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Scandalmonger

A Novel

by William Safire

ISBN: 0156013231
ISBN-13: 9780156013239
Format: Paperback

Summary

New York Times political columnist William Safire offers an historical fiction about scoundrels, scandal, and the dawn of celebrity in late 18th century America. John Adams is president; Thomas Jefferson is vice president; and Alexander Hamilton is treasury secretary. At the epicenter of this federal triumvirate is the muckraking journalist James Thomson Callender, known by many in the capitol as "the scandalmonger" for his uncovering of the secret lives of politicians. Though loathed by modern historians for his attempts at ruining the careers of two of the greatest Americans of his day by revealing Jefferson's affair with Sally Hemings and Hamilton's relationship with Maria Reynolds, Safire here paints a tragic and pathetic portrait of a man ruled by his hunger for acceptance in an age of great men and noble statesmen. A New York Times Notable Book for the year 2000.

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Media Reviews

"Safire has great fun with all this and tells his story well." -- Benson Bobrick

-- New York Times

Bibliographic Details

Publisher: Harcourt
Published date: 2001
Edition: 1th edition
Size: 6 x 8.75 inches
Weight: 1.4 pounds
Pages: 496

Publisher's Notes

The bestselling historical novel that exposes the less than honorable side of our Founding Fathers by the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist. In this gripping and timely work, William Safire unveils the story behind the nation's first great political scandals. James Thomson Callender, the "scandalmonger" of the title, is an ambitious gossip-peddling editor secretly hired by Thomas Jefferson as a political weapon. After carefully damaging Alexander Hamilton's reputation, thereby paving the way for Jefferson's success, Callender is shunned by the very politicians on whose behalf he was jailed for sedition. Broke and betrayed, Callender seeks revenge by exposing an illicit affair between Jefferson and his slave Sally Hemmings, an accusation that ultimately cost Callender his career and would not be authenticated for two centuries. By using actual letters, records, and notes to re-create dialogue and events, Scandalmonger embodies historical fiction at its best, politics at its most intriguing, and our Founding Fathers at their most notorious. For those who think that Washington sex scandals and lurid journalism are recent developments, this novel will be a revelation, for Safire shows how media intrusiveness into private lives-and politicians' cool manipulation of the press-are practices as old as the Constitution.

Other Editions

Hardcover - Simon & Schuster (2000) - from $1.00
Paperback Reprint - Harcourt (2001) - from $1.00

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