Jefferson's Secrets: Death And Desire In Monticello Summary and Reviews

Jefferson's Secrets: Death And Desire In Monticello
by Andrew Burstein

Jefferson's Secrets: Death And Desire In Monticello
List Price: $25.00
Our Price: $4.53
You Save: $20.47 (82%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $4.17 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions


or

Book Summary Information

Author: Andrew Burstein
Edition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Published)
Format: Bargain Price
Published: 2005-02-12
ISBN: N/A
Number of pages: 351
Publisher: Basic Books

Book Reviews of Jefferson's Secrets: Death And Desire In Monticello

Book Review: Having It Both Ways
Summary: 3 Stars

The good stuff in this book is invaluable to anyone with a serious interest in Jefferson. I'd award five stars for such unique scholarship, but I've subtracted two stars as a rebuke to the author and to his editors, if there were any, for perverse self-indulgence. The readability of "Jefferson's Secrets" is damaged by its repetitiousness; Burstein even repeats the same quotations from Jefferson's letters in three and four chapters, without significantly adding to his exegesis. But a more serious flaw is Burstein's rhapsodic admiration of Jefferson's mind at the same time that he protrays the man as a consummate hypocrite and egotist--not only a slave-owner and unreconstructed racist but an exploiter of servants to the point of callously making one his concubine, a Jacobin in rhetoric who lived in the style of an ancien regime aristocrat, a man who gave his daughters a decorous education yet maintained that women had no claim to equality. Burstein's defense seems to be that we should forgive Jefferson's inconsistencies because he was conflicted, and a man of his times. Indeed, the central theme of the book is to demonstrate exactly how Jefferson was a man of his times, whose world-view was shaped by the ideas and particularly the scientific knowledge of the Enlightenment. That's the good stuff, the analysis of what Jefferson himself thought he meant by what he said and wrote, given the "vocabulary" of his time and place. However, in the next breath Burstein proceeds to declare that Jefferson was in some sense the first Modern Man, a harbinger of Romanticism precisely because of his ambiguities, the very same ambiguities that Burstein has just dispelled. Really, Professor Burstein, it seems to be YOU who are conflicted, by your adulation of the "timeless" Jefferson even while you pin the human Jefferson to the cultural matrix of his lifetime!

Biographies & Memoirs Books

Book Subjects
Most talked about in Biographies & Memoirs Books
Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance ImageDreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance
by Barack Obama
Crown; Published: 2007-01-09; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $15.53
Price in other shops: $25.95
Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia ImageEat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia
by Elizabeth Gilbert
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 2007-01-30; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.00
Price in other shops: $15.00
The Wordy Shipmates ImageThe Wordy Shipmates
by Sarah Vowell
Riverhead Hardcover; Published: 2008-10-07; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $14.97
Price in other shops: $25.95
Letter to My Daughter ImageLetter to My Daughter
by Maya Angelou
Random House; Published: 2008-09-23; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $13.09
Price in other shops: $25.00
The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream (Vintage) ImageThe Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream (Vintage)
by Barack Obama
Vintage; Published: 2008-07-15; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.04
Price in other shops: $7.99
Here's the Story: Surviving Marcia Brady and Finding My True Voice ImageHere's the Story: Surviving Marcia Brady and Finding My True Voice
by Maureen Mccormick
William Morrow; Published: 2008-10-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $13.78
Price in other shops: $25.95
A Bold Fresh Piece of Humanity ImageA Bold Fresh Piece of Humanity
by Bill O'Reilly
Broadway; Published: 2008-09-23; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $14.67
Price in other shops: $26.00
Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World ImageDewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World
by Vicki Myron
Grand Central Publishing; Published: 2008-09-24; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $10.89
Price in other shops: $19.99
Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time ImageThree Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time
by Greg Mortenson, David Oliver Relin
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 2007-01-30; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.25
Price in other shops: $15.00
The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life ImageThe Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life
by Alice Schroeder
Bantam; Published: 2008-09-29; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $19.25
Price in other shops: $35.00
Similar books summaries and other product reviews
Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History ImageThomas Jefferson: An Intimate History
by Fawn McKay Brodie
W. W. Norton & Company; Published: 1998-04; Paperback; Book
Best price: $11.00
Price in other shops: $18.95
Thomas Jefferson ImageThomas Jefferson
by R. B. Bernstein
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 2005-09-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.01
Price in other shops: $15.95
American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson ImageAmerican Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson
by Joseph J. Ellis
Vintage; Published: 1998-04-07; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.97
Price in other shops: $15.95
Dining at Monticello: In Good Taste and Abundance ImageDining at Monticello: In Good Taste and Abundance
The University of North Carolina Press; Published: 2005-05-30; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $23.10
Price in other shops: $35.00
Twilight at Monticello: The Final Years of Thomas Jefferson ImageTwilight at Monticello: The Final Years of Thomas Jefferson
by Alan Pell Crawford
Random House; Published: 2008-01-08; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $12.97
Price in other shops: $27.00
Alexander Hamilton ImageAlexander Hamilton
by Ron Chernow
Penguin Press; Published: 2004-04-26; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $5.65
Price in other shops: $35.00
Sally Hemings & Thomas Jefferson: History, Memory, and Civic Culture (Jeffersonian America) ImageSally Hemings & Thomas Jefferson: History, Memory, and Civic Culture (Jeffersonian America)
University of Virginia Press; Published: 1999-11; Paperback; Book
Best price: $16.21
Price in other shops: $21.50
Jefferson's Children: The Story of One American Family ImageJefferson's Children: The Story of One American Family
by Shannon Lanier
Random House Books for Young Readers; Published: 2000-09-05; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $6.03
Price in other shops: $19.95
Sally Hemings: An American Scandal ImageSally Hemings: An American Scandal
NEILL,SAM; Release date: 2005-02-08; DVD
Best price: $3.42
Price in other shops: $6.99
Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy ImageThomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy
by Annette Gordon-Reed
University of Virginia Press; Published: 1998-04; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.98
Price in other shops: $17.95