"Shackelford captures Jefferson's intellectual vitality, his cultured interests, and the esteem in which he was held by so many who came into contact with him... [His] splendid account of Jefferson abroad captures what he was truly about." -- "Times Literary Supplement" "An intimate and richly detailed description of Jefferson's encounters with European culture... Shackelford's contribution to the study of Jefferson's intellect is as attractive as it is substantive in contributing to our understanding of Jefferson's intellect and the forces that shaped it."" -- Georgia Historical Quarterly" "This is a beautiful book: graceful in prose and rich in illustrations." -- "Journal of American History" During his time as minister to the court of Louis XVI, from 1784 to 1789, Thomas Jefferson became not only a friend of France but also the champion of European culture in the United States. Because the man who was to become America's third president learned so much from his five years abroad -- about the fine arts of architecture and painting and about the practical arts of agriculture, bureaucracy, and commerce -- his stay in Europe remains one of the most important of any American before or since. Illustrated with more than sixty images of the actual places the future president visited and described -- including both contemporary works and new photographs -- "Jefferson's Travels in Europe" is the first book to describe and explore the significance of Jefferson's European journey, detailing the sights he visited, the people he met, and the events he attended. Based on extensive research into Jefferson's account books and correspondence, as well as the experiences of other travelers ofthe day, George Green Shackelford connects Jefferson's journeys in France, England, Italy, the Netherlands, and the German Rhineland to his intellectual and aesthetic development. "Immaculately researched, thoughtful, and persuasive... A valuable, handsomely produced book." -- "Journal of the Early Republic" "An engaging account of important cultural landmarks in late eighteenth-century Europe and... a useful contribution to the literature on Thomas Jefferson, providing an insight into the private man and his wide circle of friends in Europe. It reminds us again of the vitality and comprehensiveness of Jefferson's interests." -- "Journal of Southern History" "A meticulously researched and presented work that increases our knowledge of this period of Jefferson's life." -- "William and Mary Quarterly" [original long copy]"While Americans generally still consider Thomas Jefferson to be a veritable Apostle of Americanism, it was his foreign residence and travels that made him America's most sophisticated national leader. To understand how Thomas Jefferson completed his metamorphosis from a talented provincial, it is necessary to reconstitute what he saw on his European journeys, to describe where he lived in Europe, and to speak of how his European friends influenced him."--George Green Shackelford, in "Thomas Jefferson's Travels in Europe." During his time as minister to the court of Louis XVI, from 1784 to 1789, Thomas Jefferson became not only a friend of France but also the champion of European culture in the United States. Because the man who was to become America's third president learned so much from his five years abroad--about the fine arts of architecture and paintingand about the practical arts of agriculture, bureaucracy, and commerce--his stay in Europe remains one of the most important of any American before or since. In the first book to describe and explore the significance of Jefferson's European journey, George Green Shackelford offers the reader an intimate and richly detailed account of what Jefferson saw and how he saw it. In the process, he assesses the influence on Jefferson of such figures as the architect Charles Louis Clrisseau and the artist Maria Cosway. Illustrated with more than sixty images of the actual places Jefferson visited and described--including both contemporary works and new photographs-- "Jefferson's Travels in Europe" shows how Jefferson's journeys in France, England, Italy, the Netherlands, and the German Rhineland shaped his intellectual and aesthetic development. Coaxing meaning out of Jefferson's account books and correspondence, and the parallel experiences of other travelers of the day, Shackelford has created a unique document, one that bears "a general resemblance to the book that Thomas Jefferson never wrote, his Notes on Europe."

The first-ever collection of Thomas Jefferson's entire body of travel writing showcases his wide-ranging interests and eloquent observations recorded on journeys throughout the eastern United States and Europe, spanning from 1765 to 1826.

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.

Jefferson’s years in France as minister plenipotentiary were a time of large edification. He approached his ministry as a “looker on”: Jefferson, while in France, always kept a critical distance from events, so that he could measure and critically examine them from the perspective of a dispassionate natural philosopher. Being dispassionate, Jefferson was pulled into events only insofar as circumstances required him to do so. Yet his “adventures” from his critical distance (e.g., his trip to London to meet the king, his ventures in the salons of Paris, and his travels through Southern France, Northern Italy, the Rhineland, and the Netherlands) were many, and varied. He even, at times, lost his critical, looker-on perspective from distance as he allowed himself to become immersed in events, as in the case of his relationship with lovely Italian artist and musician Maria Cosway.... > This book is a portal into the mind of Thomas Jefferson, as looker-on, during his tenure in Paris. Why was Jefferson so eager to accept the ministry to Paris? What was his impression of the great city and its people while he stayed? What lessons, while in Paris, did he learn which he could transport to Virginia and his country? Those and other questions Holowchak aims to answer in this book.

