The Women Jefferson Loved
Book description
“A focused, fresh spin on Jeffersonian biography.” —Kirkus Reviews
In the tradition of Annette Gordon-Reed’s The Hemingses of Monticello and David McCullough’s John Adams, historian Virginia Scharff offers a compelling, highly readable multi-generational biography revealing how the women Thomas Jefferson loved shaped the third president’s ideas and his vision for…
Why read it?
1 author picked The Women Jefferson Loved as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
The study of Jefferson has been dominated by men and has largely focused on politics and Jefferson’s relationships with men. Scharff presents an alternative perspective. She focuses on the women in Jefferson’s life—his mother, sisters, wife, sisters-in-law, daughters, granddaughters, and the enslaved mother of his mixed-race children. The result is an original entry in the vast corpus of books on Jefferson. It’s beautifully written, imbued with sympathy for its subjects. Scharff offers a new perspective on Jefferson but also sheds light on the varied experiences of women of different races and classes in early America. The result is a study…
From Francis' list on Thomas Jefferson from a historian's view.
If you love The Women Jefferson Loved...
Tap Dancing on Everest
Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.
The team attempts a new route up…
Want books like The Women Jefferson Loved?
Our community of 12,000+ authors has personally recommended 100 books like The Women Jefferson Loved.
Share your top 3 reads of 2024!
And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.
1,609
readers submitted
so far, will you?
📚 If you like The Women Jefferson Loved, you might also like...
Benghazi! A New History of the Fiasco that Pushed America and its World to the Brink
Benghazi: A New History is a look back at the enigmatic 2012 attack on the US mission in Benghazi, Libya, its long-tail causes, and devastating (and largely unexamined) consequences for US domestic politics and foreign policy. It contains information not found elsewhere, and is backed up by 40 pages of…
Grand Old Unraveling
It didn’t begin with Donald Trump. When the Republican Party lost five straight presidential elections during the 1930s and 1940s, three things happened: (1) Republicans came to believe that presidential elections are rigged; (2) Conspiracy theories arose and were believed; and (3) The presidency was elevated to cult-like status.
Long…
