Being Thomas Jefferson
An Intimate History
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- ¥2,800
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The deepest dive yet into the heart and soul, secret affairs, unexplored alliances, and bitter feuds of a generally worshipped, intermittently reviled American icon.
Perhaps no founding father is as mysterious as Thomas Jefferson. The author of the Declaration of Independence was both a gifted wordsmith and a bundle of nerves. His superior knowledge of the human heart is captured in the impassioned appeal he brought to the Declaration. But as a champion of the common man who lived a life of privilege on a mountaintop plantation of his own design, he has eluded biographers who have sought to make sense of his inner life. In Being Thomas Jefferson, acclaimed Jefferson scholar Andrew Burstein peels away layers of obfuscation, taking us past the veneer of the animated letter-writer to describe a confused lover and a misguided humanist, too timid to embrace antislavery.
Jefferson was a soft-spoken man who recoiled from direct conflict, yet a master puppeteer in politics. Whenever he left Monticello, where he could control his environment, he suffered debilitating headaches that plagued him for decades, until he finally retired from public life. So, what did it feel like to be Thomas Jefferson? Burstein explains the decision to take as his mistress Sally Hemings, the enslaved half-sister of his late wife, who bore him six children, none of whom he acknowledged. Presenting a society that encouraged separation between public and private, appearance and essence, Burstein paints a dramatic picture of early American culture and brings us closer to Jefferson's life and thought than ever before.
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Historian Burstein (Longing for Connection) aims in this probing biography to unearth the inner life of America's most mercurial founder, including how he made sense of his contradictory positions on slavery and democracy. To do so, Burstein explores the Age of Enlightenment's unique emotional landscape—where sensitivity and sensuality were valued but the barrier between public and private life was rigidly maintained—and examines how Jefferson, an easily irritated but loftily minded introvert, fit into this milieu. In a narrative studded with keen insights, Burstein offers notes on Jefferson's flirting style with sexually empowered French aristocratic women (mostly jokey, belying intimidation) and juxtaposes his passionate vendettas against his fellow politicians with the icy condescension of his theorizing about the "natural" hierarchy of the races. Along the way, a complex portrait emerges of a man who both longed for control of his immediate environment and constantly pushed himself into the wider world, where control was impossible and frustrations abounded. Burstein ties this to everything from Jefferson's decision to take teenage Sally Hemings as a "concubine" rather than remarry—evidence, Burstein suggests, of Jefferson's fear of the loss of control stemming from his wife's death—to his vision for America as a nation of lightly governed freeholders. It makes for immersive account of both the man and his age.
