Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History (Paperback)

by Fawn McKay Brodie (Author)
Key Phrases: restlessness and torment, genius for peace, United States, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From The Washington Post
Brilliant, provocative. . . . A biography no one interested in the man or his times should miss.

Review
An extraordinary human drama told with great insight, compassion, and literary skill. What history should be but seldom is. -- Page Smith

An extraordinary human drama told with great insight, compassion, and literary skill. What history should be but seldom is. (Page Smith )

Brilliant, provocative. . . . A biography no one interested in the man or his times should miss. (Larry McMurtry -Washington Post Book World )

Powerful and touching. . . . The story of an intimate life hidden from and at odds with the public life. . . . Brodie has humanized Jefferson without in the least diminishing him. -- Wallace Stegner

Powerful and touching. . . . The story of an intimate life hidden from and at odds with the public life. . . . Brodie has humanized Jefferson without in the least diminishing him. (Wallace Stegner )

Thoroughly fascinating, opening vistas into Jefferson's life and thought that were fresh and exciting. A superbly written book, sparkling with new information and interpretation. -- Ray A. Billington

Thoroughly fascinating, opening vistas into Jefferson's life and thought that were fresh and exciting. A superbly written book, sparkling with new information and interpretation. (Ray A. Billington )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 608 pages
• Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co. (April 17, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393317528
• ISBN-13: 978-0393317527
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #228,683 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in this category: (What's this?)

  #53 in

  Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( J ) > Jefferson, Thomas

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellant portrait of a complex man, July 2, 2002

By	Tech Junkie (Spring, TX United States) - See all my reviews

I have read this book several times over the past ten years, and referred back to it after reading biographies by others who often slander Ms. Brodies work. It is an excellent portrait of what Mr. Jefferson may have been like, both flattering and not so flattering, but always fascinating. I always enjoy it because it captures so many people around Jefferson so well, such as his mentor George Wythe and his father-in-law John Wayles, both who took a slave concubine after becoming widowers. This book is about relationships and their social times.

Ms. Brodie weighed in on Jefferson being the father of Sally Hemming's children when it was not popular to taint him with human emotions. She would be proved right on at least one of Ms. Hemming's children, Eston, being fathered by the same Y chromosome that Jefferson's own father carried. Unfortunately Ms. Brodie did not live to see the scientific vindication of her research and insight. The Jefferson family has long claimed that Sally's children who favored Jefferson were fathered by nephew Samuel Carr, Jefferson's sister Martha's son. But Sam couldn't pass that Jefferson Y chromosome!

This book is a must read for everyone who is interested in understanding the Sage of Montecello. It makes the world of Jefferson come to life and allow the reader to walk in the times of his day, his friendships, enemies, depressions, joys, trials, and triumphs. Brodie takes the time to richly describe the other individuals in Jefferson's life, there by providing to the reader great scholarship that is immensely personal and interesting.

No single book can capture Jefferson's philosophy and accomplishments; but this book is a must read for a study of the personality of one of the most complex and interesting men in the history of our civilization.

It is the most fun book on Jefferson and his times that one can read.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Great Read, June 1, 2001

By	John Bonanno (Hiram, Maine USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I titled this review "A Great Read" because of all the previous reviewers who said that (or words to that effect) this book is a great read BUT,....and there follows whatever psycho-sociological angst this work engendered in them, and then they proceeded to give it a low rating. This is an exceedingly well written and researched book which will give anyone some insight into our most complex and intelligent founding father. It is as honest as the evidence at hand allowed Fawn Brodie to be. The complicated relations between the white southern gentleman and his slaves reverberates to this day in our national unconsciousness. The only way to resolve these complexes and be free of them is to understand that they exist. If the problem of slavery so altered the inner life of one of our greatest Americans, how did it effect the more ordinary among us?

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Thoughtful analysis, January 28, 2001

By	"embolita" (Santa Cruz, California United States) - See all my reviews

Upon visiting Monticello last spring, I became fasinated with Thomas Jefferson. This is the first biography that I picked up and it has proven to be a most worthwhile read. While Brodie's psychoanalysis can get a bit tiring (she tries to support her claim that Jefferson was involved with Sally Hemmings in Paris by citing his overusage of the word "mullato" in his travel diary descriptions of the german landscape), she has done a tremendous service by denying the myth of Jefferson as a retiring hermit. Pointing out the tendency of earlier Jefferson biographers to vehemently deny the possiblity of an intense love affair after the death of Martha Jefferson, she goes on to make a clear case for the gravity of his relationship with Maria Cosway in Paris.

People who wish to focus all of their attacks on Brodie's treatment of the Jefferson-Hemmings affair fail to recognize that this was of matter was of secondary importance. Brodie's primary attempt is successful, she paints a sensitive portrait of Thomas Jefferson as a person rather than a statesman. Certainly, her conjecture leads her to inappropriate and almost certainly incorrect conclusions at times, but this type of biography is all about drawing judgements from old documents without the benefit of truly knowing the individual. While more circumspect biographers may produce a book which is more historically defensible, they cannot attempt to uncover the person behind the image. I enjoyed Brodie's suggestions and appreciate what I consider to be a successful attempt at a intimate and infinitely readable biography.