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Twilight at Monticello: The Final Years of Thomas Jefferson

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80% Recommended by our customers.
Publisher: Random House
Catalog: Book
Release date: 2008-01-08
Media: Hardcover
Number of pages: 352
Ean: 9781400060795
Book Isbn: 1400060796

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Author:

Alan Pell Crawford

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Professional 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, theMarquis 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

User Reviews:

Written on July 29, 2008
Summary: Reflections on the End of Life
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Being retired and elderly my self I am interested to see how others reach closure on their lives.

What interested me is the consistency of Jefferson's response to the ebb and flow of his life. Denial was his main ego defense and he honed its use till there was barely a pause between the event and his response.

You realize you are dealing with a good man beset by what he wanted and his ability to deliver for himself and his family. You are saddened by the life he dealt his grandson Jefferson Randolph, then self protectively blaming Jeff for not finishing his education.

Reading about his son in law and his grand daughters husband, Charles Bankhead one wishes that AA had been created 200 years earlier. Jefferson was remarkably insightful in his realization that Alcoholism was a medical illness.

Jefferson spoke to me when he wrote,

"When you and I look back on the country over which we have passed, what a field of slaughter does it exhibit! Where are all the friends who entered it with us, under all the inspiring energies of health and hope? As if pursued by the havoc of war, they are strewed by the way, some earlier, some later, and scarce a few stragglers remain to count the numbers fallen, and to mark yet, by their own fall, the last footsteps of their party. Is it a desirable thing to bear up through the heat of action, to witness the death of all our companions, and merely be the last victim?

I recommend this thoughtful book to you.

Written on July 18, 2008
Summary: Makes me want to learn even more about Mr. Jefferson
Bought the book thinking I would learn more about Monticello but discovered so much more about Jefferson. What an interesting man but also full of faults. I had only known about his presidency and his various inventions but this book had fascinating information about his personal life, his family and all the troubles they all encountered over the years.

I enjoyed the book so much I emailed the author to tell him so and he responded. I waiting for the delivery of a second of his books. Can't wait because he writes the kind of book you can't put down. And you come away learning a great deal as well.

Written on June 18, 2008
Summary: Jefferson at the end
An interesting perspective on Thomas Jefferson at the end of his life and his belief in his entitlement.

Written on June 15, 2008
Summary: Jefferson's Golden Years at Monticello
This book discusses the extended family, the estate and the retirement activities of our third president. It's well written, but it's a once over lightly.

While we meet the family members (a family chart is very much needed), we don't understand them. I thought I somewhat knew daughter Martha, but in the end she punishes a slave in a very unseemly manner which didn't fit any impression I had had. While there are character differences between the sons-in-law, their big fight and its aftermath seem to be wedged in, rather than a culmination of differences between the two men. Crawford does a very good job in presenting the story of the Hemings family, but again there is no way to understand them.

The estate and its furnishings are well described. There is a floor plan for the main building and photos and drawings of the grounds and of the other residences. There is little on the slave quarters. A map locating all the family residences would have been helpful. Unlike many writers who cover the finacial past Crawford gives benchmarks to help in understanding the scale of costs and deficits.

What is told of Jefferson's activities is good, but since the retirement spans 18 years there has to be more than what is given. Jefferson's work is always an extension of his philosophy, and Crawford's best work is here. He gives the clearest description of Jefferson on slavery that I have read (inclusive of his holding Britian responsible for rooting it in the new world) and his religious beliefs and views.

While the above review has a lot on the negative side, the problems are not about what apprears, but about what could (or maybe should) have been included. I recommend the book. It reads very well-- in fact--- it reads so well its biggest shortcoming is that there isn't more of it.

Written on May 30, 2008
Summary: Twilight
I am a history buff and have read so much about Jefferson, I almost winced when my husband brought home Twilight at Monticello--what else can there possibly be said? Well, a great deal. We have a bad habit in America of taking someone who has done us a great service and putting them so high up on a pedestal they appear to be gods. (Anyone remember the Victorian print of Washington ascending to Heaven?) This leaves the "god" no where to go but down. Twilight has achieved the 'impossible' which is to render Jefferson as a brilliant but troubled man who helped to form a type of government which was completely at odds with government as then known and risked his life doing it.

Jefferson and the others had no guidelines, no map, only a concept of what liberty should be. And, they did it. It wasn't perfect; we all know that. Nevertheless, they took the steps to achieve something that, even though flawed, gave us the liberty as time went by to amend their original ideas when they were incorrect. It works; it takes time but it works. After the Revolution, he inevitably became a god.

Later he was pulled down from God status, and correctly so, by historians stating that he was a slave holder, a father who had trouble with the "empty nest", had relatives you could dress up but you couldn't take out, and, we can all be joyful that Hamilton did the banking part since Jefferson seemed to have absolutely no concept of accounting.

Twilight is where Crawford has done Jefferson, and us, a service. He shows an old man who is out of the spotlight, mourning his chldren, madly in love with his grandchildren, making amends with old friends he has argued with, seeing comrades for the last time, worrying about slavery but unable to let go of his own slaves, desperate to pay his debts but still spending and borrowing (Mastercard anyone?), and suffering from poor health while moving on toward the end of his life. Crawford has done away with the god problem and has given us a real person, warts and all, and in so doing shows us a founding father who still shines brightly.

That is the beauty of Twilight.

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Our price	$17.82	$10.17	$17.79	$23.07	$31.50	$10.17
List price	$27.00	$14.95	$26.95	$34.95	$50.00	$14.95
Lowest used price	$11.00	$7.50	$10.81	$19.95	$14.95	$8.46
Lowest new price	$13.49	$8.00	$11.99	$19.95	$27.51	$8.49
Collectible price	$29.55	-	-	-	$50.00	-
Catalog	Book	Book	Book	Book	Book	Book
Release date	2008-01-08	2008-10-14	2008-01-28	2008-07-01	2007-11-06	2008-10-14
Media	Hardcover	Paperback	Hardcover	Hardcover	Hardcover	Paperback
Format	-	-	Illustrated	-	-	-
Number of pages	352	304	336	752	354	304
Ean	9781400060795	9781400078578	9780786720125	9780195307580	9781579652753	9780307276452
Book Isbn	1400060796	1400078571	0786720123	0195307585	1579652751	0307276457
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Twilight at Monticello: The Final Years of Thomas Jefferson