BEING THOMAS JEFFERSON An intimate history

Historian Burstein (Longing for Connection) aims in this probing biography to unearth the inner life of America's most mercurial founder, including how he made sense of his contradictory positions on slavery and democracy. To do so, Burstein explores the Age of Enlightenment's unique emotional landscape--where sensitivity and sensuality were valued but the barrier between public and private life was rigidly maintained--and examines how Jefferson, an easily irritated but loftily minded introvert, fit into this milieu. In a narrative studded with keen insights, Burstein offers notes on Jefferson's flirting style with sexually empowered French aristocratic women (mostly jokey, belying intimidation) and juxtaposes his passionate vendettas against his fellow politicians with the icy condescension of his theorizing about the "natural" hierarchy of the races. Along the way, a complex portrait emerges of a man who both longed for control of his immediate environment and constantly pushed himself into the wider world, where control was impossible and frustrations abounded. Burstein ties this to everything from Jefferson's decision to take teenage Sally Hemings as a "concubine" rather than remarry--evidence, Burstein suggests, of Jefferson's fear of the loss of control stemming from his wife's death--to his vision for America as a nation of lightly governed freeholders. It makes for immersive account of both the man and his age. (Jan.)

Close-up portrait by a noted Jefferson scholar aimed at "advancing historical knowledge without prescriptive politics." This does not mean excusing Thomas Jefferson's decades-long involvement with the enslaved Sally Hemings, who bore the first of their seven children when she was still a teenager. Historian Burstein depicts him as typical of his aristocratic Southern caste in the ability to compartmentalize, writing eloquently about the dehumanizing effects of slavery while availing himself of its sexual and economic prerogatives. Jefferson performed a similar sleight of hand with Native Americans, asserting his respect for their noble ways as he pursued expansionist policies that drove them off their land. Analyzing Jefferson's character and behavior, Burstein sees his central dilemma as the conflict between his publicly proclaimed desire for a quiet, private life and his equally powerful drive for power and fame. Jefferson emerges here as controlling, secretive, and vindictive, always ready to make political disagreements personal and rarely inclined to revise opinions even if contradicted by the facts: "His idealism as a theorist might be said to have predisposed him to be a tad insensitive to the real lives of people with whom he had no contact." It's not a pretty picture, and little in it is particularly new, though Burstein's psychological insights are impressively detailed and grounded in valuable historical context. He delves compellingly into Jefferson's motivations for a variety of incidents: his famous feud as Washington's secretary of state with Alexander Hamilton ("the better Machiavellian," in Burstein's judgment), the Louisiana Purchase during his presidency, and his postpresidential creation of the University of Virginia, "framing a curriculum in which America's founding principles were taught the 'right' way." Controlling to the last, he left behind a memoir portraying himself as "a reluctant hero" and a three-volume collection of his notes from the 1790s portraying Washington as the "unfortunate pawn" of the hated Hamilton. A nuanced, warts-and-all examination of a complicated Founding Father. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.