Customer Reviews

Thomas Jefferson: A Brief Biography

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.....than the man who wrote the encyclopaedia? This little (48 page) book had its genesis back in the 1930s when Dumas Malone got stuck with the job of editor of the "Dictionary of American Biography". Then, 50 years later, he revised it to to be published in the form we see here. Normally, such a thing would not rate mention, much less five stars, BUT, Dumas Malone was the greatest Jefferson scholar that ever lived, and the forward was written by Merrill Peterson, the second greatest. Now, I could write a very good 50 page article on Mr. Jefferson, but I barely belong on the same planet as these guys.

What we have here is the most basic life of Jefferson, touching all the high (and some of the low) points of his public life. From cradle to grave, it's ALL here, but in the merest outline. The name "Maria Cosway" is not mentioned, so we lose the "head and heart". Citizen Genet, Alexander Hamilton, John Marshall, and Aaron Burr all get appropriate notation. John Adams gets a bit more, which is proper. Betsey Walker gets named, and apologized for; Sally Hemings and James Callendar are noted, and dismissed with due scorn. The debt problems, sadly, have to be here, and they are. And the books, books, books......

In the fifty years between the first and second appearances of this article, Dr. Malone wrote the six volume "Jefferson and His Time", one of the two greatest works of biography in the English language (the other being Dr. Freeman's "RE Lee"). And, Dr. Peterson wrote the 1000+ page "Thomas Jefferson & the new nation", MAYBE the greatest one volume bio of anybody ever written. The present edition is published by the TJMF, to sell in the gift shop at Monticello. (GREAT gift shops, by the way). For a lot of folks, it's enough. If you want more, try the works of Noble Cunningham, or Joe Ellis. {FORGET Fawn Brodie}!! Why do I bother with a long review of an article?....Dumas Malone. (I even have a small bio of him that I wrote published on Find a Grave). Of course, Malone and Peterson's long works are definitive, but their length will deter most readers.

Nice concise history of Thomas Jefferson. I found it not too indepth but a quick read.