Virginia Books

The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family

Annette Gordon-Reed

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 12 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Most Disappointing and Maddening Book of the Year 1 out of 5 stars.
22 of 36 people found this review helpful.

I bought this book out of an interest in the subject matter and relying on the impressive credentials of its author. I anticipated that this would be an actual history that would bring many primary source materials together to paint a cohesive picture of the "Hemingses of Monticello."

As Gordon-Reed expressly states, Sally Hemings is a cipher, since there is so little epistolary or other primary source material extant to flesh out her presence in the narrative. Gordon-Reed seems to believe that that gives her unlimited license to project whatever thoughts, experiences, and motivations she likes upon someone who is very close to a blank page in history. It is unfair that Sally Hemings is very nearly a blank page--which injustice is not rectified by essentially inventing a persona and events for her life out of the author's imagination and suppositions. The grossest disservice of all is Gordon-Reed's supposition that Sally Hemings was defined entirely by her enslavement, despite considerable evidence to the contrary. Human beings, even enslaved ones, are more than the sum of their circumstances.

Gordon-Reed herself discusses the dangers of speculation about and projecting modern values upon historical subjects--and then disingenuously proceeds to do just that. Concerning both the Hemingses and Jeffersons et al, this book is full of outrageously broad generalizations, wild speculation, and leaps of imagination made and taken from the historical and moral perspective of a modern academic. One would expect more rigorous intellectual discipline from any author who purports to interpret history.

No one who picks up this book is likely to need convincing of the horrors of slavery--or even of 18th-century white male European patriarchy--but Gordon-Reed spends the better part of 700 pages bending others' scholarship to serve an agenda which admits of no historical context for, or alternative understandings of, actual facts. Gordon-Reed is welcome to an agenda, but it isn't history.

Since I am one of those who cannot stop reading a book--any book--before the end, I have spent the better part of the last 24 hours seething over "The Hemingses of Monticello" and what I consider to be false marketing of this work. Evidently I will have to track down and read the materials cited in the bibliography to get real information on the subject.

Editorial Review:

Historian and legal scholar Annette Gordon-Reed presents this epic work that tells the story of the Hemingses, an American slave family, and their close blood ties to Thomas Jefferson.

Remarkable Trees of Virginia

Nancy Ross Hugo

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

This stunning collaboration between the noted garden writer Nancy Ross Hugo and the photographer Robert Llewellyn showcases the fruits of an effort begun in 2004 to research, locate, and photograph Virginia's most remarkable trees. Four years later, more than one thousand trees had been officially nominated to the project and many others suggested for possible inclusion. The results, presented in this elegant, four-color volume, are astounding. Hugo and Kirwan, the project coordinators, have selected a sample of trees and "tree places" that illustrate the enormous variety, startling beauty, and fascinating history of Virginia's trees. Here you will see, through Llewellyn's incomparable lens, not only some of Virginia's largest trees, including a newly discovered national champion overcup oak in Isle of Wight County, but also some of the state's oldest, including baldcypress trees over 800 years old in Southampton County and red cedars over 450 years old in Giles. You will find unique trees like a willow oak in which a tricycle is embedded, fine specimens like the massive American beech in front of Sleepy Hollow Methodist Church in Falls Church, and outrageously shaped trees, like the water tupelos in the Cypress Bridge area of Southampton County. You will find trees associated with famous people and events as well as trees associated with ordinary people in extraordinary ways. Perhaps best of all, you will learn about communities that have gone to great lengths to protect their trees and about places where the public can visit some of the best trees and "treescapes" in the state.

Remarkable Trees of Virginia is a celebration of trees, but it doesn't dodge hard issues. In a section on urban forests, the authors describe the major problems facing trees in urban areas and point out strategies urban foresters are using to solve them. They describe the ecological services trees provide and issue a call for action both to protect trees in their existing habitats and to find more places where trees can "grow large and long."

Hugo, Kirwan, and Llewellyn present a treasury of Virginia's trees that is, indeed, remarkable.

Twilight at Monticello: The Final Years of Thomas Jefferson

Alan Pell Crawford

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Total reviews: 34 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Much has been written about Thomas Jefferson, with good reason: His life was a great American drama–one of the greatest–played out in compelling acts. He was the architect of our democracy, a visionary chief executive who expanded this nation’s physical boundaries to unimagined lengths. But Twilight at Monticello is something entirely new: an unprecedented and engrossing personal look at the intimate Jefferson in his final years that will change the way readers think about this true American icon. It was during these years–from his return to Monticello in 1809 after two terms as president until his death in 1826–that Jefferson’s idealism would be most severely, and heartbreakingly, tested.

