American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson
by Joseph J. Ellis
List Price:
Our Price: $5.98
You Save: $9.97 (63%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $3.00 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Joseph J. EllisEdition: Paperback
Published: 1998-04-07
ISBN: 0679764410
Number of pages: 464
Publisher: Vintage
Book Reviews of American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson
Book Review: tabloid history
Summary: 1 Stars
Absolute claptrap from a morally bankrupt excuse of a human being who cannot find his niche in his pathetic underachieving life. He resorts to "tabloid" history, finding it makes up for his inability to do real research or be able to critically evaluate it. His personal ability to read into the heart and motivations of the founding fathers is ridiculous.
Save your money and buy a real book by a real historian. The more read you are on one of his "targets", the more you will find his writing vacant. He must have worked for the enquirer.
Summary of American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson
Well timed to coincide with Ken Burns's documentary (on which the author served as a consultant), this new biography doesn't aim to displace the many massive tomes about America's third president that already weigh down bookshelves. Instead, as suggested by the subtitle--"The Character of Thomas Jefferson"--Ellis searches for the "living, breathing person" underneath the icon and tries to elucidate his actual beliefs. Jefferson's most ardent admirers may find this perspective too critical, but Ellis's portrait of a complex, sometimes devious man who both sought and abhorred power has the ring of truth.For a man who insisted that life on the public stage was not what he had in mind, Thomas Jefferson certainly spent a great deal of time in the spotlight--and not only during his active political career. After 1809, his longed-for retirement was compromised by a steady stream of guests and tourists who made of his estate at Monticello a virtual hotel, as well as by more than one thousand letters per year, most from strangers, which he insisted on answering personally. In his twilight years Jefferson was already taking on the luster of a national icon, which was polished off by his auspicious death (on July 4, 1896); and in the subsequent seventeen decades of his celebrity--now verging, thanks to virulent revisionists and television documentaries, on notoriety--has been inflated beyond recognition of the original person.
For the historian Joseph J. Ellis, the experience of writing about Jefferson was "as if a pathologist, just about to begin an autopsy, has discovered that the body on the operating table was still breathing." In American Sphinx, Ellis sifts the facts shrewdly from the legends and the rumors, treading a path between vilification and hero worship in order to formulate a plausible portrait of the man who still today "hover[s] over the political scene like one of those dirigibles cruising above a crowded football stadium, flashing words of inspiration to both teams." For, at the grass roots, Jefferson is no longer liberal or conservative, agrarian or industrialist, pro- or anti-slavery, privileged or populist. He is all things to all people. His own obliviousness to incompatible convictions within himself (which left him deaf to most forms of irony) has leaked out into the world at large--a world determined to idolize him despite his foibles.
From Ellis we learn that Jefferson sang incessantly under his breath; that he delivered only two public speeches in eight years as president, while spending ten hours a day at his writing desk; that sometimes his political sensibilities collided with his domestic agenda, as when he ordered an expensive piano from London during a boycott (and pledged to "keep it in storage"). We see him relishing such projects as the nailery at Monticello that allowed him to interact with his slaves more palatably, as pseudo-employer to pseudo-employees. We grow convinced that he preferred to meet his lovers in the rarefied region of his mind rather than in the actual bedchamber. We watch him exhibiting both great depth and great shallowness, combining massive learning with extraordinary na?vet?, piercing insights with self-deception on the grandest scale. We understand why we should neither beatify him nor consign him to the rubbish heap of history, though we are by no means required to stop loving him. He is Thomas Jefferson, after all--our very own sphinx.
Following his subject from the drafting of the Declaration of Independence to his retirement in Monticello, Joseph Ellis unravels the contradictions of the Jeffersonian character. A marvel of scholarship, a delight to read, and an essential gloss on the Jeffersonian legacy, American Sphinx is "history at its best" (Chicago Tribune).
General Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Audiobooks on Cassette
- Audiobooks on CD
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- e-Books
- Engineering
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Medicine
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in History Reading for the Dedicated Reader Part III
Nixon and Mao: The Week That Changed the Worldby Margaret Macmillan
Random House Trade Paperbacks; Published: 2008-03-11; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.58
Price in other shops:
Counselor: A Life at the Edge of Historyby Ted Sorensen
Harper; Published: 2008-05-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $14.00
Price in other shops:
Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendshipby Jon Meacham
Random House Trade Paperbacks; Published: 2004-10-12; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.37
Price in other shops:
Gandhi & Churchill: The Epic Rivalry that Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Ageby Arthur Herman
Bantam; Published: 2008-04-29; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $15.00
Price in other shops:
Troublesome Young Men: The Rebels Who Brought Churchill to Power and Helped Save Englandby Lynne Olson
Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Published: 2008-04-29; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.36
Price in other shops:
The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecherby Debby Applegate
Three Leaves; Published: 2007-04-17; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.18
Price in other shops:
Boone: A Biographyby Robert Morgan
A Shannon Ravenel Book; Published: 2007-09-21; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $18.61
Price in other shops:
William Clark and the Shaping of the Westby Landon Y. Jones
Hill and Wang; Published: 2005-10-12; Paperback; Book
Best price: $11.99
Price in other shops:
The Muse of the Revolution: The Secret Pen of Mercy Otis Warren and the Foundingof a Nationby Nancy Rubin Stuart
Beacon Press; Published: 2008-07-15; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $19.11
Price in other shops:
Dearest Friend: A Life of Abigail Adamsby Lynne Withey
Touchstone; Published: 2002-07-02; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.83
Price in other shops:
Similar Books and other products
Mornings on Horseback: The Story of an Extraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore Rooseveltby David McCullough
Simon & Schuster; Published: 1982-05-12; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.00
Price in other shops:
Thomas Jeffersonby R. B. Bernstein
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 2005-09-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.01
Price in other shops:
Passionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of John Adamsby Joseph J. Ellis
W. W. Norton & Company; Published: 2001-09; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.44
Price in other shops:
Benjamin Franklin: An American Lifeby Walter Isaacson
Simon & Schuster; Published: 2004-05-04; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.00
Price in other shops:
American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the Republicby Joseph J. Ellis
Knopf; Published: 2007-10-30; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $14.00
Price in other shops:
His Excellency: George Washingtonby Joseph J. Ellis
Knopf; Published: 2004-10-26; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $7.94
Price in other shops:
John Adamsby David McCullough
Simon & Schuster; Published: 2002-09-03; Paperback; Book
Best price: $13.86
Price in other shops:
Alexander Hamiltonby Ron Chernow
Penguin Press; Published: 2004-04-26; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $5.70
Price in other shops:
His Excellency: George Washingtonby Joseph J. Ellis
Vintage; Published: 2005-11-08; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.99
Price in other shops:
Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generationby Joseph J. Ellis
Vintage; Published: 2002-02-05; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.99
Price in other shops: