The creation of an American icon through the eyes of Thomas Jefferson is a true example of history. The diverse concepts and ideas embodied by Jefferson is brilliantly portrayed in the means of emotional involvement and reason. Concepts that have moved a country into war and then together is in essence a marvel.

Peter J. Hatch, head of gardening at Thomas Jefferson's beloved plantation, Monticello, offers an authorative and edifying look at the orchards and fruits grown historically and today at this beautiful Virginia estate.With much information -- both historical and practical -- the reader is taught much. And has a unique opportunity to know better not just Thomas Jefferson, the man and statesman, but Thomas Jefferson the consummate gardener.Beautifully photographed and illustrated, it's an elegant addition to any gardener's coffee table or library. And for the serious fruit grower or Monticello afficionado, a must.

Fleming has found a great little piece of history about Jefferson and Franklin. A great story about writing. Highly recommended! Look for Fleming's story BIG CHEESE FOR THE WHITE HOUSE by DK Ink!

This is a short overview of some of the discoveries made by the author and her team of archaeologists at Poplar Forest, Thomas Jefferson's retreat home. It is well written with outstanding photographs and maps. The author writes clearly without imposing her own opinion on the reader as to the results of some of the surprising discoveries made at the site. The author encourages the reader to continue his/her own provoking thought by acknowledging that the site is still very much a work in progress and causes the reader to look forward to further discoveries. This author is to be commended for her straightforward writing that allows even the layperson to come away with a great deal of acquired knowledge.

Peterson's book captures snapshots of how Americans have viewed Thomas Jefferson throughout our history. On July 4, 1826, Thomas Jefferson died, and this is where the Jefferson image begins to take shape. The thesis concerns "the composite representation of the historic personage and of the ideas and ideals, policies and sentiments, habitually identified with him" (Preface). We watch how his image is refashioned and molded by various politicians over the course of one hundred and fifty years that this book covers. We are led by a great historian who has written eight books on Thomas Jefferson. It is a stimulating, whirlwind journey. The intellectual beginnings of the strains about slavery start with the Jefferson image. Ambiguity seems to sum up his points in his writings. It became possible for abolitionists to point to the Declaration of Independence and his comments on the Missouri Compromise, "it was like a fire-bell in the night" sounding "the knell of the Union" (189). The pro-slavery side could use Jefferson's and Madison's Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798 and cloak the issue as states' rights. To make this jump, however, the states' rights supporters had to change the interpretation of nullification from a consortium of states to a single state. These issues made for a gigantic loggerhead that would only be solved by a Civil War. Peterson shows us with great clarity how both sides claimed they were the true heirs of the Jefferson mind. Alleged sexual relations of a president are not only in twentieth century politics. Jefferson's affair with Sally Hemings is described and refuted by the author. Peterson pulls out three possible roots for these "rumors." They are all very interesting arguments; however, it has been proven true by DNA tests. Abraham Lincoln shines in this account as the person capable of synthesizing the conflicting ideas of Jefferson into one whole. I would argue that it is Lincoln's portrayal of Jefferson that we all have come to accept as our standard. Lincoln combined "the work of Alexander Hamilton, on the basis of the principles of Jefferson; and thus united...the two strands of political philosophy..." (220). This was Lincoln's genius as a leader, to bring a powerful government together with the ideals of the Declaration. This has made the image of Jefferson and Lincoln interconnected in the American mind. Jefferson falls into disrepute after the Civil War because of his intellectual dilemmas that helped shape it; consequently, there was a resurgence of popularity of the Federalists and particularly of Hamilton, Jefferson's nemesis. The twentieth century ushers in a new era over the Jefferson image. Differing policies and presidents resurrect Jefferson in the Progressive movement, the Wilsonian New Freedom, and Theodore Roosevelt's New Nationalism (331). This leads us to the same conflicts that Hamilton and Jefferson had, especially concerning the role of the federal government. It is, however, a changing country that will soon no longer be the agrarian dream that Jefferson would have liked. The U.S. had become an industrial and political powerhouse in the world, and there was no going back. The image changes to fit the times as the New Deal comes. Franklin D. Roosevelt uses Jefferson to provide a symbol to rally around, but it also seriously undermines and revises Jefferson's ideals. A big government program like the New Deal would not have been a priority according to strict Jeffersonian principles. Peterson writes that the Jefferson Memorial which was built in 1943 during FDR's administration "testifies to the artistry with which the New Deal combined reverence for the symbol and freedom of revision" (333). The book concludes in 1943 with the completion of the Jefferson Memorial and his birthday centennial. What are we left with at the end? We can quote a variety of different aspects to the Jeffersonian image depending on whose interpretation you prefer. You can quote Jefferson, "the anti-statist, states' righter, isolationist, agrarian, rationalist, civil libertarian, and constitutional democrat" (445). This division of the mind of the Sage of Monticello has created a boon for historians and politicians. We can all find something about Jefferson to argue and point to as a support for our position. Peterson has written a wonderful guide book though American thought on a very enigmatic figure in our history. Occasionally, the book gets bogged down in little details. It mostly provides extremely clear arguments concerning the historical disputes over who is the heir to the Jeffersonian image. Merrill Peterson has made an important contribution to the interpretation of a complex American figure. After consulting recent bibliographies, no one has written a similar work. Only the author himself could have improved on this book. The book has been republished and it currently available.

