Master of the Mountain by Henry Wiencek
Is there anything new to say about Thomas Jefferson and slavery? The answer is a resounding yes. Henry Wiencek s eloquent, persuasive book based on new information coming from archaeological work at Monticello and on hitherto overlooked or disregarded evidence in Jefferson s papers opens up a huge, poorly understood dimension of Jefferson s world. We must, Wiencek suggests, follow the money.So far historians have offered only easy irony or paradox to explain this extraordinary Founding Father who was an emancipationist in his youth and then recoiled from his own inspiring rhetoric and equivocated about slavery, who enjoyed his renown as a revolutionary leader yet kept some of his own children as slaves. But Wiencek s Jefferson is a man of business and public affairs who makes a success of his debt-ridden plantation thanks to what he calls the silent profits gained from his slaves and thanks to a skewed moral universe that he and thousands of others readily inhabited.Many people of Jefferson s time saw a catastrophe coming and tried to stop it, but not Jefferson. The pursuit of happiness had been badly distorted, and an oligarchy was getting very rich. Is this the quintessential American story?| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780374534028 |
| ISBN 10 | 0374534020 |
| Title | Master of the Mountain |
| Author | Henry Wiencek |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Farrar, Straus & Giroux Inc |
| Year published | 2013-09-03 |
| Number of pages | 352 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |