Andrew Burstein

Jefferson's Adoptive Son: The Life of William Short, 1759-1848. By George Green Shackelford. Kentucky. $33.00. Professor Emeritus George Shackelford of Virginia Polytechnic Institute completed a substantial dissertation on the life of William Shor [...]

The Paris Years of Thomas Jefferson. By William Howard Adams. Yale. $30. 00. Is it not a self-evident truth that, despite the lure of his peripatetic life, the historical Jefferson is lost to us? William Howard Adams is certainly not about to g [...]

In recent attempts to expose the delinquency of the extremist Thomas Jefferson during the era of the French Revolution, prominent writers have obsessed on familiar Jeffersonian catchphrases and 18th-century hyperbole: "Were there but an Adam and E [...]

Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy. By Annette Gordon-Reed. University Press of Virginia. $29.95. American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson. By Joseph J. Ellis. Knopf. $26. Finding someone who doesn't know that Thom [...]

Jefferson the symbol, Jefferson the man. His legacy is either clouded in myth or mercilessly exploited. He seems to be what each generation needs him to be. His stirring words remain with us, but his character often changes. Historians have long been [...]