Flight From Monticellothomas Jefferson At War

Author : Michael Kranish
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199745900
Total Pages : 402 pages
Book Rating : 4.06/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Flight from Monticello: Thomas Jefferson at War written by Michael Kranish and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-01-21 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Thomas Jefferson wrote his epitaph, he listed as his accomplishments his authorship of the Declaration of Independence and the Virginia statute of religious freedom, and his founding of the University of Virginia. He did not mention his presidency or that he was second governor of the state of Virginia, in the most trying hours of the Revolution. Dumas Malone, author of the epic six-volume biography, wrote that the events of this time explain Jefferson's "character as a man of action in a serious emergency." Joseph Ellis, author of American Sphinx, focuses on other parts of Jefferson's life but wrote that his actions as governor "toughened him on the inside." It is this period, when Jefferson was literally tested under fire, that Michael Kranish illuminates in Flight from Monticello. Filled with vivid, precisely observed scenes, this book is a sweeping narrative of clashing armies--of spies, intrigue, desperate moments, and harrowing battles. The story opens with the first murmurs of resistance to Britain, as the colonies struggled under an onerous tax burden and colonial leaders--including Jefferson--fomented opposition to British rule. Kranish captures the tumultuous outbreak of war, the local politics behind Jefferson's actions in the Continental Congress (and his famous Declaration), and his rise to the governorship. Jefferson's life-long belief in the corrupting influence of a powerful executive led him to advocate for a weak governorship, one that lacked the necessary powers to raise an army. Thus, Virginia was woefully unprepared for the invading British troops who sailed up the James under the direction of a recently turned Benedict Arnold. Facing rag-tag resistance, the British force took the colony with very little trouble. The legislature fled the capital, and Jefferson himself narrowly eluded capture twice. Kranish describes Jefferson's many stumbles as he struggled to respond to the invasion, and along the way, the author paints an intimate portrait of Jefferson, illuminating his quiet conversations, his family turmoil, and his private hours at Monticello. "Jefferson's record was both remarkable and unsatisfactory, filled with contradictions," writes Kranish. As a revolutionary leader who felt he was unqualified to conduct a war, Jefferson never resolved those contradictions--but, as Kranish shows, he did learn lessons during those dark hours that served him all his life.

Author : Adam Hodges
Publisher : OUP USA
ISBN 13 : 0199759596
Total Pages : 193 pages
Book Rating : 4.90/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The "War on Terror" Narrative written by Adam Hodges and published by OUP USA. This book was released on 2011-04-15 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The War on Terror Narrative provides a longitudinal and holistic study of the formation, circulation, and contestation of the Bush administration's narrative about the "war on terror."

Author : Thomas S. Kidd
Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 0300250061
Total Pages : 321 pages
Book Rating : 4.60/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Thomas Jefferson written by Thomas S. Kidd and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2022 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This is a biography of Thomas Jefferson's life and conflicted moral universe. Jefferson has received increasing historical attention since the late 1990s. Much of the focus on Jefferson has concerned topics including his relationship with his slave Sally Hemings, the "Jefferson Bible," and bitter political rivalries with Alexander Hamilton and many others. Until now, however, no biography has fully explored Jefferson's spiritual beliefs and ethical precepts, and how those ideas did (or did not) sync up with the way Jefferson actually lived. Encapsulated in Jefferson's privileged but fraught life are themes that suffuse American history itself: religious seeking, racial injustice, inspiring ideals, and squalid realities. Employing fresh research in Jefferson's vast papers, Thomas Jefferson: A Biography of Spirit and Flesh shows how deeply the Christian culture of Jefferson's upbringing influenced him. It also reveals how he struggled as an adult to find an adequate replacement for the conventional Christianity of his youth, even as he became more entangled in political feuds, personal debt, and the terrible consequences of slaveowning"--

