Being Thomas Jefferson - by Andrew Burstein (Hardcover)

About the Book

The deepest dive yet into the heart and soul, secret affairs, unexplored alliances, and bitter feuds of a generally worshipped, intermittently reviled American icon.

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

"Burstein employs the key events of Jefferson's life to probe the inner man to a degree no other biographer has attempted, and he succeeds brilliantly. This groundbreaking work should be considered critical reading as we celebrate the 250th anniversary of Jefferson's greatest achievement, the Declaration of Independence." --Peter Cozzens, Washington Independent Review of Books

""Delightful... Mr. Burstein concentrat[es] on Jefferson's thoughts, personality, relationships and milieu... One theme that runs through Mr. Burstein's account is the gap that often yawned between Jefferson's image and his private thoughts. Perhaps no one is entirely consistent, but with Jefferson the disparity could be jarring. He told the world, and himself, that he was a rational, even-tempered man."" --Richard Brookhiser, Wall Street Journal

"It's a striking reminder that Jefferson's legacy endures-all the more reason to read what might be Burstein's crowning achievement." --Danny Heitman, The Advocate

"A magnificent book... Burstein is a master storyteller... This is a book which an undergraduate or graduate should read and, more particularly, digest. It is certainly also an exemplary book for the general reader. In many ways it is a call to action... I had difficulty putting it down... Burstein has written an honest portrayal of Jefferson's personality, not showering him with adulation nor demeaning his missteps and flaws ... As to new information and characterizations of Jefferson, Burstein entered untrodden areas of inquiry and revisited relationships that have been largely undervalued in the past ... Burstein brilliantly teases out various truths about Jefferson's inner life ... throughout this fine book is Burstein's strong effort to exit the debate over Jefferson's attitudes to slavery and to advance historical knowledge without 'prescriptive politics.' Burstein wants not to promote or debase, but to explain the man Jefferson with the tools of the historical archive of evidence, all of it ... This compelling book offers very much to readers in understanding the intimate mind and history of one of the foremost Founders of the United States of America ... This book tells truth and explains the values of one of our country's greatest Founders and their hopes, ideals and aspirations for the future." --Robert Louis Semes, The Humanist Magazine

"Objective and fascinating... Thomas Jefferson was a unique study in contrasts, as brilliantly highlighted by Andrew Burstein in Being Thomas Jefferson. The meticulous record keeper who got swamped with crushing debt, a public figure with thin skin who firmly held onto grudges, a rogue who seduced his friend's girlfriends/wives, Burstein adeptly shows Jefferson to be a flawed, yet historically impactful figure." --Philip Zozzaro, Manhattan Book Review

"Burstein shows his mastery of the Jefferson archive on every page, but he also brings judicious psychological insight to the task. Archives, after all, do not interpret themselves, and it is the discriminating scholar and critic in Burstein that gives his book its unusual distinction... lively and incisive." --Edward Short, City Journal

"An indispensable biography... Mr. Burstein brings a lifetime of reading and research to a sensitive revaluation of Jefferson... noteworthy not only for what he has to say about Jefferson, but also about how others have said it and contributed to the biographer's own mastery of the subject." --Carl Rollyson, The New York Sun

"Burstein succeeds in providing an intimate look at Jefferson's attitudes and predispositions... This endless push and pull, between Jefferson's desire for a tranquil, studious life at Monticello, and his belief that he had a critical role to play in the young United States, lies at the heart of this book." --Brian Tanguay, California Review of Books

"Being Thomas Jefferson is enormously impressive. Burstein writes with both clarity and restraint, resisting the temptation to psychoanalyze Jefferson while still insisting that emotions mattered significantly to him." --H-Net Reviews

"This volume is worthy of a place on the shelf of any Jefferson enthusiast. Although Jefferson has been alternately deified and vilified, Burstein's analysis demonstrates that the truth is somewhere in the middle of these extremes. This close examination of his personal life makes the real Jefferson come to life in ways that make him relatable, complex, and at times frustrating. Perhaps most importantly, Burstein's work gives readers a real sense of Jefferson's humanity." --Kelly Mielke, Journal of the American Revolution

"Close-up portrait by a noted Jefferson scholar aimed at 'advancing historical knowledge without prescriptive politics.' . . . Burstein's psychological insights are impressively detailed and grounded in valuable historical context . . . A nuanced, warts-and-all examination of a complicated Founding Father." --Kirkus

"Noted Jefferson scholar Andrew Burstein has produced an elegantly written exploration of our third president's inner life. Being Thomas Jefferson is a thought-provoking and timely addition to the literature on Jefferson." --Annette Gordon-Reed, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for THE HEMINGSES OF MONTICELLO: AN AMERICAN FAMILY

"Most biographies of Thomas Jefferson are focused on his intellect. Andrew Burstein lays open his heart. He has answered a question that has always puzzled me: why was Jefferson so adroit at playing hide-and-seek inside himself." --Joseph J. Ellis, author AMERICAN SPHINX: THE CHARACTER OF THOMAS JEFFERSON

