This is pretty sad really. I started out as a believer in the Woodson story and Woodson has obviously done a lot of research on his family history. Certainly, there are many distinguished people in Woodson's family...sadly, Thomas Jefferson has been pretty definitely proven by DNA (no match after testing 6 Woodson lines!) not to be one of them! Since Woodson was the Hemings child with the strongest "oral history"/family lore--the fact that there was no link to Jefferson really calls into question the whole story since obviously Sally got pregnant by somebody else in Paris. And the allegations started about a "Black Tom"....Still and all, with irrefutable evidence that someone in Woodson's family lied to create a link that science has proven doesn't exist, Woodson still can't give it up, claiming the 'no match" was the result of illegitimacy later in the line...which Woodson still doesn't seem to get would still mean he is not related to the Great Man. Bottom line: Don't waste your money.

The existence of 'Black Tom' is highly questionable, though Woodson is quite right about the erasure in Jefferson's records, I've seen it too in a holograph edition of his Farm Book.
Unfortunately for Mr. Woodson's thesis 'Tom's' name should certainly have appeared more than once. His 'mother' and 'brothers and sister' are listed not only on Jefferson's Slave Census but in distributions of rations and clothing as well. 'Black Tom' supposedly lived at Monticello till 1802, his name most certainly should have appeared in those records just as the rest of the Hemmings family's names did.
However the even if the existence of 'Black Tom' were proven it would do the Woodsons no good. The famous DNA tests that proved the Eston Jeffersons are indeed descended from *A* Jefferson male, (possibly Thomas but his brother or nephew is equally probable) also proved that though Thomas Woodson was undoubtedly sired by a white man that man was *not* a Jefferson.
The Woodson family has chosen to ignore this incontrovertable scientific evidence and cling to their family myth. Frankly I find it pitiable that this extraordinarily accomplished and successful family should be so fixated on a fictitious illegitimate descent from a Founding Father. The achievements of generations of Woodsons, against unbelievable odds, is in itself a heritage to be proud of, they don't need Jefferson's blood to validate their role in American history.

As a "roots" like story of a family's rise from slavery to the present day, this book is a pleasant read. However, for elucidating any ties to Thomas Jefferson, it is a tremendous disappointment. Having been greatly impressed by the poise, strength of character, and intelligence of Robert Cooley, the father one of the authors, I always hoped that his boast of being decended from Thomas Jefferson was true. However, the historic record left me in doubt. I bought "A President in the Family" with hopes that reading the Woodson family story would dispel some of that doubt, providing substance to the strong oral history. Sadly, I have been left hanging.

This book was not what I was looking for. My teacher assigned us a Biography/Autobiography book report (like every month), and I checked this book out in the library. Yeah, maybe its ok for 4-8 year olds, this book is really boring for children like me. This book had stuff I already knew about, and I didn't learn anything. It was really boring and had no interesting facts. So, if you are looking for a book with a detailed scope about Thomas Jefferson, read another book.

This is a great book for older remedial students as well as grades 1-4. The primary facts are here with some illustrations. The text is simple and easily understood.

There are good books and bad books about the Revolution. This one is terrible. O'Brien goes on for 200 pages about Jefferson's support of the French Revolution (so what else is new?) before getting to his real point: Jefferson was a white supremacist because he didn't free his slaves and didn't support the revolution in Haiti. In O'Brien's drunken fantasy, there is something called the "American civil religion" which is going to split and Jefferson will become the patron saint of the white supremacist nutcases like those of Oklahoma City. (there, there, Con, put the bottle down and come to bed) It's a shame, because I recall that years ago O'Brien played a worthwhile--if strongly Anglophile--role in Irish politics. But now he has alighted on our shores to grind several of his European axes and savage a man who has seen worse and as ever emerges unbowed: a great, if complex, inconsistent and highly ambitious, father of our country. If you want to understand the many contradictions in Jefferson's writings and actions, simply read the essay on him in Professor Bailyn's "To Begin the World Anew". Twenty pages with more wisdom than any number of O'Brien's fulminations.