This Companion forms an accessible introduction to the life and work of Thomas Jefferson, third President of the United States and author of the Declaration of Independence. Essays explore Jefferson's political thought, his policies towards Native Americans, his attitude to race and slavery, as well as his interests in science, architecture, religion and education. Contributors include leading literary scholars and historians; the essays offer up to date overviews of his many interests, his friendships and his legacy. Together, they reveal his importance in the cultural and political life of early America. At the same time these original essays speak to abiding modern concerns about American culture and Jefferson's place in it. This Companion will be essential reading for students and scholars of Jefferson, and is designed for use by students of American literature and American history.

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

Beginning with the famous opening to the Declaration of Independence ("When in the course of human events..."), almost all of Thomas Jefferson’s writings include creative, stylistically and philosophically complex references to time and history. Although best known for his "forward-looking" statements envisioning future progress, Jefferson was in fact deeply concerned with the problem of coming to terms with the impending loss or fragmentation of the past. As Hannah Spahn shows in Thomas Jefferson, Time, and History, his efforts to promote an exceptionalist interpretation of the United States as the first nation to escape from the "crimes and calamities" of European history were complicated both by his doubts about the outcome of the American experiment and by his skepticism about the methods and morals of eighteenth-century philosophical history. Spahn approaches the conundrum of Jefferson’s Janus-faced, equally forward- and backward-oriented thought by discussing it less as a matter of personal contradiction and paradox than as the expression of a late Newtonian Enlightenment, in a period between ancient and modern modes of explaining change in time. She follows Jefferson in his creation of an influential narrative of American and global history over the course of half a century, opening avenues into a temporal and historical imagination that was different from ours, and offering new assessments of the solutions Jefferson and his generation found (or failed to find) to central moral and political problems like slavery.

Thomas Jefferson designed his own tombstone, describing himself simply as "Author of the Declaration of Independence and of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, and Father of the University of Virginia." It is in this simple epitaph that R.B. Bernstein finds the key to this enigmatic Founder--not as a great political figure, but as leader of "a revolution of ideas that would make the world over again." In Thomas Jefferson, Bernstein offers the definitive short biography of this revered American--the first concise life in six decades. Bernstein deftly synthesizes the massive scholarship on his subject into a swift, insightful, evenhanded account. Here are all of Jefferson's triumphs, contradictions, and failings, from his luxurious (and debt-burdened) life as a Virginia gentleman to his passionate belief in democracy, from his tortured defense of slavery to his relationship with Sally Hemings. Jefferson was indeed multifaceted--an architect, inventor, writer, diplomat, propagandist, planter, party leader--and Bernstein explores all these roles even as he illuminates Jefferson's central place in the American enlightenment, that "revolution of ideas" that did so much to create the nation we know today. Together with the less well-remembered points in Jefferson's thinking--the nature of the Union, his vision of who was entitled to citizenship, his dread of debt (both personal and national)--they form the heart of this lively biography. In this marvel of compression and comprehension, we see Jefferson more clearly than in the massive studies of earlier generations. More important, we see, in Jefferson's visionary ideas, the birth of the nation's grand sense of purpose.

In 1787, Thomas Jefferson, then the American Minister to France, had the "complete skeleton, skin & horns" of an American moose shipped to him in Paris and mounted in the lobby of his residence as a symbol of the vast possibilities contained in the strange and largely unexplored New World. Taking a cue from Jefferson's efforts, David Post, one of the nation's leading Internet scholars, here presents a pithy, colorful exploration of the still mostly undiscovered territory of cyberspace--what it is, how it works, and how it should be governed. What law should the Internet have, and who should make it? What are we to do, and how are we to think, about online filesharing and copyright law, about Internet pornography and free speech, about controlling spam, and online gambling, and cyberterrorism, and the use of anonymous remailers, or the practice of telemedicine, or the online collection and dissemination of personal information? How can they be controlled? Should they be controlled? And by whom? Post presents the Jeffersonian ideal--small self-governing units, loosely linked together as peers in groups of larger and larger size--as a model for the Internet and for cyberspace community self-governance. Deftly drawing on Jefferson's writings on the New World in Notes on the State of Virginia, Post draws out the many similarities (and differences) between the two terrains, vividly describing how the Internet actually functions from a technological, legal, and social perspective as he uniquely applies Jefferson's views on natural history, law, and governance in the New World to illuminate the complexities of cyberspace. In Search of Jefferson's Moose is a lively, accessible, and remarkably original overview of the Internet and what it holds for the future.

Not every presidential visit to the theatre is as famous as Lincoln's last night at Ford's, but American presidents attended the theatre long before and long after that ill-fated night. In 1751, George Washington saw his first play, The London Merchant, during a visit to Barbados. John Quincy Adams published dramatic critiques. William McKinley avoided the theatre while in office, on professional as well as moral grounds. Richard Nixon met his wife at a community theatre audition. Surveying 255 years, this volume examines presidential theatre-going as it has reflected shifting popular tastes in America.