Posted at History News Network, Monday, September 22, 2008 Annette
Gordon-Reed : Edmund Morgan calls her one of the best historians of her
generation <http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/54782.html>

Source: *Marie Morgan and Edmund S. Morgan in the New York Review of Books
in the course of a review of Annette Gordon-Reed's new book, The Hemingses
of Monticello*<http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21855?utm_medium=email&utm_source=Campaign+Monitor&utm_content=91964597&utm_campaign=Joseph+Lelyveld+on+John+%26+Sarah%2c+Michael+Chabon+on+Obama&utm_term=Jefferson%26%238217%3bs+Concubine>(10-9-08)

The Hemingses of Monticello is a brilliant book. It marks the author as one
of the most astute, insightful, and forthright historians of this
generation. Not least of Annette Gordon-Reed's achievements is her ability
to bring fresh perspectives to the life of a man whose personality and
character have been scrutinized, explained, and justified by a host of
historians and biographers. They have struggled to illuminate, and sometimes
to gloss over, the dark places in his life. Like many upright public figures
who know they are pure and their enemies vile, he was capable of deviousness
and treachery. He instigated the savage attacks by the anti-Federalist
National Gazette editor Philip Freneau on John Adams, once his fast friend,
and was flummoxed rather than ashamed at being caught out paying Freneau to
be his mouthpiece. Such actions gave rise in Jefferson biographies to
characterizations like "enigma" and "sphinx."

The full review is at http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21855?email

-- 
Jon Kukla
www.JonKukla.com

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