I would give this book a "0" if it were possible. This book by Conor Cruise O' Brien is a postmodernist/deconstructionist
"history" if it can be even called that. O' Brien, a socialist and Burkean, claims Thomas Jefferson was "high on the wild gas of liberty" because he supported the cause of Revolutionary France against the armies of the monarchies of Europe. This book was written to destroy the American people's connection to their great tradition of liberty and republicanism. O' Brien compares Jefferson to the communist butcher Pol Pot because he supported the actions of the Jacobins in the " Reign of Terror". O' Brien of course leaves out the brutality of the ancien regime, and the murders and slaughter metted out by the "holy alliance". Jefferson did believe in dying for liberty, a concept abandoned today by most plugged in Americans. Next O' Brien relates Jefferson is the father of the KKK, the militia movement, and white supremecy. All utter nonsense. If you want a good history of Jefferson and the French Revolution this is not it.

While researching Edmund Burke and the French Revolution, this book offered wonderful and unique insights into the debate through the eyes of Thomas Jefferson during the heat of the French Revolution (and even some things I did not know about Burke). Instead of just giving a personal interpretation, O'Brien relies heavily on primary sources, letting the reader read what the particular person had to say instead of summarizing (or as some authors do, reinterpreting). This book is essential to understanding either Jefferson or the French Revolution.

The author fails to see things with the eyes of the generation about which he is writing. That makes for bad history, merely the out-of-context attachment of situations, strung together into a book. How disappointing. However, he cannot be very lonesome. I'm afraid he has the company of a lot of clever, educated, useless historians (so-called) these days.

Having purchased this volume from a bookseller's table, with its gorgeous portrait of the aging Thomas Jefferson, I began to read it. After a chapter or two, I sought the review at Amazon.com. That reviewer was not overjoyed, nor was I. Roger Kennedy has assembled a collage of words, weaving together some history and some ideas about agriculture. The result is a success at neither. In the Bibliographic Notes (readable and comprehensible) he faults Henry Adams for describing Jefferson with faint praise, which Adams then turned against the 3rd President. Roger Kennedy does much the same.
If Kennedy's cause intrigues you, purchase the volume from Amazon.com at a good discount! The forewarned buyer will be less disappointed with a generous discount. Some errors of fact are thrown together with obvious errors of interpretation, the dust jacket is nicely done.
The thesis of Mr. Jefferson's Lost Cause is hardly realized. At its minimum, Kennedy suggests that Jefferson was a member of the planter class and promoted the planters' interests, while writing enthusiastically about America's yoeman farmers. While a marxist might joyfully propose a comparison between the planter class and modern agribusiness, that hope will be dashed by the author's denunciation of the southern farmer for failing to raise adequate capital by the development of larger banks.

Thomas Jefferson wrote eloquently against slavery and in favor of a nation of small farmers. He also ran a large plantation worked by several hundred slaves. Traditionally, Americans have emphasized the former, and found excuses for the latter. Kennedy does exactly the opposite. In fact, he argues that Jefferson was in a real sense responsible for preserving and extending slavery--and the system of large estates owned by "planters" that went with it.

During the Revolutionary War, a number of Virginians felt that slavery would eventually have to be ended. Jefferson did not support them, and slavery became more firmly established. In 1784, the government set up by the Articles of Confederation began to decide what to do with the new territories outside the 13 original states. A number of people felt that slavery should not be allowed there. Jefferson did not support them, and slavery was extended. In 1802, Jefferson, now president, bought the giant Louisiana Territory from France. A number of Americans felt that slavery should not be allowed there. Jefferson did not support them, and slavery was further extended.

Why would Jefferson do this, especially since slavery made impossible a country of small farmers? Kennedy has several answers. First, Jefferson wasn't really that fond of small farmers. He considered many of them to be uncivilized bumpkins. But he positively hated industrialization, and felt especially bad about free black "mechanics." He thought that the only proper way to treat freed slaves was the bring them back to Africa (or maybe Haiti). Until that would happen, it was "not yet" time for emancipation. Jefferson was a planter himself and felt that other planters were his peers. He wanted them to like him, and he relied on them politically. Kennedy also seems to say that Jefferson was an unwitting stooge of British merchants. They wanted to lend the planters money, buy their cotton, and sell them English manufactured goods. Had the South developed like the North, with towns and workshops constantly springing up amidst the family farms, this "neo-colonialism" (or "colonial-imperialism") couldn't have happened.

