Thomas Jefferson: A Life [Paperback]

Willard Sterne Randall (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 18, 1994

The highly praised one-volume biography of Thomas Jefferson that provides illuminating new insights into his public and private life--by the award-winning author of A Little Revenge: Benjamin Franklin at War with His Son and Benedict Arnold: Patriot and Traitor.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

A biography of Thomas Jefferson, who despite his legendary intelligence and political savvy, could be ruthless, not to mention lawless, in his efforts to preserve his causes. Jefferson operated on two levels, as his opposition to slavery as a slaveowner attests. But as Willard Sterne Randall argues, this duality is what made him so effective. Whether Jefferson's 1784 draft of Virginia's constitution "prefigured the founding documents of republics in Europe, Asia, Africa and South America, as well as the Confederate States of America," as Randall claims, is questionable, but his impact on international trade, diplomatic discussions and the success of the state of Virginia cannot be disputed.

From Publishers Weekly

Randall's masterful, gracefully written portrait brings us closer to Jefferson than any previous biography. The self-taught stoic who tried to make himself an embodiment of the Age of Reason was also, in Randall's view, a tortured romantic who kept a pledge to his dying wife not to remarry. Jefferson fell passionately in love with at least two married women, including British painter Maria Cosway with whom he gallivanted in Paris. As a statesman he could act illegally and ruthlessly if he perceived a serious threat to one of his causes, as in his drafting of secret orders that enabled George Rogers Clark to seize territory for Virginia under cover of the Revolution. Randall, biographer of Benedict Arnold and Benjamin Franklin, finds that Jefferson as president was an "ambivalent pragmatist" who often set aside his principles to achieve his goals. Randall dismisses as "preposterous" biographer Fawn Brodie's theory that the slave Sally Hemings was Jefferson's concubine; Brodie, he charges, relied on mere gossip and highly suspect, uncorroborated memoirs by ex-slaves.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 736 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial (June 18, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060976179
• ISBN-13: 978-0060976170
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (34 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #889,553 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Informative and thorough, but at the expense of flow, April 24, 2003

By 

Marc Pieroni (Hoboken, NJ USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Thomas Jefferson: A Life (Hardcover)

Randall may have uncovered just about every fact there is about Thomas Jefferson. The fact that he dedicated pages evenly to each one is where this book fails. Thomas Jefferson could be the most complex figure in American history, but most people won't realize that fact from reading this biography because their minds will be numb from reading the first 300 pages of the book dedicated to his early law career that really played little role in the development of Jefferson. The author tries to justify his inclusion of all this material by theorizing that his contempt for the law system turned Jefferson's mind towards changing the system and thus revolution, and once committed to revolution his ideas on government were influenced by his law teachings, but dedicating 50 pages to Jefferson part in exploting a loop hole in Virinia law to help the First Families acquire more land serves more to make the reader flip through the pages scanning for interesting dates to resume reading. The real dissapointment in the book is that in spite of all this research, Randall fails to really tackle Jefferson's hypocricies and puzzling political movements. Perhaps he was unable to find good cause for Jefferson's motives, but to ignore his obvious faults makes this biography toothless. His borderline treasonous behavior as both Washington's Secretary of State and Adams' Vice-President, his obvious hypocrisy between champion of human equality and slaveowner, and his change of heart about the institution between his authorship of the Declaration and his ascension to the Presidency (along with the glossing over of his decision-making process during the Louisiana Purchase), are all controversial actions of a man usually considered "great" without much examination. This book would be the proper forum to defend the actions, explain the rationale behind them, or if failing to discover one, call out Jefferson for these personal blemishes. Randall does none of this, either lamely glossing over the points or omitting them altogether. After becoming president, the story gets so thin that it makes one wonder if Randall himself got bored with his research and writing of Jefferson's early career that he simply wanted to finish the book. He chose the wrong part of Jefferson's life to cut from. The book gets 2 stars for the information it contained, and doesn't get 3 more because of its presentation and lack of the information that it should have. There must be more engaging biographies of Jefferson than this one.