"Andrew Burstein has written what promises to become the most acclaimed contemporary biography of Thomas Jefferson - appropriately for the 200th year after his death and the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Burstein neither tries to promote or dethrone but succeeds in creating a revealing portrait of a complex individual, who had a great capacity for friendship and grudges, who sought privacy but also celebrity, who was pessimistic about human nature but optimistic about the possibilities for the future. Skillfully dissecting his use of language, the biography reminds us of why it is important to engage with a man who more than any other is part of the DNA of the United States." --Andrew O'Shaughnessy, author of THE ILLIMITABLE FREEDOM OF THE HUMAN MIND and THE MEN WHO LOST AMERICA

"Drawing on a lifetime of research on Thomas Jefferson, historian Andrew Burstein achieves what few scholars have thought possible: to penetrate Jefferson's public façade so as to plumb his innermost depths. Written with immense learning, grace, and sensitivity, Burstein offers a deep psychological portrait that allows readers to imagine the third president in wholly new ways." --Rosemarie Zagarri, author of REVOLUTIONARY BACKLASH: WOMEN AND POLITICS IN THE EARLY AMERICAN REPUBLIC

"In this provocative 'psychological reckoning, ' Andrew Burstein illuminates both the inner life of Jefferson, and also the challenges and rewards of the biographer's craft. With a focus on who Jefferson hated as well as who he loved, Burstein foregrounds Jefferson's uncanny ability to rationalize his own behavior, and his unwillingness to judge himself. Burstein deftly interweaves the private and the public and thus vividly brings early American politics to life." --Elizabeth R. Varon, author of LONGSTREET: THE CONFEDERATE GENERAL WHO DEFIED THE SOUTH

"An exciting, sensitive, & perceptive probe into the hidden Jefferson. It is a touchingly personal & succinct book that compliments & culminates Burstein's life-long contribution to understanding Jefferson. Those new to Jefferson literature will find it comprehensive & engaging. Scholars will appreciate its insights & speculations about its mysterious subject." --Fred Kaplan, author of JOHN QUINCY ADAMS: AMERICAN VISIONARY and HIS MASTERLY PEN: A BIOGRAPHY OF JEFFERSON THE WRITER

"Fresh and persuasive, Being Thomas Jefferson helps reinterpret this immensely complex man for the modern reader. Based on enormous and wide-ranging research, Andrew Burstein intervenes at critical moments in Thomas Jefferson's long life to offer penetrating analytical insights." --John B. Boles, author of JEFFERSON: ARCHITECT OF AMERICAN LIBERTY

"I thought I knew Thomas Jefferson. I've read the hagiographies, the political philosophers, the learned biographies, the psychologists, the muckrakers. I'm familiar with the facts and speculations about his secret life with Sally Hemings. I've studied the marble statue on the Tidal Basin and the arguments for taking that statue down. It turns out I didn't know Jefferson half so well as I thought. This "intimate history" is neither gossip nor psychoanalysis. It's not hero worship or iconoclasm. Burstein has an encyclopedic knowledge of Jefferson's world-which vegetables came to table in Virginia, which philosophers could be found in Philadelphia bookstores, and what pornography one might access in Paris. He also has that genius quality of telling us what we could have known all along, if only we were sensible enough to see what was in plain sight. It turns out that Thomas Jefferson, like you and me, was a human being." --Joseph Kelly, author of MAROONED and THE BIGGEST LIE

"There is no finer scholar of the inner life of Thomas Jefferson than Andrew Burstein. In this brilliant, provocative, new book Burstein picks up where Fawn Brodie left off fifty years ago and shows us a Jefferson who was torn between his powerful desire to achieve fame and leave his mark on history, and the impulse to retreat from public life. The result is a beautifully written study that shows Jefferson in a new light, calling us to reconsider what we thought we knew about the Sage of Monticello." --Francis D. Cogliano, author of A REVOLUTIONARY FRIENDSHIP: WASHINGTON, JEFFERSON AND THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC

"Thomas Jefferson is a puzzle. His ideas and politics are well known, but much about his inner life-what he really thought, why he thought it, and what drove him-has remained hidden. Andrew Burstein, who perhaps knows Jefferson better than any other scholar, succeeds in penetrating what many thought was the impenetrable Jefferson. What Burstein uncovers isn't always pleasant, but it is revealing and opens what previously had been many a closed door into the inner Jefferson." --John Ferling, author of SHOTS HEARD ROUND THE WORLD

About the Author

Andrew Burstein recently retired as the Charles P. Manship Professor of History at Louisiana State University. He is the author of The Passions of Andrew Jackson, Jefferson's Secrets, and several other books on early American politics and culture. He is the coauthor (with Nancy Isenberg) of Madison and Jefferson and The Problem of Democracy. Burstein's writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Salon.com He advised Ken Burns' production "Thomas Jefferson," and was featured on C-SPAN's American Presidents Series and Booknotes, and numerous NPR programs. He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.