Thomas Jefferson: Draftsman of a Nation

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University of Virginia Press, 2008 - 360 ページ

Praise for Natalie Bober's previous work:

"Natalie Bober's Thomas Jefferson is a gift to us all. She makes him present, alive, and accessible: a man of intellect, feeling, grief, purpose, and great imagination."--Ken Burns, documentary producer

"Natalie Bober has provided what is probably the most thorough and intellectually sophisticated narrative that any young adult] book on the Revolution has ever attempted." --Joseph J. Ellis, author of American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson

"Even readers raised on political cynicism will come away from this feeling stirred by this powerful, exciting story of their government's birth."--Booklist *Starred*

To many Americans, Thomas Jefferson is the architect of our freedom. And yet the author of the Declaration of Independence also participated in a society that depended on slavery, and was himself the owner of slaves. How are we to reconcile this contradiction? This new life of Jefferson by Natalie S. Bober does not evade this difficult question.

From the first page, we are taken into Jefferson's world, to help us understand what it meant to be a man of his time. He stands before us as a shy, freckle-faced, and, for the eighteenth century, unusually tall young man. We follow him through a life in which he gave words to American independence, journeyed to France as ambassador, and triumphed in a bitter campaign not unlike our recent presidential elections. He served two terms in the White House, but the achievements most important to him were as the author of the Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and as architect and founder of the University of Virginia, which stands today as a living monument to his belief in the importance to a democracy of higher education open to everyone. His belief in the "illimitable freedom of the human mind" speaks to us even today. Thomas Jefferson taught us the power of the word. He showed us that words beautifully shaped can reshape lives. The Jefferson revealed here is distinguished by his often contradictory nature but also by his optimism, his curiosity, and his exceptional sense of his own place in history.

Like Bober's earlier books on Abigail Adams and the American Revolution, Thomas Jefferson: Draftsman of a Nation will appeal to students of history of all ages. This book faces the fact that Jefferson was a flawed human being--yet insists that this does not disqualify him as a hero.

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目次

Bold in the Pursuit of Knowledge
3
All Men Are Born Free
9
392
19
Young HotHeads
69
A Masterly
78
An Expression of the American Mind
90
A Revolutionary Document
101
Legal Reform in Virginia
118
Conflict in the Cabinet
211
Our Own Dear Monticello
219
We Are All Republicans We Are
241
Architect of American Expansion
253
Octagonal Retreat
269
The Venerable Corps of Grandfathers
276
Thomas Jefferson Still Survives
293
Authors Note
305

A New Door Opens
153
Dialogue between the Head and the Heart
174
Changing the Shape of His Country
187
Crusade against Ignorance
196
Notes
313
Religious Liberty
321
Bibliography
333
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著者について (2008)

Author, historian, and educator Natalie S. Bober, best known for her biographies of poets, artists, and figures of early American history, died on December 29, 2022. She was 92. Bober was born Natalie Birnbaum on December 27, 1930 in New York City, the daughter of Samuel, who worked in real estate, and Dolly, an editor, researcher, and indexer. Bober was attending Hunter College when she married Lawrence Bober, a banker, in 1950. She continued her studies, receiving her B.A. from Hunter in 1951, and later earned a M.S. from Hofstra University in 1966. Her works include Thomas Jefferson: Man on a Mountain (Atheneum, 1988) which garnered critical praise. She also wrote another historical biography: Abigail Adams: Witness to a Revolution (Atheneum, 1995). That title was named the winner of the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Nonfiction and also won SCBWI¿s Golden Kite Award. In all, she published 11 books for young readers.

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