Thomas Jefferson's Enlightenment: Paris 1785 - Softcover

Thompson, James C.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0985486392 ISBN 13: 9780985486396

Publisher: Commonwealth Books, 2014

Synopsis

As portrayed in this colorful book, Thomas Jefferson is not quite the monument that readers learn about in school. In a new kind of nonfiction narrative, Jefferson's transformation from frontiersman and political loner into cosmopolitan political leader is taught by submerging the reader in the things that Jefferson did and saw on his travels to Paris in 1785. Featuring 168 museum-quality reproductions of period maps, Parisian scenes, and portraits of the lumieres who welcomed the untraveled American into the salons of prerevolutionary Paris, readers accompany Pierre Cabanis and his aspiring protégé to public gardens, the theatre, salons, the grain exchange, and along the bustling, stinking thoroughfares of the French capital. They accompany Jefferson as he settles into the most elegant and debauched society in the world. Because they are with Jefferson as Cabanis instructs him on the French concept of Progress, they understand how Jefferson became its agent and how his new vision of himself and his role in the world prepared the Father of the Enlightenment in America for the political contest he entered when he returned home.

About this title

About the Author:

James C. Thompson is a professor, artist, and "intellectual tourist" who once lived across the Rivanna River from Monticello on the farm of Jefferson's eldest daughter, Martha Jefferson Randolph. During his four years there, he came to know all the hills and hollows in Jefferson Country. He is the author of many books on Jefferson and American history, including Thomas Jefferson's Early Political Initiatives. He lives in Boothbay Harbor, Maine.

About this edition

• Publisher: Commonwealth Books
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0985486392
• ISBN 13: 9780985486396
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 160