Author : Jon Meacham
Publisher : Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN 13 : 0812979486
Total Pages : 802 pages
Book Rating : 4.80/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power written by Jon Meacham and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2013-10-29 with total page 802 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • The Washington Post • Entertainment Weekly • The Seattle Times • St. Louis Post-Dispatch • Bloomberg Businessweek In this magnificent biography, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of American Lion and Franklin and Winston brings vividly to life an extraordinary man and his remarkable times. Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power gives us Jefferson the politician and president, a great and complex human being forever engaged in the wars of his era. Philosophers think; politicians maneuver. Jefferson’s genius was that he was both and could do both, often simultaneously. Such is the art of power. Thomas Jefferson hated confrontation, and yet his understanding of power and of human nature enabled him to move men and to marshal ideas, to learn from his mistakes, and to prevail. Passionate about many things—women, his family, books, science, architecture, gardens, friends, Monticello, and Paris—Jefferson loved America most, and he strove over and over again, despite fierce opposition, to realize his vision: the creation, survival, and success of popular government in America. Jon Meacham lets us see Jefferson’s world as Jefferson himself saw it, and to appreciate how Jefferson found the means to endure and win in the face of rife partisan division, economic uncertainty, and external threat. Drawing on archives in the United States, England, and France, as well as unpublished Jefferson presidential papers, Meacham presents Jefferson as the most successful political leader of the early republic, and perhaps in all of American history. The father of the ideal of individual liberty, of the Louisiana Purchase, of the Lewis and Clark expedition, and of the settling of the West, Jefferson recognized that the genius of humanity—and the genius of the new nation—lay in the possibility of progress, of discovering the undiscovered and seeking the unknown. From the writing of the Declaration of Independence to elegant dinners in Paris and in the President’s House; from political maneuverings in the boardinghouses and legislative halls of Philadelphia and New York to the infant capital on the Potomac; from his complicated life at Monticello, his breathtaking house and plantation in Virginia, to the creation of the University of Virginia, Jefferson was central to the age. Here too is the personal Jefferson, a man of appetite, sensuality, and passion. The Jefferson story resonates today not least because he led his nation through ferocious partisanship and cultural warfare amid economic change and external threats, and also because he embodies an eternal drama, the struggle of the leadership of a nation to achieve greatness in a difficult and confounding world. Praise for Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power “This is probably the best single-volume biography of Jefferson ever written.”—Gordon S. Wood “A big, grand, absorbing exploration of not just Jefferson and his role in history but also Jefferson the man, humanized as never before.”—Entertainment Weekly “[Meacham] captures who Jefferson was, not just as a statesman but as a man. . . . By the end of the book . . . the reader is likely to feel as if he is losing a dear friend. . . . [An] absorbing tale.”—The Christian Science Monitor “This terrific book allows us to see the political genius of Thomas Jefferson better than we have ever seen it before. In these endlessly fascinating pages, Jefferson emerges with such vitality that it seems as if he might still be alive today.”—Doris Kearns Goodwin

Author : Eric D. Lehman
Publisher : Wesleyan University Press
ISBN 13 : 0819573302
Total Pages : 293 pages
Book Rating : 4.08/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Homegrown Terror written by Eric D. Lehman and published by Wesleyan University Press. This book was released on 2012-01-01 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This lively biography of America’s most famous traitor offers a new perspective on his terrible legacy as well as life in Revolutionary Era Connecticut. On September 6, 1781, Connecticut native Benedict Arnold and a force of 1,700 British soldiers and loyalists took Fort Griswold and burnt New London to the ground. The brutality of the invasion galvanized the new nation, and “Remember New London!” would become a rallying cry for troops under General Lafayette. In Homegrown Terror, Eric D. Lehman chronicles the events leading up to the attack and highlights this key transformation in Arnold—the point where he went from betraying his comrades to massacring his neighbors and destroying their homes. This defining incident forever marked him as a symbol of evil, turning an antiheroic story about weakness of character and missed opportunity into one about the nature of treachery itself. Homegrown Terror draws upon a variety of primary sources and perspectives, from the traitor himself to his former comrades like Jonathan Trumbull and Silas Deane, to the murdered Colonel Ledyard. Rethinking Benedict Arnold through the lens of this terrible episode, Lehman sheds light on the ethics of the dawning nation, and the way colonial America responded to betrayal and terror.

Author : Francis D. Cogliano
Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 0300179936
Total Pages : 317 pages
Book Rating : 4.34/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Emperor of Liberty written by Francis D. Cogliano and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2014-01-01 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Jefferson scholar reevaluates the third president's thinking on foreign policy and his record as a statesman.