Based on new research and documents culled from the Library of Congress, the Virginia Historical Society, and other special collections, including hitherto unexamined letters from family, friends, and Monticello neighbors, Alan Pell Crawford paints an authoritative and deeply moving portrait of Thomas Jefferson as private citizen–the first original depiction of the man in more than a generation.

Here, told with grace and masterly detail, is Jefferson with his family at Monticello, dealing with illness and the indignities wrought by early-nineteenth-century medicine; coping with massive debt and the immense costs associated with running a grand residence; navigating public disputes and mediating family squabbles; receiving dignitaries and corresponding
with close friends, including John Adams, the Marquis de Lafayette, and other heroes from the Revolution. Enmeshed as he was in these affairs during his final years, Jefferson was still a viable political force, advising his son-in-law Thomas Randolph during his terms as Virginia governor, helping the administration of his good friend President James Madison during the “internal improvements” controversy, and establishing the first wholly secular American institution of higher learning, the University of Virginia at Charlottesville. We also see Jefferson’s views on slavery evolve, along with his awareness of the costs to civil harmony exacted by the Founding Fathers’ failure to effectively reconcile slaveholding within a republic dedicated to liberty.

Right up until his death on the fiftieth anniversary of America’s founding, Thomas Jefferson remained an indispensable man, albeit a supremely human one. And it is precisely that figure Alan Pell Crawford introduces to us in the revelatory Twilight at Monticello.

'Crawford (Thunder on the Right) offers his own equally compelling look, in this case at Jefferson's life, post-presidency, from 1809 until his death in 1826. Then a private citizen, Jefferson was burdened by financial and personal and political struggles within his extended family. His beloved estate, Monticello, was costly to maintain and Jefferson was in debt. Newly studying primary sources, Crawford thoroughly conveys the pathos of Jefferson's last years, even as he successfully established the University of Virginia (America's first wholly secular university) and maintained contact with James Madison, John Adams, and other luminaries. He personally struggled with political, moral, and religious issues; Crawford shows us a complex, self-contradictory, idealistic, yet tragic figure, helpless to stabilize his family and finances. Historians and informed readers alike will find much to relish in both of these distinctive works of original scholarship. Both are recommended for academic and large public libraries.
–Library Journal

“In "Twilight at Monticello," Alan Pell Crawford treats his subject with grace and sympathetic understanding, and with keen penetration as well, showing the great man's contradictions (and hypocrisies) for what they were.”
–Wall Street Journal


“Like all people, famous or almost unknown, Jefferson was a mass of contradictions. Crawford explores them masterfully, thus indeed presenting a new Jefferson for a new generation.”
–Houston Chronicle

“…a worthy addition to the already enormous body of Thomas Jefferson scholarship. Crawford did his homework well, using literally dozens of sources to give us an unvarnished picture of the human side of one of America’s greatest leaders in an entertaining, fast-moving narrative. You might never loom at Monticello in quite the same way again after reading this book.”
–The Fredericksburg (Va.) Free-Lance Star

Where Valor Rests: Arlington National Cemetery

Rick Atkinson

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Total reviews: 23 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Arlington National Cemetery spreads across the rolling hills west of the Potomac, a serene and reverent sanctuary for the presidents, soldiers, and heroes—famous and unsung alike—who lie in eternal rest among its green lawns and quiet glades, a roster dating back to America's birth and including many of the foremost names in our history. A national monument in the truest sense, Arlington's solemn beauty embraces a brave legacy—a heritage remembered and renewed every day as the military buries its own.

Bittersweet, breath-taking, sometimes heart-wrenching, always deeply respectful, this commemorative book guides readers gently over tree-lined slopes to share the ceremonies observed throughout the year, from the traditional wreath-laying on Memorial Day, which enshrines centuries of courage with a formality at once austere and profoundly emotional, to the moving graveside services that honor individual men and women who served our country. Captured in stunning color by a select group of gifted photographers, 220 unforgettable images create a portrait as poignant as it is proud.

Archival photographs also trace the history of the cemetery from the early National Historic Monument, "Arlington House," to the eternal flame at the Kennedy grave to sections for the lost astronauts and victims of the 9/11 Pentagon attack. With an Introduction by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Rick Atkinson, this lovely volume is both a fitting tribute and a stirring reminder of the values we Americans hold dear.

