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Article: American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson
- Article from:
- The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography
- Article date:
- July 1, 1997
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright Virginia Historical Society Summer 1997. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson. By JOSEPH J. ELLIS. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1997. xiv, 365 pp. $26.00.
JOSEPH J. ELLIS is in no way enamored of Thomas Jefferson, the "American sphinx," as he calls the third president. In itself, this would not distinguish Ellis's elegant and penetrating examination of "the character of Thomas Jefferson" from many works in the recent flood of books about Jefferson; once regarded as virtually sacrosanct, Jefferson now seems increasingly problematic, and his critics grow in number. But Ellis comes at Jefferson from a special direction. Unlike so many others, he seems never to have been seriously bitten by the Jefferson bug in the ...