The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family
by Annette Gordon-Reed
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List Price: $35.00
Our Price: $20.41
Your Save: $ 14.59 ( 42% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: W.W. Norton & Co.
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Average Customer Rating:   
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.460922
EAN: 9780393064773
ISBN: 0393064778
Label: W.W. Norton & Co.
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 800
Publication Date: 2008-09-17
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co.
Studio: W.W. Norton & Co.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Insights Into America Through One Family
Comment: This is an incredibly rich and detailed history of one African-American family, the Hemingses of Monticello. Ten years ago DNA analysis confirmed a two hundred year old rumor, that Sally Hemings, a slave belonging to Thomas Jefferson, had in all likelihood been his mistress and borne children by him. In the years since the original DNA results were released more research has confirmed yet another old rumor, that Sally Hemings was actually the half-sister of Jefferson's own wife.
Annette Gordon-Reed's thorough research has recreated the lives of the Hemings family at Monticello and their complicated relationship with President Jefferson. In so doing she has also illuminated something that has been swept under the rug and carefully ignored by many: that the relationship between slave and owner was often not just economic in nature. Exploitation could be sexual in nature, but sometimes, as was apparently the case with Jefferson and Hemings, it had a more tender emotional element as well. Thus Gordon-Reed has made a major contribution to our national understanding and reconciliation.
I am a white Southerner with many ancestors who owned slaves, including some who lived not far from Monticello. I have also had my own DNA analyzed, discovering among other things that my maternal line ancestry has a connection to a prominent living African-American. Such discoveries, which more and more Americans will make as DNA analysis becomes more common, along with books like The Hemingses of Monticello, should help us find healing at long last.
Customer Rating:
Summary: no title
Comment: this is a remarkable book. Gordon-Reed has taken the famous dna test of the jefferson descendants and extrapolated the genome for a good portion of the american experience. as history this is about as far as you can get from both marx and the annales school. it's as specific and imponderable and irreducible as human love and atrocity. america as a totally disfunctional, nightmarish yet ultimately redeeming family (his)story.
gordon-reed mixes a historian's curiosity and methodology with a lawyer's sifting of the evidence. while many of her conclusions are highly circumstantial they are nonetheless convincing. her readings of minimal 'evidential' traces is absolutely extraordinary. the discriminant always seems to be just how inbred racism and sexism is to american society. in the year of obama, this is the book.
Customer Rating:
Summary: This is history writtn by TMZ
Comment: Maybe worth a read if your into the Jeffersonian Saga but it's not worth much.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Ostentatious writing
Comment: This is an excellent story about interesting characters. There is more than sufficient historical background to give life to the setting. The pleasure of the reading is lessened by the author's attempts to over-impress the reader with her credentials and vocabulary. Read this if you want a historical essay; skip it if you're looking for a good novel.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Slavery from the Slaves Point of View
Comment: This is a fascinating but too long and over detailed discussion of the Hemings family, owned by Thomas Jefferson, the man who told us "all men are created equal." It is probably not fair to judge the lives of slaves from the Hemings family because they were, in the context of that society, always over privileged, having been the children of a black mother, Elizabeth Hemings and a white father, John Wayles. They were always house servants, some of them men were free to work for wages with Jefferson's permission, one of them, James, became an accomplished French chef while Jefferson was our envoy to France, but they clearly remained slaves until late in Jefferson's life, when he freed some of them. Sally Hemings was able to negotiate freedom for the children she had with Jefferson. And, of course, this tale cuts Thomas Jefferson down to size, a brilliant man who was nevertheless not true to his own rhetoric and who truly believed in white and male supremacy.
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Editorial Reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Insights Into America Through One Family
Comment: This is an incredibly rich and detailed history of one African-American family, the Hemingses of Monticello. Ten years ago DNA analysis confirmed a two hundred year old rumor, that Sally Hemings, a slave belonging to Thomas Jefferson, had in all likelihood been his mistress and borne children by him. In the years since the original DNA results were released more research has confirmed yet another old rumor, that Sally Hemings was actually the half-sister of Jefferson's own wife.
Annette Gordon-Reed's thorough research has recreated the lives of the Hemings family at Monticello and their complicated relationship with President Jefferson. In so doing she has also illuminated something that has been swept under the rug and carefully ignored by many: that the relationship between slave and owner was often not just economic in nature. Exploitation could be sexual in nature, but sometimes, as was apparently the case with Jefferson and Hemings, it had a more tender emotional element as well. Thus Gordon-Reed has made a major contribution to our national understanding and reconciliation.
I am a white Southerner with many ancestors who owned slaves, including some who lived not far from Monticello. I have also had my own DNA analyzed, discovering among other things that my maternal line ancestry has a connection to a prominent living African-American. Such discoveries, which more and more Americans will make as DNA analysis becomes more common, along with books like The Hemingses of Monticello, should help us find healing at long last.
Customer Rating:
Summary: no title
Comment: this is a remarkable book. Gordon-Reed has taken the famous dna test of the jefferson descendants and extrapolated the genome for a good portion of the american experience. as history this is about as far as you can get from both marx and the annales school. it's as specific and imponderable and irreducible as human love and atrocity. america as a totally disfunctional, nightmarish yet ultimately redeeming family (his)story.
gordon-reed mixes a historian's curiosity and methodology with a lawyer's sifting of the evidence. while many of her conclusions are highly circumstantial they are nonetheless convincing. her readings of minimal 'evidential' traces is absolutely extraordinary. the discriminant always seems to be just how inbred racism and sexism is to american society. in the year of obama, this is the book.
Customer Rating:
Summary: This is history writtn by TMZ
Comment: Maybe worth a read if your into the Jeffersonian Saga but it's not worth much.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Ostentatious writing
Comment: This is an excellent story about interesting characters. There is more than sufficient historical background to give life to the setting. The pleasure of the reading is lessened by the author's attempts to over-impress the reader with her credentials and vocabulary. Read this if you want a historical essay; skip it if you're looking for a good novel.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Slavery from the Slaves Point of View
Comment: This is a fascinating but too long and over detailed discussion of the Hemings family, owned by Thomas Jefferson, the man who told us "all men are created equal." It is probably not fair to judge the lives of slaves from the Hemings family because they were, in the context of that society, always over privileged, having been the children of a black mother, Elizabeth Hemings and a white father, John Wayles. They were always house servants, some of them men were free to work for wages with Jefferson's permission, one of them, James, became an accomplished French chef while Jefferson was our envoy to France, but they clearly remained slaves until late in Jefferson's life, when he freed some of them. Sally Hemings was able to negotiate freedom for the children she had with Jefferson. And, of course, this tale cuts Thomas Jefferson down to size, a brilliant man who was nevertheless not true to his own rhetoric and who truly believed in white and male supremacy.
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.
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