"Most Blessed of the Patriarchs"

Reviews / Votes

"They neither indict nor absolve Jefferson; instead, they aim to make sense of his contradictions for modern sensibilities...A fascinating addition to the Jefferson canon." -- Publishers Weekly (starred review) "Gordon-Reed and Onuf, both highly reputable Jefferson scholars, strive to understand Jefferson's outlooks over his long life...Gordon-Reed and Onuf's keen and fresh approach to Jefferson and his ideas will engage history buffs." -- Booklist (starred review) "With characteristic insight and intellectual rigor, Annette Gordon-Reed and Peter Onuf have produced a powerful and lasting portrait of the mind of Thomas Jefferson. This is an essential and brilliant book by two of the nation's foremost scholars-a book that will, like its protagonist, endure." -- Jon Meacham, author of Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power "A peerless team, Annette Gordon-Reed and Peter Onuf pierce the mysteries of Jefferson's character and at last offer a compelling explanation of how the republican statesman and plantation patriarch could coexist in a single soul. Jefferson's flaw was not hypocrisy but conviction, his unswerving belief in paternalism as empowering and beneficent." -- Danielle Allen, author of Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality "This inspired collaboration takes us as close as we're likely to get to the way Thomas Jefferson understood himself and his times. Not content with cliches about a man who made his world anew, Gordon-Reed and Onuf show us the world that made the man... Here is Jefferson as he might have painted his own image, a self-portrait comprised of equal parts sun and shadow." -- Jane Kamensky, author of Copley: A Life in Color