Firefight: Inside the Battle to Save the Pentagon on 9/11

Patrick Creed, Rick Newman

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Total reviews: 15 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Amid all the stories of tragedy and heroism on September 11, there is one tale that has yet to be told–the gripping account of ordinary men and women braving the inferno at the Pentagon to rescue friends and co-workers, save the nation’s military headquarters, and defend their country.

Pentagon firefighters Alan Wallace and Mark Skipper had just learned the shocking news that planes had struck the World Trade Center when they saw something equally inconceivable: a twin-engine jetliner flying straight at them. It was American Airlines Flight 77, rushing toward its target. In his Pentagon office, Army major David King was planning a precautionary evacuation when the room suddenly erupted in flames. Arlington firefighters Derek Spector, Brian Roache, and Ron Christman, among the first responders at the scene, were stunned by the sight that met them: a huge flaming hole gouged into the Pentagon’s side, a lawn strewn with smoking debris, and thousands of people, some badly injured, stumbling away from what would become one of the most daunting fires in American history.

For more than twenty-four hours, Arlington firefighters and other crews faced some of the most dangerous and unusual circumstances imaginable. The size and structure of the Pentagon itself presented unique challenges, compelling firefighters to devise ingenious tactics and make bold decisions–until they finally extinguished the fire that threatened to cripple America’s military infrastructure just when it was needed most.

Granted unprecedented access to the major players in the valiant response efforts, Patrick Creed and Rick Newman take us step-by-step through the harrowing minutes, hours, and days following the crash of American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon’s western façade. Providing fascinating personal stories of the firefighters and rescuers, a broader view of how the U.S. national security command structure was held intact, and a sixteen-page insert of dramatic photographs, Firefight is a unique testament to the fortitude and resilience of America.

Thomas Jefferson on Wine

John Hailman

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Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> Drinks & Beverages -> Spirits

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Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

In Thomas Jefferson on Wine, John Hailman celebrates a founding father's lifelong interest in wine and provides unprecedented insight into Jefferson's character from this unique perspective. In both his personal and public lives, Jefferson wielded his considerable expertise to influence the drinking habits of his friends, other founding fathers, and the American public away from hard liquor toward the healthier pleasures of wine.

An international wine judge and nationally syndicated wine columnist, Hailman discusses how Jefferson's tastes developed, which wines and foods he preferred at different stages of his life, and how Jefferson became the greatest wine expert of the early American republic. Hailman explores the third president's fascination with scores of wines from his student days at Williamsburg to his lengthy retirement years at Monticello, using mainly Jefferson's own words from hundreds of immensely readable and surprisingly modern letters on the subject.

Hailman examines Jefferson's five critical years in Paris, where he learned about fine wines at Europe's salons and dinner tables as American Ambassador. The book uses excerpts from Jefferson's colorful travel journals of his visits to France, Italy, and Germany, as well as his letters to friends and wine merchants, some of whose descendants still produce the wines Jefferson enjoyed. Vivid contemporaneous accounts of dinners at the White House allow readers to experience vicariously Jefferson's "Champagne diplomacy." The book concludes with an overview of the current restoration of the vineyards at Monticello and the new Monticello Wine Trail and its numerous world-class Virginia wineries. In Thomas Jefferson on Wine Hailman presents an absorbing and unique view of this towering historical figure.

John R. Hailman, a trial attorney and adjunct professor of law and literature at the University of Mississippi School of Law in Oxford, wrote a wine column that appeared in the Washington Post and in syndication for over a decade with Gannett News Service. Hailman has served as a judge at numerous international wine competitions for over twenty years.

Three Generations, No Imbeciles: Eugenics, the Supreme Court, and Buck v. Bell

Paul A. Lombardo

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

"Three generations of imbeciles are enough." Few lines from Supreme Court opinions are as memorable as this declaration by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. in the landmark 1927 case Buck v. Bell. The ruling allowed states to forcibly sterilize residents in order to prevent "feebleminded and socially inadequate" people from having children. It is the only time the Supreme Court endorsed surgery as a tool of government policy. Paul Lombardo's startling narrative exposes the Buck case's fraudulent roots.