Robert Healy's "Jefferson on Religion in Public Education" is a great read. Healy traces Jefferson's philosophy regarding education from his early days as a member of the Virginia Legislature to his creation of the University of Virginia near the end of his life. Healy relates Jefferson's thought on the importance of education to a free society and how only an educated populace can live free.

Healy tackles the divisive world of religion and public education by deliniating Jefferson's views. Jefferson did believe religion was compatable with education, but he did not believe education should be dominated by sectarian bigots. Jefferson eliminated religious teaching from the elementary school curriculum thinking children too young for such complex issues as religious dogma and tenets.

Jefferson was hostile not to religious belief, he himself believed in God, but was hostile to fanatical religious views which had inflicted hatred and fanaticism on the world. He believed school was for teaching the "illuminating" of the human mind, not indoctrinating with sectarian belief.

Mr Healy's book is a comprehensive study and worth the purchase.

This book, although geared toward an adolescent audience, provided me not only with an excellent background in to Jefferson's life and decisons, but also addressed issues about his presidency which is rarely found in any book for young adults. The language of the book is pithy and clear, and hence appropriate for any age group. My Grandmother adores the series, after reading any of the books she feels as though she has really learned something. Also, the books themselves are very attractive.

«I have ever judged of the religion of others by their lives» - Thomas Jefferson.

Thomas Jefferson was a private man, and nowhere more so than in religious matters. A believer in the «eternal divorce» of religious opinion from civil authority, he was just as wary of the curtailment of individual freedom of conscience by the tyranny of public pressure, castigating the tyrants with clean hands who «altho' the laws will no longer permit them... to burn those who are not exactly of their Creed, ... raise the Hue and cry of Heresy against them, place them under the ban of public opinion, and shut them out from all the kind affections of society.» Afraid of any undue influence on other people's opinions, and jealous of any interference with his own much abused tranquility and reputation, this man who was «in a sect of my own» refrained till the end of his life from any public disclosure of his beliefs in divine matters.

However, his silence did not extend to those among his closer friends whom he suspected to be receptive to his unorthodox opinions, and in addition to his correspondence with them, time -seconded by the efforts of the editors of the present volume- has preserved for us two remarkably revealing documents : «The Philosophy of Jesus», which he composed in 1804, and «The Life and Morals of Jesus», which produced about fifteen years later.

