W. W. Norton
October 2008
On Sale: September 29, 2008
800 pages ISBN: 0393064778 EAN: 9780393064773 Kindle: B001FA0ONM Hardcover / e-Book Add to Wish List
"Pathbreaking....and very moving" (Edmund S. Morgan)—the multigenerational story of Thomas Jefferson's hidden slave family. This epic work tells the story of the Hemingses, whose close blood ties to our third president had been systematically expunged from American history until very recently. Now, historian and legal scholar Annette Gordon- Reed traces the Hemings family from its origins in Virginia in the 1700s to the family's dispersal after Jefferson's death in 1826. It brings to life not only Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson but also their children and Hemings's siblings, who shared a father with Jefferson's wife, Martha. The Hemingses of Monticello sets the family's compelling saga against the backdrop of Revolutionary America, Paris on the eve of its own revolution, 1790s Philadelphia, and plantation life at Monticello. Much anticipated, this book promises to be the most important history of an American slave family ever written. Advance Praise for Annette Gordon-Reed's The Hemingses of Monticello: "Annette Gordon-Reed has broken a path into territory that has hitherto eluded historians: what happens to intimate human relations, those between lover and loved, parent and child, brother and sister, when one among them is enslaved to another. In a richly detailed narrative of events, public and private, she reconstructs the feelings of the participants: Thomas Jefferson, his slave mistress, and her blood relatives. The result is not simply a fascinating story in itself, but a new perspective on how the humanity of slaves and a slave owner could adjust and survive in circumstances designed to obliterate it. We have had other studies of master-slave relationships, but none that has penetrated to the depth of this one."—Edmund S. Morgan, author of American Slavery "Thomas Jefferson often described his slaves at Monticello as 'my family.' Annette Gordon-Reed has taken that description seriously. Surely more seriously than Jefferson ever intended! The result, the story of the Hemings family, is the most comprehensive account of one slave family ever written. It is not a pretty story, but it is poignant beyond belief. And it demonstrates conclusively that we must put aside Gone With the Wind forever and begin to study Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom."—Joseph J. Ellis, author of American Sphinx "This is not only a riveting history of a slave family on a grand scale, it is also a rarely seen portrait of the family in the Big House, with a remarkable account of the relationship of white and black families. This work catapults Gordon-Reed into the very first rank of historians of slavery."—John Hope Franklin, author of From Slavery to Freedom "Jefferson's Monticello is a great American icon. But this book allows us to see the place as never before—as the Hemingses' Monticello. And when Jefferson is in Paris, so are James and Sally Hemings. From years of painstaking research and deep personal engagement with all the Jefferson controversies, Annette Gordon-Reed has crafted a brave, compelling, and moving family saga about slavery and freedom. This is a thoroughly human story about an inhuman institution, told from the inside looking out. Jefferson owned the Hemingses and fathered some of them as he tried to scientifically manage their lives and labor in minute detail; Gordon-Reed never lets us forget that. But more importantly, this work is a beautifully written, textured story about race, tragedy, and sometimes hope—America's story. If this country has a modern Shakespeare looking for material, Gordon-Reed has provided it."—David W. Blight, author of A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Narratives of Emancipation "Annette Gordon-Reed is a prodigiously gifted historian and The Hemingses of Monticello is her masterpiece. Bringing the Hemings family out of the shadows and into vibrant life, Gordon-Reed restores them to their proper role at Thomas Jefferson's mountaintop home. As she reconstructs the lives and times of Elizabeth Hemings, her children, among them, James and Sally, and many, many other family members, Gordon-Reed illuminates the history of slavery and race in the Old Dominion. Jefferson's Virginia—and Jefferson himself—will never look the same again."—Peter Onuf, author of Jefferson's Empire: The Language of American Nationhood and The Mind of Thomas Jefferson "Annette Gordon-Reed's splendid achievement will have the last word on Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, for one cannot imagine another historian matching her exhaustive research and interpretive balance."—David Levering-Lewis, author of W. E. B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century
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