In 1924 Carrie Buck -- involuntarily institutionalized by the State of Virginia after she was raped and impregnated -- challenged the state's plan to sterilize her. Having already judged her mother and daughter mentally deficient, Virginia wanted to make Buck the first person sterilized under a new law designed to prevent hereditarily "defective" people from reproducing. Lombardo's more than twenty-five years of research and his own interview with Buck before she died demonstrate conclusively that she was destined to lose the case before it had even begun. Neither Carrie Buck nor her mother and daughter were the "imbeciles" condemned in the Holmes opinion. Her lawyer -- a founder of the institution where she was held -- never challenged Virginia's arguments and called no witnesses on Buck's behalf. And judges who heard her case, from state courts up to the U.S. Supreme Court, sympathized with the eugenics movement. Virginia had Carrie Buck sterilized shortly after the 1927 decision.

Though Buck set the stage for more than sixty thousand involuntary sterilizations in the United States and was cited at the Nuremberg trials in defense of Nazi sterilization experiments, it has never been overturned. Three Generations, No Imbeciles tracks the notorious case through its history, revealing that it remains a potent symbol of government control of reproduction and a troubling precedent for the human genome era.

A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Own Narratives of Emancipation

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Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Slave narratives are extremely rare. Of the one hundred or so of these testimonies that survive, a mere handful are first-person accounts by slaves who ran away and freed themselves. Now two newly uncovered narratives, and the biographies of the men who wrote them, join that exclusive group.

Wallace Turnage was a teenage field hand on an Alabama plantation, John Washington an urban slave in Virginia. They never met. But both men saw opportunity in the chaos of the Civil War, both escaped North, and both left us remarkable accounts of their flights to freedom. Handed down through family and friends these narratives tell gripping stories of escape.

Working from an unusual abundance of genealogical material, historian David W. Blight has reconstructed Turnage’s and Washington’s childhoods as sons of white slaveholders and their climb to black working-class stability in the North, where they reunited their families. In A Slave No More, the untold stories of two ordinary men take their place at the heart of the American experience.

The Bedford Boys: One American Town's Ultimate D-Day Sacrifice

Alex Kershaw

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Total reviews: 36 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

On June 6, 1944, nineteen boys from Bedford, Virginia--population 3,000--died in the first bloody minutes of D-Day when their landing craft dropped them in shallow water off Omaha Beach. They were part of the first wave of American soldiers to hit the sands of Normandy. Later that day, two more soldiers from the same small town died of gunshot wounds. Twenty-one sons of Bedford killed--no other town in America suffered a greater one-day loss. It is a story that one cannot easily forget--and one that the families of Bedford will never forget. It was, and still is, Bedford's longest day.The Bedford Boys is the intimate true story of these young men and their friends and families in Bedford. It portrays a neighborhood of soldiers before and during the war--from the girlfriends they left behind to the buddies they made in basic training, from anxious barracks in England to the bloody beaches of Normandy. Based on extensive interviews with survivors and relatives as well as on diaries and letters, Alex Kershaw's book focuses on several remarkable individuals and families to tell one of the most poignant stories of World War II--the story of one small American town that went to war and died on Omaha Beach.

George Washington : Writings (Library of America)

George Washington

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Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

In this splendid book, Washington finally speaks for himself 5 out of 5 stars.
61 of 61 people found this review helpful.

George Washington is far more revered than known; but, as this splendid book proves, when you come to know him you feel even more admiration for him. This installment in the indispensable LIBRARY OF AMERICA series gathers hundreds of Washington's letters, as well as his more formal public statements as Virginia legislator and revolutionary leader, Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army, advocate of federal constitutional reform, and First President of the United States. The formal public statements display the heavy style that Washington fell into when consciously speaking to posterity. It is in his letters that Washington's vigorous mind, strong emotions, and sound judgment emerge most cleary -- and that portray his humanity and his nobility most clearly and accessibly. Readers of this volume would be well-advised to read John Rhodehamel's superb chronology (appearing at the back of the book) first, and then turning to the text. If they do this, they will have! a sound chronological and historical basis for setting Washington's writings, public and private, in context and for seeing the critical founding decades of the American republic as he saw and experienced them.

-- Richard B. Bernstein, Adjunct Professor of Law, New York Law School; Daniel M. Lyons Visiting Professor in American History, Brooklyn College/CUNY; Book Review Editor for Constitutional Books, H-LAW; and Senior Research Fellow, Council on Citizenship Education, Russell Sage College

Editorial Review:

Bringing together 450 letters, orders, addresses, and other significant historical documents penned by America's first president during the course of his life, a substantial anthology is arranged chronologically beginning with a journal written at age sixteen.