Kennedy thinks slavery was especially environmentally destructive. Compared to owner-worked small farms, slave-worked plantations killed the soil. This is a difficult argument to make. No landowner deliberately exhausts his land in ten years if he can keep it productive for 20 or 30 or more. There was new land in the west that one could move to, but you didn't have to be a plantation-owner to sell and move (and if your land is ruined, why will anyone pay you much money for it?). However, says Kennedy, more small-holders were too poor to move, and out of necessity, they took better care of their land. Besides, caring for the land required initiative and local knowledge or complex procedures or special tools. Slave-owners would not permit their slaves to do much besides follow simple orders and use simple tools.

And Kennedy is heart-broken at what could have been. Maybe free soil outside the old slave south, maybe freed slaves as yeoman, maybe decent treatment of the Indians, maybe well-cared for land. The second half of the book might be summarized: merchants sell individual Indians money on credit, then with the US Army at their back, force Indian nations to give up vast tracts of land to discharge the debt. Slave-owners move in and ruin the land. Americans settle beyond the boundaries of the United States. Then when the local Indians, escaped slaves, "maroons" (mixed Indian and African), and European colonial governments resist, get the US armed forces to enforce their stealing. Slave-owners move in and ruin the land. I was unclear exactly how this related to Jefferson. Kennedy seems to be saying, "He knew about a lot about it; he was happy about it; sometimes he took positive action to bring it about; even when he was no longer president, he did nothing to stop it."

I liked the way this book takes on hypocrisy, pretension, and myth, e.g., the myth of the "independence" of southern plantations. Planters borrowed money every year, and every year had to sell their crop on the world market. Prices and interests rates were never the same from one year to the next, and planters see-sawed between boom and bust. Yet Kennedy then buys into an equally ridiculous myth: that English merchants just decided on their own what prices and interst rates would be. He can't seem to comprehend that in these markets, everyone had "exposure" and no one was "in control." A major flaw of the book is the idea that after the Revolution the South became part of "an invisible empire manipulated from London and the [English] Midlands."

I feel like I should have liked this book but I didn't. Why? The book has some beautiful phrases and sentences but too often they were like raisins in a poorly cooked pudding. Sometimes it's hard to tease out exactly what Kennedy is saying and sometimes he just sounds silly. Along with the raisins are some awful jellied currants (a failed metaphor? now you know how this reader felt).

Kennedy has been head of the Smithsonian's American history museum and of the National Park Service. This book left me with the impression that Kennedy feels, "Once I had to uphold the icons. But now I may indulge myself. In an oh-so-civilized way, I will skewer those who are unjustly worshipped and elevate those unjustly scorned." All too often it sounded bureaucratic and snide.

The book just doesn't flow well. It was exceedingly difficult to keep all the people and places straight. And THIS was maddening: three quarters of the way through the book I turned the page and found 8 glossy pages of prints and rudimentary maps. They would have been some help. Yet nowhere, NOWHERE in the book are these pages mentioned, not when the people shown are introduced, not when places are mentioned, not in the table of contents, not anywhere.

Toward the end I began to feel like I was reading some of the anti-Clinton investigative journalism that blossomed at the end of his presidency. I was glad someone had the energy and the commitment to do it but I was overwhelmed by the minutiae. And I knew that I was getting a one-sided picture.

I give it four stars for content, two for presentation.

Although this work was officially written by Lance Banning, there is no mistake that it is an outgrowth of the theories of J.G.A. Pocock. Essentially, Banning tries to make the case that the Jeffersonian Republicans were the American version of Bolingbroke's "Country Party." Moreover, he tries to demonstrate how the party advocated the classical republican values of "civic humanism." Ultimately, the book falls flat on its face. Anyone acquanted with Jefferson, as well as his party, should be able to see right through Banning's account. Although there certainly were classical republican elements in their thought, these were only secondary and complimentary to the libertarian theories of natural rights and individualism. A more accurate (although still deeply flawed) account is Joyce Appleby's work "Capitalism and a New Social Order:The Republican Vision of the 1790's."

