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Editorial Reviews

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Thomas Jefferson's life seems to be riddled with contradictions: he wrote "all men are created equal" yet owned hundreds of slaves; he feared mixing the races yet fathered children with a partially black slave. Joseph J. Ellis took this Jefferson-as-enigma approach in American Sphinx, which won the National Book Award for nonfiction in 1997. E.M. Halliday, however, argues that "the 'sphinx' approach tends to mystify rather than enlighten" and attempts to reconcile some of the contradictions in Understanding Thomas Jefferson.

Halliday starts off with a comprehensive sketch of Jefferson's life, from his father's death when he was 14 to his own death on July 4, 1826. Halliday describes Jefferson's college days, his passionate marriage, his trip to Paris, and, of course, his relationship with Sally Hemings, his slave and concubine.

Halliday's analysis of the Jefferson-Hemings affair is refreshing, given that many biographers have felt Jefferson lost all interest in sex after his wife's death (or, to quote Nick Nolte, who played the man in Jefferson in Paris, "The historians like to think that after Jefferson's wife died, his dick fell off"). Halliday lays out all the evidence, also noting that "most biographers have paid insufficient attention ... to the probability that some of her traits, of both appearance and character, were reminiscent of her half sister, Jefferson's greatly beloved wife." He then criticizes the "blinkered historians" who ignored or dismissed ample evidence of the affair--that is, before DNA testing proved that Jefferson fathered at least one of Hemings's children.

A series of related essays follows the biography, including a clear-eyed view of the relationship between history and fiction. Throughout the book, Halliday writes in a chatty, almost gossipy tone, noting the Marquis de Lafayette's "formidable expanse of forehead," describing Jefferson's "tall, lean but muscular figure," musing that "September in Paris, while less celebrated in love songs than April, can be a wonderfully sexy time of year." Entertaining, informative, and eminently readable, Understanding Thomas Jefferson will leave readers feeling that they do. --Sunny Delaney

From Library Journal
This book has great merits as well as great flaws. Its merits include the author's commonsense, balanced approach to his subject, his solid grasp of the material, and his effervescent style. Halliday, a longtime editor at American Heritage and author of previous works on the poet John Berryman and on the Allied invasion of Soviet Russia in 1918 19, persuasively argues that historians Andrew Burstein (The Inner Jefferson: Portrait of a Grieving Optimist, 1995) and Joseph J. Ellis (American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson) are wrong to claim that Jefferson was a bundle of unfathomable contradictions and mysteries. Halliday maintains that many of Jefferson's apparent contradictions are understandable, given his position in society and the era in which he lived. Despite Jefferson's failings in his views on blacks and women, Halliday says that his championship of human liberty gives him a deserved place on Mount Rushmore. The book's most serious flaw is its scope. Over half of the book is devoted to Jefferson's sex life (or lack thereof), particularly with his slave Sally Hemmings; this preoccupation is compounded by the author's overuse of words like erotic. (In two places he even notes that the weather was "sexy.") The book says almost nothing about Jefferson's work in the Continental Congress or his two terms as President. Recommended for larger public libraries. T.J. Schaeper, St. Bonaventure Univ., New York
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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First Sentence:
ing and the peasants of the metropolis are trudging sullenly to their ill-paid travail-if they are so lucky as to have jobs at all. The sexual mores of this haut monde, on the fringe of which widower Thomas Jefferson, the newly appointed American minister to France, soon was to find himself, are rather touchingly hinted at by the story of Lafayette's marriage. Read the first page

Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
unchequered happiness

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Understanding Thomas Jefferson (Hardcover)

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