Thomas Jefferson

Richard B. Bernstein (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

288 Seiten

2005
Oxford University Press Inc (Verlag)
978-0-19-518130-2 (ISBN)

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Explores the life of Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826): first Secretary of State, second Vice President, fifth President of the United States, and a renaissance man of early America. This biography sets him in context, as a member of the Virginia gentry, an able and skilled lawyer, a talented politician, and the finest writer of his era.

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.

R. B. Bernstein is Adjunct Professor of Law at the New York Law School and director of online operations at Heights Books, Inc. The author or editor of eighteen books on American constitutional history, including Are We to Be a Nation? and Amending America (both nominees for the Pulitzer, Bancroft, and Parkman Prizes), he lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Introduction
1. A Young Gentleman of Virginia (1743-1774)
2. "We hold these truths..." (1763-1776)
3. The Hard Work of the Revolution (1776-1784)
4. "Behold me at length on the vaunted scene of Europe!" (1784-1789)
5. "The parties styled republican and federal" (1789-1793)
6. Touching Earth (1794-1797)
7. "The reign on witches" (1794-1797)
8. "We are all republicans, we are all federalists" (1801-1805)
9. "A splendid misery" (1805-1809)
10. Enthusiasm and Anguish (1809-1826)
Epilogue: "Take care of me when dead..."

Notes
Chronology
Bibliographical Essay
Index

Erscheint lt. Verlag	29.9.2005
Zusatzinfo	25 halftones
Verlagsort	New York
Sprache	englisch
Maße	130 x 212 mm
Gewicht	236 g
Themenwelt	Literatur ► Biografien / Erfahrungsberichte
	Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Geschichte / Politik
	Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Neuzeit (bis 1918)
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
ISBN-10	0-19-518130-1 / 0195181301
ISBN-13	978-0-19-518130-2 / 9780195181302
Zustand	Neuware