Full name: Jefferson and Monticello: The Biography of a Builder

Author: Jack McLaughlin Year: 1988 Rank: Rating: Original Rating: Pop Rating: Genres/categories: Biographies, History, Non Fiction Purchase/reserch links: LibraryThing Goodreads Amazon ISBNs: 9780805014631 0805014632

This book, a National Book Award nominee in 1988, is the life of Thomas Jefferson as seen through the prism of his love affair with Monticello. For over half a century, it was his consuming passion, his most serious amusement. With a sure command of sources and skilled intuitive understanding of Jefferson, McLaughlin crafts and uncommon portrait of builder and building alike. En route he tells us much about life in Virginia; about Monticello's craftsmen and how they worked their materials; about slavery, class, and family; and, above all, about the multiplicity of domestic concerns that preoccupied this complex man. It is and engaging and incisive look at the eighteenth-century mind: systematic, rational, and curious, but also playful, comfort-loving, and amusing. Ultimately, it provides readers with great insight into daily life in Colonial and Federal America. Similar books: The Inner Jefferson by Andrew Burstein Understanding Thomas Jefferson by E. M. Halliday Jefferson the President by Dumas Malone The Lost World of Thomas Jefferson by Daniel J. Boorstin Jefferson the Virginian by Dumas Malone Thomas Jefferson by Fawn M. Brodie The Great Little Madison by Jean Fritz Thomas Jefferson by Willard Sterne Randall Twilight at Monticello by Alan Pell Crawford The Wright Brothers by David McCullough Empire of the Summer Moon by S. C. Gwynne The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester America's First Dynasty by Richard Brookhiser Mobituaries by Mo Rocca Gandhi by Mahatma Gandhi The Life of Elizabeth I by Alison Weir The Meaning of Everything by Simon Winchester Crazy Horse and Custer by Stephen E. Ambrose Caesar by Adrian Goldsworthy Walt Disney by B. G. Thomas