Jefferson and Monticello: The Biography of a Builder

Name: Jefferson and Monticello: The Biography of a Builder
Author: Jack McLaughlin
ISBN: 9781429936798

Jack McLaughlin

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Jefferson and Monticello: The Biography of a Builder

Jack McLaughlin

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Jefferson and Monticello: The Biography of a Builder was a National Book Award nominee in 1988. Jack McLaughlin's biography tells the life of Thomas Jefferson as seen through the prism of his love affair with Monticello. For over half a century, it was his consuming passion, his most serious amusement. With a sure command of sources and skilled intuitive understanding of Jefferson, McLaughlin crafts an uncommon portrait of builder and building alike. En route he tells us much about life in Virginia; about Monticello's craftsmen and how they worked their materials; about slavery, class, and family; and, above all, about the multiplicity of domestic concerns that preoccupied this complex man. It is an engaging and incisive look at the eighteenth-century mind: systematic, rational, and curious, but also playful, comfort-loving, and amusing. Ultimately, it provides readers with great insight into daily life in Colonial and Federal America.

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