So much of the history of Monticello has been swept under the rug for generations and generations. As a Virginian living in such close proximity to Monticello, I, as the majority of people who have made the requisite trip through Mr. Jefferson's estate had literally no grasp on its actual history. Mr. Leepson's watershed book is eminently readable, even for those of us who are not students of historical preservation and brings to light the actual gritty past of this now pristine national monument. The fact that the Jefferson family or the Jefferson Foundation has not exclusively owned Monticello is often downplayed by many persons associated with it in its current condition. Perhaps the greatest merit of Saving Monticello is that it reveals the fact that this estate has a much deeper and more complex history than many Americans realize or may be willing to believe.

Mr. Leepson has masterfully peeled back the onion skin of history and shows the reader that Monticello's historical significance is not restricted to early American or Architectural history alone, but can actually stand as a microcosm of American History in its full form. From the birth of the nation to civil war to anti-Semitism- Monticello has seen it all. Mr. Leepson's book artfully reveals Monticello's sometimes colorful, often tragic history in a text that marries the all too frequently opposing qualities of being both informative and entertaining.

This book is worth every minute spent reading it and may even entice its readers to delve further into Monticello's family tree. We truly owe the Levy family a debt of gratitude for preserving Monticello for future generations. Without their intervention, this estate would not be in existence today for us to enjoy and appreciate. I cannot recommend this book highly enough, and I thank Mr. Leepson for finally giving us, the reader, access to the story behind this historical treasure.

Saving Monticello: The Levy Family's Epic Quest to Rescue the House That Jefferson Built written by Marc Leepson is a wonderful book as it chronicles that "essay in architecture" Thomas Jefferson called Monticello his mountain-top estate in Virginia. What happened after Thomas Jefferson died is a story begging to be told and it is a story of a family by the name of Levy that brought the estate back twice from near ruin, this is a tale that recounts the turbulent saga of this fabled estate.

Being one of the millions of people that has visited Monticello in the past, I always wondered about the history of Monticello after Jefferson died on July 4, 1826 to the time I visited the estate. I asked one of the tour guides at that time, she filled me in on some of the juicy parts, but it wasn't as comprehensive as this book.

I later sat down with another tour guide and asked some more questions about the history of the estate, the grounds, the upkeep of the house and the purchase of artifacts once owned by Jefferson at the time he lived at Monticello... again they were very helpful and pointed my curiosity to what is referenced in the bibliography in this book. So, I did some further digging and what Marc Leepson has uncovered in this book is spot-on with good work in telling this fascinating story of a house, history, family-life and times through the years.

"Saving Monticello" is a book with a history of a family, with who's efforts, we should all be grateful for saving a national treasure, a family whos little-known story of the remarkable commitment to Monticello's preservation. This is the account of Uriah P. Levy and his nephew Jefferson Monroe Levy in this well-written compelling story.

"Saving Monticello" is a story filled with fascinating detail about the life and times of one of the most beloved national monuments, for almost ninety years in private hands, until 1923 when the Levy family relinquished it to the Thomas Jefferson Foundation.

As you read "Saving Monticello" you'll see the veil of history being slowly and with great detail lifted to reveal a stoey that is reflective to our nations history, a story that is fully appreciated, from early on, a cast of characters a different as America herself played a roll with Monticello.

This is a fascinating read and well worth your time.

Our third president, Thomas Jefferson, possessed many talents, but a grand vision was among the top of his possessions. Over a period of many years, he designed, built, and re-built his grand home in the Piedmont of Virginia. Neither the plain saltbox home of John Adams nor the stately yet conventional Mount Vernon home of George Washington, Monticello was a home of which the entire country could be proud. Exhibiting many classical architectural elements along with some truly unique touches, Thomas Jefferson's Monticello was a home that completely fit the remarkable qualities of its owner.

After Jefferson's death on the 50th anniversary of the country's birth, Monticello was soon sold to clear some of his substantial debts. Saving Monticello is the story of the ultimate preservation of this irreplaceable national treasure. The story primarily features the Levy family, a collection of intriguing characters who continue the goal preserving Jeffersons home, at great person cost, through several decades, and against substantial opposition. Marc Leepson has produce a clear narrative of this fascinating history, covering Monticello's repeated near ruin and its restoration to its original glory. Written in a clear manner, yet with abundant detail, this book is required reading for Jefferson scholars, students of architecture, or merely those interested in a great historical tale. It is clearly the best account of the largely unknown saga of the saving of Monticello.

Marc Leepson is a genius. I wish he would write more than just books. If he wrote a movie script, I would watch the movie over and over. This man rules.