These two pamphlets, the former in English, and the latter in four languages (Greek, Latin, French and English), evince Jefferson's enduring dedication to what he believed to be the restoration of Christ's authentic life and message. Their method of composition, matured after reading and rereading Joseph Priestley's radical, Unitarian treatises on the subject (such as his *History of the Corruptions of Christianity* and his *History of the Early Opinions Concerning Jesus Christ*), was simply to rewrite the Gospels by cutting out anything smacking of the «idolatry and superstition» of the «vulgar», any reference to the supernatural or to Jesus's divinity, and retaining only the «diamonds» that were his sermons and parables.

These two pamphlets tell the story of a child, born to a Jewish couple, who grows up in wisdom, preaches for a short while a reformed (one is almost tempted to say «Enlightened») version of the wicked faith and morality of his people, and is put to death by the civil and religious authorities, a martyr of the unholy alliance of church and state. This man never rose from the dead nor performed any miracles whatsoever, and if he ever claimed to be divinely inspired, the error was excusable : «Elevated by the enthusiasm of a warm and pure heart , conscious of the high strains of an eloquence which had not been taught to him, he might readily mistake the coruscations of his own fine genius for inspirations of a higher order.»

Jefferson deeply regretted his revered Jewish reformer died «at about 33, his reason having not yet attained the maximum of it's energy», but he nonetheless considered the system of morality he had begun to develop to be «the most benevolent and sublime that has been ever taught ; and eminently more perfect than those of any of the antient philosophers». He saw in this system the ultimate guarantee of the one value that seemed to matter to him above all others : social «utility» or harmony, the state of generalized peace and goodwill which is achieved when men refrain from initiating force against each other and love each other as Jesus loved them. And he saw in it too, the one common denominator in all the preachings of the myriad Christian sects, the one hope of their ultimate reconciliation and of an end to centuries of religious wars and persecutions : for only dogma, that crazed concoction of corrupt, «overlearned professors» and priests, divided them.

But *Jefferson's Extracts From the Gospels* contains much more than reproductions of his heretic selections from the Evangelists. It also includes a highly competent and sensible introduction to Jefferson's religious evolution, from the influence of Bolingbroke to that of Priestley; and, perhaps my favorite section of the volume, a one-hundred-page collection of letters written by or to Jefferson from 1800 to 1825, and revealing his opinion of Plato («a Graecian sophist... dealing out mysticisms incomprehensible to the human mind»), Epicurus (whose doctrines «contain everything rational in moral philosophy which Greece and Rome have left us») and Calvin («a madman... on whom reasoning was wasted. The strait jacket alone was [his] proper remedy») ; of the Quakers (whom we should all imitate, opting to «live without an order of priests, moralise for ourselves, follow the oracle of conscience, and say nothing about what no man can understand nor therefore believe») and the Unitarians (whose «advances towards rational Christianity» would soon convert the whole nation) ; of the Apocalypse («the ravings of a maniac») and the «incomprehensible jargon of the Trinitarian arithmetic, that three are one, and one is three.»

I would not recommend this book to anyone seeking answers to the ultimate questions, but if all you want to know is what Jefferson believed in, I cannot imagine a better source.

Jefferson's Memorandum Books are a marvel in themselves, but even more so with the editing work of Bear and Stanton. The Memorandum Books are transcribed to offer the reader Jefferson's records on money spent travelling from DC back to Monticello (p. 1094), the efficiency of one- vs. two-wheeled wheelbarrows (p. 282), or his early legal notations. But what makes this work invluable is the wealth of information that the editors have packed into the footnotes about everything from Jefferson's personal relationships at the time of an entry, to the location of a road or river he mentions, to whatever can be known about a slave paid for running an errand. To make the 1419 page (with footnotes) Jefferson document usable, the editors constructed a 203 page index to make the Memorandum Books as useful a tool as they could be. The scholarly apparatus here makes this publication a source for historians of just about anything, from the local to the national economy, slave life at Monticello and Virginia, the environment, and, of course, Thomas Jefferson. The only problem with the books is the price tag, which will inhibit many who don't have institutional support for their research tools.