Author : Thomas S Kidd
Publisher : Basic Books
ISBN 13 : 0465028101
Total Pages : 320 pages
Book Rating : 4.08/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Patrick Henry written by Thomas S Kidd and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2011-11-22 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most Americans know Patrick Henry as a fiery speaker whose pronouncement "Give me liberty or give me death!" rallied American defiance to the British Crown. But Henry's skills as an orator -- sharpened in the small towns and courtrooms of colonial Virginia -- are only one part of his vast, but largely forgotten, legacy. As historian Thomas S. Kidd shows, Henry cherished a vision of America as a virtuous republic with a clearly circumscribed central government. These ideals brought him into bitter conflict with other Founders and were crystallized in his vociferous opposition to the U.S. Constitution. In Patrick Henry, Kidd pulls back the curtain on one of our most radical, passionate Founders, showing that until we understand Henry himself, we will neglect many of the Revolution's animating values.

Author : Michael Kranish
Publisher : Harper Collins
ISBN 13 : 0062123297
Total Pages : 481 pages
Book Rating : 4.99/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Real Romney written by Michael Kranish and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2012-01-10 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Absorbing and fair-minded.” —New York Times “Romney’s story in full and clear detail…fascinating in-depth stuff.” —Los Angeles Times “A fascinating story [that] sheds next light on an elusive subject.” —Boston Globe Despite his political prominence, Mitt Romney remains an enigma to many in America. Who is the man behind that sweep of dark hair and the high-wattage smile? A savvy politician or someone who will simply say anything to win? A business visionary or a ruthless dealmaker? In this definitive, unflinching, and widely-acclaimed biography by Boston Globe investigative reporters Michael Kranish and Scott Helman, readers will finally discover the real Mitt Romney. Based on hundreds of interviews and more than five years of reporting, The Real Romney offers for the very first time a full understanding of this complex political figure.

Author : William G. Hyland
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 1442239840
Total Pages : 311 pages
Book Rating : 4.45/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Martha Jefferson written by William G. Hyland and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2015-02-26 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Martha Jeffersonis the first and only biography of Thomas Jefferson’s greatest love and true kindred spirit, who died an untimely death at the young age of thirty-three in 1782. Drawing on a wealth of newly probed sources—including family letters, documents, and the handwritten notes left by Jefferson’s famed biographer, Dumas Malone—William G. Hyland Jr. captures the charm, sophistication, and grace, as well as a profound sense of history, of this little known and elusive figure who, until now, has been a mere footnote to the story of America’s founding. Hyland brings us a conflicted and honest Martha Jefferson, who endured the Revolution as valiantly as some men—defending her very doorstep from raiding British troops—and presided over the domestic life of the Jeffersons’ “little mountain,” Monticello, during her husband’s long absences and historic rise to power. A revealing and insightful look at an often overlooked American woman, this book provides a unique and previously unexplored understanding of America’s Revolutionary Era, and the men and women upon whose bravery, talent, and resolve our nation was founded.

Author : Cynthia A. Kierner
Publisher : Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN 13 : 080788250X
Total Pages : 376 pages
Book Rating : 4.04/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Martha Jefferson Randolph, Daughter of Monticello written by Cynthia A. Kierner and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2012-05-14 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the oldest and favorite daughter of Thomas Jefferson, Martha "Patsy" Jefferson Randolph (1772-1836) was extremely well educated, traveled in the circles of presidents and aristocrats, and was known on two continents for her particular grace and sincerity. Yet, as mistress of a large household, she was not spared the tedium, frustration, and great sorrow that most women of her time faced. Though Patsy's name is familiar because of her famous father, Cynthia Kierner is the first historian to place Patsy at the center of her own story, taking readers into the largely ignored private spaces of the founding era. Randolph's life story reveals the privileges and limits of celebrity and shows that women were able to venture beyond their domestic roles in surprising ways. Following her mother's death, Patsy lived in Paris with her father and later served as hostess at the President's House and at Monticello. Her marriage to Thomas Mann Randolph, a member of Congress and governor of Virginia, was often troubled. She and her eleven children lived mostly at Monticello, greeting famous guests and debating issues ranging from a woman's place to slavery, religion, and democracy. And later, after her family's financial ruin, Patsy became a fixture in Washington society during Andrew Jackson's presidency. In this extraordinary biography, Kierner offers a unique look at American history from the perspective of this intelligent, tactfully assertive woman.