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very good, but misses some things, November 16, 2001

By 

Anaxagoras (Austin, TX USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Thomas Jefferson: A Life (Paperback)

This may be the best single-volume biography written on Jefferson. Randall clearly has done an enormous amount of research in preparing this work, and the results are outstanding. The information is complete and useful, detailed but not dull.

Randall particularly focuses on the early years of Jefferson's life, which many other biographers have neglected. This is the strongest point of the entire work, for it provides details and information that are to be found nowhere else.

The only drawback to this biography is that the latter years of Jefferson's life are largely ignored. Jefferson's term as President is dealt with in scarcely thirty pages. Even worse, the 17 years of Jefferson's retirement (in some ways the most fascinating) are tossed away in about ten pages.

Randall perhaps should have written a book on Jefferson's early life alone, which is clearly the area he has focused his research on. That being said, this biography is extremely well-written and very enlightening. It would make a solid addition to anyone's bookshelf.

27 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Jefferson through partisan eyes: A great, uneven effort, May 7, 2003

By 

Gregory Maier (Concord, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Thomas Jefferson: A Life (Paperback)

If one can get past the fact that Willard Sterne Randall's prose is ponderous, uneven and repetitive (he shows improvement in his latest biography of Alexander Hamilton), a reader will certainly be able to appreciate the diligent research, remarkable detail and exploration of Thomas Jefferson's early life as given us by the author. The early life and formative years of America's third president has never been rendered better or in greater detail, and the first few hundred pages of this book --up to Jefferson's first years in France-- are absolutely worth reading.

Randall strikes one as somewhat prudish when it comes to exploring the more human frailties of his mighty subject, almost smugly downplaying Jefferson's sexual relationships throughout his life, and dismissing, with a scholarly sniff, the notion that Thomas Jefferson might have had an intimate relationship with his slave Sally Hemings. Scientific tests performed after the publication of this almost epic biography have raised some relevant questions, and though certainly not the centerpiece of Jefferson's life and myriad accomplishments, it is evidence of the author's almost protective prose.

Nonetheless, the complex Thomas Jefferson, a pixilated, self-absorbed genius who was also voraciously patriotic and far-sighted, is clearly painted for the reader. His ability to compartmentalize his many desires and inner conflicts is fascinating --apparently, the many facets of Jefferson seldom, if ever, communicated with each other. Yet, to watch Jefferson studying law, natural science and the classics (to name but a few fields in which he would become an authority), molding himself (with a good deal of generous patronage and good fortune) into an indisputable man for all seasons, is marvelous. No recent biographer has brought this much life to Jefferson's early days, through his tenure in the House of Burgesses to budding revolutionary; from the crafting of the Declaration of Independence to his role in France.

It is a shame Randall does not give us more balance in presenting the whole of Jefferson's life, but the founder of the University of Virginia was more than complex.

In his book, "American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson," Joseph J. Ellis rightly describes Jefferson as such, and Randall's earlier effort offers the reader an even grander panorama --indeed, Jefferson's entire life-- through which to observe this eccentric, frustrating and frustrated champion of an American agrarian utopia.

Thomas Jefferson cannot be praised highly enough, and Randall needn't have put Jefferson's overall image on a modest pedestal. But enough of the essential Jefferson, if any parts of him can be truly known, are shown here to the reader through Randall's minute research and sweeping presentation (Randall's stinting on Jefferson's life after about 1790 not withstanding).

The book isn't without faults (it isn't exactly a page-turner), but the observations offered equal or outweigh Randall's sometimes brilliant, often bumbling, prosaic narrative. Jefferson outshines the author, and like a Sphinx, raises more questions than are answered. Still, this may be the closest modern readers of a single volume biography will get to Jefferson's many worlds. Five stars for Jefferson, less two for Randall's uneven effort.