This is an attempt to understand the psychology of the late 18th century Virginia gentry by exploring the writings of some of its more prominent male menbers. Lockridge culls his evidence from the commonplace books of Thomas Jefferson and William Byrd, in which the subjects collected jokes, quotations, and parables that they found to be particularly illuminative. While Lockridge acknowledges that the perspectives of two men cannot be wholly transferable to their entire class, he hopes that his subjects are representational enough that some insight into the general beliefs of the gentry can be found in their writings. However, by focusing on narrow periods in the authors' lives in a strictly constructed context, while adding a heavy dose of his own (questionable) psychoanalysis, Lockridge excludes much evidence that could provide a more balanced assesment of gentry values.

Lockridge rests his case on the belief that the personality failings of Jefferson and Byrd were somehow representational of a broad misogynistic conviction among upper-class Virginia men. While continuously undermining his own argument by admitting that among the scores of commonplaces he has read, he found nothing similar to the "misogynistic rage" uncovered in the writings of these two men, he is nonetheless certain that these aberrations were somehow deeply reflective of true patriarchal hatred for women. Despite the fact that his own sources make clear that these expressions of misogyny appeared in response to personal failures with women (Byrd was spurned in romance, and Jefferson was unhappily controlled by his mother during his rebellious teenage years) Lockridge argues that it is not enough to agree that these outbursts were reflective of bad personal experiences with women, but that we need to "understand what mental categories are invoked on such an occasion." Understanding what Lockridge means by this would be far more enlightening, however. He goes on to insist that because entries concerning women appear in the same time frame as those about power and rebellion, they must be indisputably connected in the authors' minds, despite the fact that the two men had much to say about these themes in other contexts.

Despite the problems in the work, the conclusions Lockridge ultimately draws about patriarchy are rather convincing, though more concrete evidence than he has presented would be required to prove them. He argues that rather than fearing women for their sexual or political power, it was economic control that most consternated gentrymen, as widows had the ability to control their own property (though Jefferson's attempts to change the legal code so that females could inherit property from their parents would seem to contradict the idea that he personally felt this way.)

Lockridge claims that the point of his study was simply to show that males were under pressure from women because female economic power had the potential to undermine male hegemony in controlling the structure of their newly created world. This is certainly a valid and interesting point; it is thus all the more unfortunate that the body of his essay does little to reinforce it.

Well written but gets boring reading the same old rehash warmed over with a different person's opinions. Nothing new here, I'm afraid, just a repeat.

Don't waste your time (or money). This book is almost as poorly written as it is poorly cited. The author obviously had no editor. There are nearly a half-dozen better choices if you want reliable information on Jefferson and the slavery connection.

The author asserts that Jefferson begot children with his slave and reminds the reader that this was not usual or shocking behavior for many antebellum Southern men. This book is amusing because of it's high spirited, conversational style and because of it's flaws. It could've been a very good book if only Mr. Sloan had sought out the services of a copy/content editor. The technical problems with the book are just too distracting.

The allegation that Thomas Jefferson was the father of children by his slave, Sally Hemings, was published in a Richmond, Va. newspaper in 1802. In a bumpy read (the writing style ranges from breezy to turgid), Sloan's book is typical of what is becoming an "attack the famous" genre. He offers no new scholarship and skirts around the lack of any direct evidence to support his theme. Sally Hemings was about 14 years old when she travelled to Paris as the maid to Jefferson's youngest daughter. The rumor started by the newspaper charge is that she became pregnant and returned to Monticello to have Jefferson's child. Apparently the author was unaware, when he published this book, that DNA testing was being conducted that ruled out Jefferson as the father. During the period from 1795 to 1808, Sally had four children that lived and Sloan claims Jefferson paternity for all of them. He does not explain, nor have other purveyors of the myth, why no one who observed this Jefferson-Hemings relationship ever made a statement about it during Jefferson's life. This includes his daughters, his grandchildren, brother, sister, and nephews, many of whom resided at Monticello during these years. It also included Sally's two brothers James and Bob, who were freed in the 90's, and her son and daughter who ran away in 1822, as well as two of her sons, a brother, and two nephews who were freed by Jeffersons's will. Imagine how important Sally would have been at Monticello as Jefferson's long time mistress, virtually his wife, yet not one word remains to describe her. She is an historical cipher. The author has clearly read extensively on the subject, but if you are looking for a documented history, this is not your book. Sloan even admits that he "is not impressed with footnotes." It is also hard to have confidence in a book that cites two of the books in Dumas Malone's six volume biography, but not the two with the genealogical information and the special appendix on the Hemings issue. Sloan could have benefitted from an editor. This has all the faults of a self published book. But, if you are looking for rumor and innuendo, it's all here.

