"Most blessed of the patriarchs"
Subtitle: Thomas Jefferson and the empire of the imagination
By: Annette Gordon-Reed, Peter S. Onuf
Contributors: Onuf, Peter S., author
Edition: First edition.
Published: 2016
Language: eng
Number of pages: 370
ISBN-13: 9780871404428
Subjects: Philosophy; Political and social views
Other titles: Thomas Jefferson and the empire of the imagination
Description: Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Annette Gordon-Reed teams up with the country's leading Jefferson scholar, Peter S. Onuf, to present an absorbing and revealing character study that finally clarifies the philosophy of Thomas Jefferson. Tracing Jefferson's development and maturation from his youth to his old age, 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."

Jefferson was a man so riven with contradictions that he is almost impossible to know. Gordon-Reed and Onuf dispel the many clichés that have accrued over the years, and trace his philosophical development from youth to old age. In doing so, they challenge much of what we have come to accept about Jefferson, and reintroduce us to a man more gifted than most, but complicated in just the ways we all are.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: North and south; title: Patriarch. Home; title: Plantation; title: Virginia.; title: Traveller. France; title: Looking homeward; title: Politics.; title: Enthusiast. Music; title: Visitors; title: Privacy and prayers.