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Author: Peter S. Onuf
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 0813931827
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 329
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Book Description
Thomas Jefferson read Latin and Greek authors throughout his life and wrote movingly about his love of the ancient texts, which he thought should be at the core of America's curriculum. Yet at the same time, Jefferson warned his countrymen not to look to the ancient world for modern lessons and deplored many of the ways his peers used classical authors to address contemporary questions. As a result, the contribution of the ancient world to the thought of America's most classically educated Founding Father remains difficult to assess. This volume brings together historians of political thought with classicists and historians of art and culture to find new approaches to the difficult questions raised by America's classical heritage. The essays explore the classical contribution to different aspects of Jefferson’s thought and taste, as well as examining the significance of the ancient world to America in a broader historical context. The diverse interests and methodologies of the contributors suggest new ways of approaching one of the most prominent and contested of the traditions that helped create America's revolutionary republicanism. Contributors:Gordon S. Wood, Brown University * Peter S. Onuf, University of Virginia * Michael P. Zuckert, University of Notre Dame * Caroline Winterer, Stanford University * Richard Guy Wilson, University of Virginia * Maurie D. McInnis, University of Virginia * Nicholas P. Cole, University of Oxford * Peter Thompson, University of Oxford * Eran Shalev, Haifa University * Paul A. Rahe, Hillsdale College * Jennifer T. Roberts, City University of New York, Graduate Center * Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy, University of Virginia
Author: Peter S. Onuf
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 0813931827
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 329
Get Book Here
Book Description
Thomas Jefferson read Latin and Greek authors throughout his life and wrote movingly about his love of the ancient texts, which he thought should be at the core of America's curriculum. Yet at the same time, Jefferson warned his countrymen not to look to the ancient world for modern lessons and deplored many of the ways his peers used classical authors to address contemporary questions. As a result, the contribution of the ancient world to the thought of America's most classically educated Founding Father remains difficult to assess. This volume brings together historians of political thought with classicists and historians of art and culture to find new approaches to the difficult questions raised by America's classical heritage. The essays explore the classical contribution to different aspects of Jefferson’s thought and taste, as well as examining the significance of the ancient world to America in a broader historical context. The diverse interests and methodologies of the contributors suggest new ways of approaching one of the most prominent and contested of the traditions that helped create America's revolutionary republicanism. Contributors:Gordon S. Wood, Brown University * Peter S. Onuf, University of Virginia * Michael P. Zuckert, University of Notre Dame * Caroline Winterer, Stanford University * Richard Guy Wilson, University of Virginia * Maurie D. McInnis, University of Virginia * Nicholas P. Cole, University of Oxford * Peter Thompson, University of Oxford * Eran Shalev, Haifa University * Paul A. Rahe, Hillsdale College * Jennifer T. Roberts, City University of New York, Graduate Center * Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy, University of Virginia
Author: Peter S. Onuf
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
ISBN: 9781557869227
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 284
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Book Description
This book analyzes Thomas Jefferson's conception of American nationhood in light of the political and social demands facing the post-Revolutionary Republic in its formative years.
Author: Thomas E. Ricks
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062997475
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 266
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Book Description
New York Times Bestseller Editors' Choice —New York Times Book Review "Ricks knocks it out of the park with this jewel of a book. On every page I learned something new. Read it every night if you want to restore your faith in our country." —James Mattis, General, U.S. Marines (ret.) & 26th Secretary of Defense The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and #1 New York Times bestselling author offers a revelatory new book about the founding fathers, examining their educations and, in particular, their devotion to the ancient Greek and Roman classics—and how that influence would shape their ideals and the new American nation. On the morning after the 2016 presidential election, Thomas Ricks awoke with a few questions on his mind: What kind of nation did we now have? Is it what was designed or intended by the nation’s founders? Trying to get as close to the source as he could, Ricks decided to go back and read the philosophy and literature that shaped the founders’ thinking, and the letters they wrote to each other debating these crucial works—among them the Iliad, Plutarch’s Lives, and the works of Xenophon, Epicurus, Aristotle, Cato, and Cicero. For though much attention has been paid the influence of English political philosophers, like John Locke, closer to their own era, the founders were far more immersed in the literature of the ancient world. The first four American presidents came to their classical knowledge differently. Washington absorbed it mainly from the elite culture of his day; Adams from the laws and rhetoric of Rome; Jefferson immersed himself in classical philosophy, especially Epicureanism; and Madison, both a groundbreaking researcher and a deft politician, spent years studying the ancient world like a political scientist. Each of their experiences, and distinctive learning, played an essential role in the formation of the United States. In examining how and what they studied, looking at them in the unusual light of the classical world, Ricks is able to draw arresting and fresh portraits of men we thought we knew. First Principles follows these four members of the Revolutionary generation from their youths to their adult lives, as they grappled with questions of independence, and forming and keeping a new nation. In doing so, Ricks interprets not only the effect of the ancient world on each man, and how that shaped our constitution and government, but offers startling new insights into these legendary leaders.