Although easy enough to read and laced with numerous Jeffersonian quotations, this book, on balance, is far more concerned with Professor Sheldon's appraisal of contemporary society than it is with the opinions of the nation's third president. Sheldon's conservative Christian viewpoint is obvious and gives rise to the legitimate concern that he may have been quite selective in his use of substantiating information, employing only those facts which are consistent with his own stance on issues while creating the illusion that he is presenting the reader with an unbiased perspective. Some of his "supportive evidence" is anecdotal and may very well have no basis in fact. For example, twice Sheldon mentions a comparison of surveys regarding educational problems in 1940 and 1990 in an attempt to prove a decline in educational and moral standards. These "surveys," however, are a fiction concocted by former Ft. Worth businessman T. Cullen Davis, an evangelical Christian who has openly admitted that he created the poll out of his own imagination in order to advance his personal views. Professor Sheldon may very well have done much the same thing. Lack of precise supportive documentation is the most disturbing feature of this book. Virtually nowhere is it possible for the reader to easily verify the accuracy of what the author states or to learn the context from which quoted remarks are taken. Given Sheldon's obvious bias, a reader who wants a more scholarly, objective account of Thomas Jefferson's thoughts would be well advised to look elsewhere, like Joseph Ellis's "American Sphinx."

I have read over a 1/2 dozen books about Thomas Jefferson and "What would Jefferson say?" rates dead last. Sheldon's most poorly written chapters appear to be out of the area of his expertise. The book has some glaring errors in scientific discussions. It's obvious the author is not a scientist. He does a better job on chapters dealing with economics and Jefferson's character. He totally drops the ball in his chapter about Jefferson and science. Sheldon believes that Jefferson would reject evolution. He writes "...radical evolution holds that the world and it's species develop out of themselves, internally, not out of an external creator". Thus, Jefferson, who was a deistic scientist, would reject evolution. The quote is a false statement and shows the author's ignorance of science. True science does not have an opinion on things it cannot observe. It only attempts to explain what it can observe, therefore true science is open to the theory of natural evolution being born out of a creator. However, at this time such a theory cannot be tested or proved. Sheldon also quotes evolutionary scientist, Dr. Stephen Gould, grossly out of context. Gould would be furious to see how Sheldon has misused those writings. Something smells fishy. What is the author's hidden agenda here? I believe Jefferson, the true scientist he was, would side with the vast majority of scientists and accept evolution. In conclusion, I feel Jefferson would be proud that in only 200 years we have become the greatest nation on earth surpassing empires built over thousands of years. I do believe Jefferson, who hoped that U.S. citizens would eventually turn Unitarian would be disappointed that there is still so much superstition in the U.S. Jefferson saw knowledge as light, and superstition and ignorance as darkness. So what would Jefferson say about the book "What would Jefferson say?" I believe he would say the same thing he said about the Bible. He would call it a "dung hill." Sheldon corrupts Jefferson's beliefs in the same way Jefferson believed the Bible was corrupt. They were both put together to manipulate the uneducated. Sheldon makes Thomas Jefferson sound like Pat Robertson who, I have little doubt, Jefferson would have despised. For anyone who really wants to learn about Jefferson, I recommend reading "Jefferson and Religion" by Eugene R. Sheridan. Leave Sheldon's book to those who want to lie to themselves and make Jefferson into something he was not.

Attention! Sheldon's views of Jefferson's thought to not reflect on Jefferson's! I could not believe what I was reading when I opened up this book. I hought that Sheldon had at least a relatively firm grasp on Jefferson's thought after reading his book "The Political Philosophy of Thomas Jefferson," I was sorely disappointed. It appears that Sheldon may understand what he thought, but is not able to translate it to the events of today. It is a shame that Sheldon failed in his effort, because such a work as this, properly done, would be wonderful to see. If you truly interested in what Jefferson would think about current events today, let me sum it up for you. He would be outraged and saddened to see what happened to the once great nation that he helped to found. He would be enraged at the tyrannical activities of our government. As for his political leanings, he would most certainly be a radical libertarian.