Books like Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an — picked by fans

Jill Lepore is a Swiss-Army-Knife historian, capable of tackling any topic in American history with verve. Here she offers a biography of Jane Franklin Mecom, best known as Benjamin Franklin's younger sister. Jane's life gives us a wonderful foil for "Benny," who arose from obscurity in Boston to the center of the American stage. Lepore keeps the dual narratives moving briskly along while also opening a window on how biographies are assembled.

Along the way, the reader finds recipes for making soap, an assortment of maxims from Poor Richard and Silence Dogood, family gossip and tragedies, Jane's reactions to rising Revolutionary violence, her fear of dementia in old age, and the idiosyncrasies of Benjamin Franklin's earliest biographers. The chatter between the siblings, on matters large and small, is captivating. Lepore has to fill in many gaps in the source material to complete the life of Jane Mecom, but the pleasure… show more.

Isenberg’s complete biography of the notorious Aaron Burr brings the reader beyond the typical villainous frame set by earlier historians. There are plenty of engrossing elements to Burr’s life, involving war, sex, political maneuvering, the famous duel with Alexander Hamilton, risky finance, and accusations of treason.

Isenberg tackles them all, while humanizing her ambitious, prickly subject. But I found the real value of the book is in its capacity to show more familiar founders, such as Hamilton, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson, from very different angles.

Any time spent in the figurative company of Peter (Pierre) Charles L’Enfant, Revolutionary soldier, artist, and erstwhile engineer, is time well spent. The man’s passions and talents were just so peculiar and profound, and he landed himself squarely in the birth of the American nation.

In his own English, L’Enfant’s words are convoluted, perhaps a legacy of his preference for his native French language, but Berg does a wonderful job of humanizing the ambitious artist and following his every twist and turn. Beware the ending. But there is an enormous payoff here in seeing the fulfillment of L’Enfant’s vision for what the city of Washington could be.

A book on George Washington must be on this list. We can ask for no better than Levy’s highly entertaining study of Washington through the lens of archaeological discoveries made at all the sites of importance connected to the man, from Virginia to Barbados to the Ohio Valley to Philadelphia.

Through these sites and new discoveries, we meet the man in unusual ways. And Levy strikes the perfect balance between guarded cynicism and awe. I loved the final chapter on the relevance of it all to our world today.

The urge to limit vast accumulations of individual wealth, the historian James Huston reminds us in this 1998 deep dive into America’s largely forgotten past, turns out to be as American as apple pie.

The new American nation, as John Adams put in in 1776, would only be able to preserve the “balance of power on the side of equal liberty and public virtue” by dividing the nation’s land “into small quantities, so that the multitude may be possessed of landed estates.”

Thomas Jefferson fully agreed. A republic, he insisted, “cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property.” Our founders never lived up to these noble aims. We still can.

This is a great biography, no question. One reason is the interesting truths it contains. As I read through the story of Thomas Jefferson's life, I realized that the eighteenth-century population had no concept of ethical principles. They did not understand the fallacy of divine right or divine-given equality. They did not understand that every single human is unique in every way and that humans are entirely different from every other human, plant, and animal.

They did not understand that every unique individual has the same need for life, liberty, and fulfillment, or that this need extends to all humans and animals regardless of race, gender, sex, age, social status, color, or any other variable. Nor did the people of Jefferson's day understand any of the ethical principles that humans must follow in their treatment of other life if they wish to survive on this planet.

This book made me… show more.

Like many of us who read a lot of history, I can easily forget that the founders were very human, with their likes and dislikes, friends and enemies,

Cogliano explores for the first time the personal relationship between two of the most well-known Virginians, the first and third presidents. It turns out that they were close friends,… until they weren’t.

This book is based on notes made by Thomas Jefferson when he was US ambassador to France. For me, their highlight is his account of a journey south to examine the operation of the Canal du Midi which links Toulouse to the Mediterranean. Jefferson travelled down from Paris in his own carriage and when he reached the mouth of the canal near Agde he saw no reason to abandon it. He hired a barge to take him to Toulouse and loaded his carriage on deck.

During his eight-day journey, he recorded his impressions in notes and letters written while he was travelling, and he made observations on aspects of daily life which his French contemporaries rarely thought worth recording: agriculture, architecture, the price of goods and labour, the condition of the people, technical aspects of the canal, and where he could find the best wine.

This book is hard to… show more.

Growing up in Virginia, I was forced to admire Thomas Jefferson. By “force,” I mean that we took frequent field trips to Monticello, Jefferson’s home, and Williamsburg, where Jefferson attended the College of William & Mary. I was brought to Jefferson’s homes across Virginia and have seen numerous statues of this great and valuable thinker, writer, and political leader.

But naturally, given Jefferson’s role in writing the Declaration of Independence and yet his ownership of slaves up until the day of his death raises important contradictions for any serious student of American history. In grappling with Jefferson, we grapple with the meaning of America and of America’s ideals for younger students today.  

Thomas Jefferson is, indeed, the most enigmatic of the Founding Fathers. He lived in such a way that he fell deeper and deeper into debt over the course of his lifetime; why?

Thomas Jefferson was a man… show more.

Whereas many books research the history of higher education are full of lofty ideals and collegiate high jinks, Alan Taylor’s book Thomas Jefferson’s Education is an insightful yet sobering look at the historical context and inception of the University of Virginia. This text is no hagiography and details how Jefferson’s university was deeply intertwined with slavery and many of the elitist vices common to Virginia gentry.