Author: Garry Wills
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0385542836
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 440
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Book Description
From one of America's foremost historians, Inventing America compares Thomas Jefferson's original draft of the Declaration of Independence with the final, accepted version, thereby challenging many long-cherished assumptions about both the man and the document. Although Jefferson has long been idealized as a champion of individual rights, Wills argues that in fact his vision was one in which interdependence, not self-interest, lay at the foundation of society. "No one has offered so drastic a revision or so close or convincing an analysis as Wills has . . . The results are little short of astonishing" —(Edmund S. Morgan, New York Review of Books)
Author: Kevin J. Hayes
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199758484
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 750
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Book Description
Thomas Jefferson was an avid book-collector, a voracious reader, and a gifted writer--a man who prided himself on his knowledge of classical and modern languages and whose marginal annotations include quotations from Euripides, Herodotus, and Milton. And yet there has never been a literary life of our most literary president. In The Road to Monticello, Kevin J. Hayes fills this important gap by offering a lively account of Jefferson's spiritual and intellectual development, focusing on the books and ideas that exerted the most profound influence on him. Moving chronologically through Jefferson's life, Hayes reveals the full range and depth of Jefferson's literary passions, from the popular "small books" sold by traveling chapmen, such as The History of Tom Thumb, which enthralled him as a child; to his lifelong love of Aesop's Fables and Robinson Crusoe; his engagement with Horace, Ovid, Virgil and other writers of classical antiquity; and his deep affinity with the melancholy verse of Ossian, the legendary third-century Gaelic warrior-poet. Drawing on Jefferson's letters, journals, and commonplace books, Hayes offers a wealth of new scholarship on the print culture of colonial America, reveals an intimate portrait of Jefferson's activities beyond the political chamber, and reconstructs the president's investigations in such different fields of knowledge as law, history, philosophy and natural science. Most importantly, Hayes uncovers the ideas and exchanges which informed the thinking of America's first great intellectual and shows how his lifelong pursuit of knowledge culminated in the formation of a public offering, the "academic village" which became UVA, and his more private retreat at Monticello. Gracefully written and painstakingly researched, The Road to Monticello provides an invaluable look at Jefferson's intellectual and literary life, uncovering the roots of some of the most important--and influential--ideas that have informed American history.
Author: Joseph J. Ellis
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0375727469
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 463
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Book Description
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER Following Thomas Jefferson from the drafting of the Declaration of Independence to his retirement in Monticello, Joseph J. Ellis unravels the contradictions of the Jeffersonian character. He gives us the slaveholding libertarian who was capable of decrying mescegenation while maintaing an intimate relationship with his slave, Sally Hemmings; the enemy of government power who exercisdd it audaciously as president; the visionarty who remained curiously blind to the inconsistencies in his nature. American Sphinx is a marvel of scholarship, a delight to read, and an essential gloss on the Jeffersonian legacy.
Author: Kevin R. C. Gutzman
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1250010802
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 305
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Book Description
"In this lively and clearly written book, Kevin Gutzman makes a compelling case for the broad range and radical ambitions of Thomas Jefferson's commitment to human equality." - Alan Taylor, Pulitzer Prize winning author of American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750-1804 Though remembered chiefly as author of the Declaration of Independence and the president under whom the Louisiana Purchase was effected, Thomas Jefferson was a true revolutionary in the way he thought about the size and reach of government, which Americans who were full citizens and the role of education in the new country. In his new book, Kevin Gutzman gives readers a new view of Jefferson—a revolutionary who effected radical change in a growing country. Jefferson’s philosophy about the size and power of the federal system almost completely undergirded the Jeffersonian Republican Party. His forceful advocacy of religious freedom was not far behind, as were attempts to incorporate Native Americans into American society. His establishment of the University of Virginia might be one of the most important markers of the man’s abilities and character. He was not without flaws. While he argued for the assimilation of Native Americans into society, he did not assume the same for Africans being held in slavery while—at the same time—insisting that slavery should cease to exist. Many still accuse Jefferson of hypocrisy on the ground that he both held that “all men are created equal” and held men as slaves. Jefferson’s true character, though, is more complex than that as Kevin Gutzman shows in his new book about Jefferson, a revolutionary whose accomplishments went far beyond the drafting of the Declaration of Independence.
Author: William Howard Adams
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300082616
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 368
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Book Description
An illustrated study brings to life the atmosphere and personalities of pre-revolutionary Paris, traces their influence on the American envoy, and recounts his participation in the life of the city and its intrigues at court. UP.
Author: Brian P. Janiskee
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442201347
Category : Democracy
Languages : en
Pages : 200
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Book Description
In Local Government in Early America, Brian P. Janiskee examines the origins of the "town hall meeting" and other iconic political institutions, whose origins lie in our colonial heritage. This work offers an overview of the structure of local politics in the colonial era, a detailed examination of the thoughts of key founders--such as John Adams and Thomas Jefferson--on local politics, and some thoughts on the continued role of local institutions as vital elements of the American political system.
Author: Jon Meacham
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN: 0812979486
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 802
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Book Description
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer Jon Meacham, “a big, grand, absorbing exploration of not just Jefferson and his role in history but also Jefferson the man, humanized as never before” (Entertainment Weekly) “Probably the best single-volume biography of Jefferson ever written.”—Gordon S. Wood A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly, The Seattle Times, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, BookPage This magnificent biography brings vividly to life an extraordinary man and his remarkable times, giving us Thomas Jefferson the man, the politician, and the president. A Founder whose understanding of power and of human nature enabled him to move men and marshal ideas, to learn from his mistakes and to prevail, Jefferson was passionate about many things—women, his family, science, architecture, gardening, Monticello, Paris, and more. He strove, despite fierce opposition, to realize his vision: the creation, survival, and success of popular government in America. Drawing on archives in the United States, England, and France, as well as unpublished transcripts of Jefferson presidential papers, Jon Meacham shows us the personal Jefferson, a man of appetite, sensuality, and passion. He also presents Jefferson as the most successful political leader of the early republic, and perhaps in all American history, a leader who found the means to endure and to win. His story resonates today not least because he led his nation through ferocious partisanship amid economic change and external threats. Jefferson also embodies an eternal drama, the struggle of the leadership of a nation to achieve greatness in a difficult and confounding world.
