Most Blessed of the Patriarchs: Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imagination

New York and London: Liveright Publishing Corporation; W. W. Norton & Company, 2016. xxv, 370 pages, illustrations, maps; 25 cm. Tight, clean copy. Stated First Edition. Dust jacket protected in a mylar cover. A fine copy of the first printing. "Thomas Jefferson is often portrayed as a hopelessly enigmatic figure -- a riddle -- a man so riven with contradictions that he is almost impossible to know. Lauded as the most articulate voice of American freedom and equality, even as he held people -- including his own family -- in bondage, Jefferson is variably described as a hypocrite, an atheist, or a simple-minded proponent of limited government who expected all Americans to be farmers forever. Now, Annette Gordon-Reed teams up with America's leading Jefferson scholar, Peter S. Onuf, to present a character study that dispels the many cliche´s that have accrued over the years about our third president. Challenging the widely prevalent belief that Jefferson remains so opaque as to be unknowable, the authors create a portrait of Jefferson, as he might have painted himself, one 'comprised of equal parts sun and shadow.' Tracing Jefferson's philosophical development from youth to old age, the authors explore what they call the 'empire' of Jefferson's imagination -- an expansive state of mind born of his origins in a slave society, his intellectual influences, and the vaulting ambition that propelled him into public life as a modern avatar of the Enlightenment who, at the same time, likened himself to a figure of old -- 'the most blessed of the patriarchs.' Indeed, Jefferson saw himself as a 'patriarch,' not just to his country and mountain-like home at Monticello but also to his family, the white half that he loved so publicly, as well as to the black side that he claimed to love, a contradiction of extraordinary historical magnitude." - Publisher.. 1st. Hardcover. Fine/Fine. 8vo. Collectible.