Page 397 ends with an entry on Ticket Punching, so Ticket Punching is the caption at the top of the page. Of the nine entries on that page, I was most familiar with 365 Days, a book by Ronald J. Glasser, a U.S. Army Medical Corps physician who treated burn patients in Japan. There is also an entry for Strom Thurmond, a U.S. Senator since 1954, on that page. All that page 397 says about Thot Not, Operation is "See Daniel Boone Operations." Daniel Boone was a Special Forces thing in Cambodia. Ultimately Thot Not was arrived at as the perfect description for such people who, being "dressed as peasants or in unrecognizable uniforms, went into Cambodia to gather intelligence or to sabotage communist installations at the Southern end of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, despite U.S. law forbidding operations in countries not at war with the United States." (p. 88). The entry for Operation Arc Light covers almost a page, from the first strike on 18 June 1965, dropped from B-52s flying above 30,000 feet, to the last on 18 August 1973. I had missed seeing the effective strikes against NVA forces at Khe Sanh in 1968 and Pleiku and An Loc in 1972 when they happened, and only visited one of those sites in the highly exciting time in between those events. There are only eleven lines in the entry for Fonda, Jane, not counting the "See also: Hawks and Doves; Teach-Ins." (p. 131). The entry on Free-Fire Zones is longer, and includes the information that "After 1965, the Pentagon renamed the zones `specific strike zones,'" (p. 138), but I was in one after 1969 and still think that the army was calling them Free-Fire Zones. I was too close to Pinkville to know what the Pentagon was thinking about a lot of things, so this book contains a number of revelations, even for me. Also from Washington, D.C., Appendix E has the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, Public Law 88-408; 78 Stat. 384 which clearly stated, "the United States is assisting the peoples of southeast Asia to protect their freedom and has no territorial, military or political ambitions in that area." (p. 543) Appendix F on pages 545-578 contains the text of the Paris Peace Accords~27 January 1973, and I might read this some day to see if it says anything about American bodies, a subject on which there is no entry in the main part of the Dictionary, but which has been the subject of much diplomatic discussion since the Accords were agreed to, and articles in the press always seemed a bit vague about what the elements of the agreement were. This book is a tiny additon to the level of recognition of history as a context and part of American culture, but is a bit heavy on the items of controversy which mattered as much as anything about Vietnam, which is one of those things which has never really been subject to agreement.

Marc Leepson and Helen Hannaford have just edited a reference work titled "Webster's New World Dictionary of the Vietnam War." This 600-page volume is an excellent addition to a growing library of Vietnam War reference books that include: John S. Bowman's "The Vietnam War: An Almanac." New York: World Almanac Publications, 1985; Philip K. Jason. "The Vietnam War in Literature: An Annotated Bibliography of Criticisms." Pasadena, California and Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Salem Press, 1992; Stanley I. Kutler. "Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War." New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1996; John Newman, David A. Willson, David J. DeRose, Stephen Hidalgo, and Nancy J. Kendall. "Vietnam War Literature." Lanham, Md. & London: Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1996; James Olson. "Dictionary of the Vietnam War." New York: Peter Bedrick Books, 1987; Linda Reinberg. "In the Field: The Language of the Vietnam War." New York, Oxford: Facts on File, 1991; Harry G. Summer, Jr. "Historical Atlas of the Vietnam War." Boston, New York: Houghton, Mifflin Company, 1995; Carl Singleton. "Vietnam Studies: An Annotated Bibliography." Lanham, Md. & London: The Scarecrow Press; and Pasadena, Calif. & Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Salem Press, 1997; Spencer C. Tucker, editor. "Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War: A Political, Social and Military History." Santa Barbara, California, Denver, Colorado, Oxford, England: ABC-Clio, 1998. Leepson and Hannaford's work contains 1,561 encyclopedic entries with the standard "see" and "see also" cross references, eight appendices, and fourteen maps. Central to the essence and ambitions of the book are the contributions of fifty-two scholars whose comments provide bedrock information on an immense array of subjects. The dictionary's specific entries vary in length from a few words for topics such as "jungle boots" and "Rome Plow," to more extensive two-plus page discussions of key items like "Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN)," "Marines," and "People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN)." Leepson and Hannaford have done a commendable job of boiling down an overwhelming amount of information into one useable, quick-reference volume. They admit that their dictionary is not "a definitive account" of the war. (p. v) There is no such work. Yet their result is a welcome addition to the massvie body of literature dealing with a war for which we are steadily compiling layer upon layer of books, government documents, videos, films, journal articles, conference papers, and electronic data-base sources. While those interested in the Vietnam War often debate the conflict heatedly in terms of cause and legacies, accuracy of information, and analytical framework, there can be no doubt that the Vietnam generation has been extraordinarily productive in creating a rich corpus of Vietnam War works for future generations to access and evaluate. "Webster's New World Dictionary of the Vietnam War" speaks eloquently of its editors' sincere and arduous efforts to create a dictionary that will fit competently on library shelves among so many other reference works. It is a recommended purchase for those who wish to possess authoritative accounts of a war that is slowly becoming the most studied conflict in United States history.

As a Vietnam War veteran, college reference librarian and instructor of a class on the Vietnam War, I was thrilled to discover Webster's New World Dictionary of the Vienam War, edited by Marc Leepson. Marc had e-mailed me many months ago and told me about this project and had asked me to help him with some of the fact verification, which I was happy to do, but I had forgotten all about it by the time I saw the book advertised. As a reference librarian, I especially appreciate the clear cross-references, the maps and the text of the Paris Peace Accords which is included in Appendix F. Unlike most dictionaries of the Vietnam War, this book has many entries on Asian political leaders important to the war. For example, see the entry on Souvanna Phouma. Writers, such as Tim O'Brien, also get excellent entries which list their important work. For a bias free, one volume reference book on the Vietnam War, you can't go wrong with this one.