, interpretive survey of Jefferson's long and verbose life.... The author strongly emphasizes Jefferson's democratic ideals and his practical enactment of them in his political career. However crowded the TJ shelf, libraries should allow room for Bernstein's compact, competent contribution."--Booklist

"R. B. Bernstein has produced a fascinating, extremely intelligent examination of the life of Thomas Jefferson. With a clear eye and deft historical touch, Bernstein reminds us why studying Jefferson and his world will always remain central to understanding the development of the American character."--Annette Gordon-Reed, author of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy

"Veteran historian Bernstein pulls off a remarkable feat: he writes of Jefferson and his 'ambiguous legacies' with utter serenity, detachment and balance. He takes no sides and offers no particular arguments about the man. Instead, in prose of the utmost directness and clarity, Bernstein simply lays out the great founder's life in all its complexities, achievements and, at the end, ruin.... Anyone wanting to brush up on Jefferson's life or gain exposure to the latest findings about it will find this book of huge value. It will be most valuable to those seeking an introduction to Jefferson's life and achievements. There's little doubt that the book will become the standard brief one-volume biography of someone who was 'the leading spokesman for the revolution of ideas that changed...the face of America and the world.'"--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Bernstein has brought as much clarity to a famously elusive subject as anyone can, and he's done it all at concise, readable length."--Christian Science Monitor

Customer Reviews

Response to Richard E. Dixon
I read with mingled exasperation and disappointment Richard E. Dixon's misleading amazon.com review of my book. To cite particulars:

* There was no way for me to cover everything in a book of this length, so an omission of a statement that Jefferson's work on the Virginia capitol was the introduction of classical forms of architecture to America is hardly an error or a fumble.

* I grounded my interpretation of Napoleon's actions regarding the Louisiana Purchase on the work of Peter Onuf, Jon Kukla, Lawrence Kaplan, Roger Kennedy, and Alexander De Conde. Since my book appeared, the recent Monticello Monograph by James E. Lewis has appeared, and is in accord with the arguments already cited. If he disagrees with their -- and my -- interpetations, that is a disagreement, not a historical error.

* On page 74, I wrote that Jefferson HELPED to move Madison from opposing a bill of rights to favoring it. I have noted the four reasons that Madison made this transition in my 1987 book ARE WE TO BE A NATION? THE MAKING OF THE CONSTITUTION and my 1993 book AMENDING AMERICA -- those including (i) Madison's pledge during ratification; (ii) his recognition that the Federalists' pledge to work for amendments was a necessary concession to popular opinion; (iii) his working out a solution -- embodied in the Ninth Amendment -- to his fear that a bill of rights might omit rights by failing to list them; and (iv) his having been influenced by Jefferson. I cited AMENDING AMERICA in JEFFERSON (210n118). No fair-minded reader would have drawn the conclusion that Mr. Dixon drew from that passage, or from the larger discussion on pages 72-74.

* On page 137, I write that the Executive Mansion is "now known as the White House." "Now" in that passage means today, not in Jefferson's or Madison's presidency. Indeed, not till Theodore Roosevelt's presidency (1902 or 1903) did the Executive Mansion acquire its official name of the White House. No fair-inded reader would have misread the text as Mr. Dixon misread it.

* On the Sally Hemings question, Mr. Dixon is unpersuaded and, I find from previous experience of his approach to this controversy, unpersuadable. One specific error that he made in misrepresenting my work: I note in my text at page 196 that the DNA study disproved the Woodson claim. His "reasoning" on Frasier Nieman's study -- which consists of dubbing it a "Monte Carlo" methodology, then claiming that another scholar using a similar "Monte Carlo" methodology failed miserably, with the implicit conclusion that Mr. Nieman's study is similarly a miserable failure -- is worthy of a place as an illustrative example in Jeremy Bentham's HANDBOOK OF POLITICAL FALLACIES.

I respectfully but firmly request that Mr. Dixon withdraw his imputations against my book. I would have written to him privately, but I could not find a current, valid email address for him.

Good overview of Jefferson life but author stumbles
Thomas Jefferson's long and accomplished life resists compression into a one volume treatment. Professor R. B Bernstein almost meets the challenge but not without some lapses. He misses the importance of Jefferson's design of the Virginia State Capitol as the introduction of classical architecture to public buildings. It was not Jefferson's influence that brought James Madison to accept the need for a bill of rights, but the opposition of Virginia and other states to the adoption of a Constitution that lacked such amendments. It was the loss of Saint-Domingue (Haiti) that caused Napoleon to give up his dream of a western empire, not the costs of maintaining the Louisiana Territory. Bernstein succumbs to the revisionist effort to create a persona for Sally Hemings in asserting she was given "extensive authority over running" Monticello.

There are errors of fact which should have been caught by the readers Bernstein credits in his Acknowledgments: Eston Hemings was born in 1808, not 1809; the earliest references to the Presidents House as the White House was 1812, not at the time Jefferson moved into it; Sally Hemings never went to Ohio with her sons, but died in Charlottesville.

It is disappointing to read the "proof" Bernstein, a law professor, accepts in the last chapter when he discusses whether Jefferson fathered children by Sally Hemings. Bernstein is one of the "believers" scattered throughout academia who have followed a pattern of making the test for paternity "could he have" rather than "did he." Two examples suffice. One, in his first term as president, the Federalist press accused Jefferson of fathering a son Tom with Hemings. A Woodson family had long claimed they are the descendants of this Tom. Although DNA tests destroyed this myth, Bernstein calls the family stories of other descendants of Sally Hemings "oral history" and insists they are "proof" of paternity. Two, Bernstein endorses a Monte Carlo simulation by an archeologist at Monticello on the "odds" that Jefferson was the cause of Hemings' conceptions. If this gibberish had any value Bernstein should take it to the racetrack. Recently, a professor at St. Joseph's University did a Monte Carlo simulation for the NCAA basketball tournament. In the round of sixteen, he got eight right.

In short, not the "brilliant" biography praised on the back cover, but certainly a readable and thorough one. Just skip the last chapter.

Food for thought
I have nothing but glowing praise for this author of "Thomas Jefferson", R.B. Bernstein. I just wanted to say that I agree with all the reviewers who gave the book good marks. I also took one reviewer's suggestion and went on to read "West Point:Thomas Jefferson.." by Remick and found it different than the Bernstein book and other T.J. books because it is not so much ABOUT Jefferson, as is a biography, but FROM Jefferson, the moral history and philosophy being drawn from his own readings and writings. I recommend after reading Bernstein's "Thomas Jefferson" you go on to the book by Remick, if you enjoy food for thought.