Thomas Jefferson
A Modern Prometheus

Provides a critical and controversial re-assessment of Thomas Jefferson and the Jeffersonian influence by a leading intellectual historian.

Wilson Jeremiah Moses (Author)

9781108470964, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 28 March 2019

518 pages, 1 b/w illus.
23.5 x 15.7 x 3.5 cm, 0.87 kg

'… offers a critical intellectual assessment of the man [Jefferson] and his influence.' G. A. Smith, Choice

In Thomas Jefferson: A Modern Prometheus, Wilson Jeremiah Moses provides a critical assessment of Thomas Jefferson and the Jeffersonian influence. Scholars of American history have long debated the legacy of Thomas Jefferson. However, Moses deviates from other interpretations by positioning himself within an older, 'Federalist' historiographic tradition, offering vigorous and insightful commentary on Jefferson, the man and the myth. Moses specifically focuses on Jefferson's complexities and contradictions. Measuring Jefferson's political accomplishments, intellectual contributions, moral character, and other distinguishing traits against contemporaries like George Washington and Benjamin Franklin but also figures like Machiavelli and Frederick the Great, Moses contends that Jefferson fell short of the greatness of others. Yet amid his criticism of Jefferson, Moses paints him as a cunning strategist, an impressive intellectual, and a consummate pragmatist who continually reformulated his ideas in a universe that he accurately recognized to be unstable, capricious, and treacherous.

1. Introduction
2. Lincoln and historiography
3. Let our workshops remain at Monticello
4. Life, liberty, property, and peace
5. What is genius? 'Openness, brilliance, and leadership'
6. A Renaissance man in the age of the Enlightenment
7. Baconism and natural science
8. Anthropology and ethnic cleansing: white 'rubbish' blacks, and Indians
9. Education, religion, and social control
10. Women and the Count of Monticello
11. Debt, deference and consumption
12. Defining the presidency.

Subject Areas: History of ideas [JFCX], History of the Americas [HBJK]