Synopses & Reviews
Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's magnificent mountaintop home in Charlottesville, Virginia, has attracted public attention ever since Jefferson's day, when sightseers regularly visited the grounds in hopes of catching a glimpse of the former president. Today, each year more than half a million people from around the world visit Monticello, the only home in America on the United Nations' list of World Heritage Sites that must be protected at all costs.
Thomas Jefferson's Monticello is a superb collection of essays, adorned with beautiful color photography, that showcases this American treasure. Designed by Jefferson himself, Monticello is a model of elegance and symmetry. It is also home to Jefferson's world-class collection of art and porcelain from France, scientific instruments from England, the finest American furniture from Philadelphia and New York, and enduring furnishings made in Monticello's own joinery by enslaved craftsmen. The celebrated gardens and grounds form an experimental yet breathtakingly lovely landscape featuring flowers, fruits, and vegetables of the Old and New Worlds.
Featuring essays by Monticello's scholarly staff, this stunning book explores all aspects of Jefferson's home. A section on the plantation and the enslaved community at Monticello provides a larger context in which to place and understand the house, its activities, and its owner.
Review
Many books have been devoted to Monticello; this stands with the best. (Richmond Times-Dispatch)
Review
This beautiful book captures the home's aesthetic appeal, and the experts writing the text bring new information on the way Jefferson lived, studied, and created there. (Garry Wills, author of Lincoln at Gettysburg)
Review
This book takes us on a photographic and textual adventure into the spirit of Monticello and its architect, Thomas Jefferson. (Southern Living)
Review
This is a rare coffee-table book, not only handsome but full of worthwhile text and insights into the life and thinking of Jefferson as president, architect and Renaissance man. (Los Angeles Times)
Synopsis
Thomas Jefferson's Monticello is a superb collection of essays and color photographs showcasing this American treasure. With essays by William L. Beiswanger, Peter J. Hatch, Lucia Stanton, and Susan R. Stein, this stunning book explores all aspects of Jefferson's home. A section on the plantation and the enslaved community at Monticello provides a larger context in which to place and understand the house, its activities, and its owner.
About the Author
William L. Beiswanger is Robert H. Smith Director of Restoration at Monticello and has overseen numerous landscape and building restoration projects there. He is a contributor to the National Trust books American Landscape Architecture and Master Builders, and the author of Monticello in Measured Drawings. Director of Gardens and Grounds since 1977, Peter J. Hatch is responsible for the care, restoration, and interpretation of Jefferson's Monticello landscape. He is an authority on Jefferson's gardening interests and on the history of plants in American gardens. His most recent book is The Fruits and Fruit Trees of Monticello. Lucia Stanton is Shannon Senior Research Historian at Monticello. The author or co-editor of various books on Jefferson, including Jefferson's Memorandum Books, Free Some Day: The African-American Families of Monticello, and Slavery at Monticello, she is currently involved in an oral history of the descendants of Jefferson's slaves, which is part of her research on the African-American families of Monticello and on the plantation at large. Curator of Monticello since 1986, Susan R. Stein has responsibility for Thomas Jefferson's world-famous house and the wide variety of artifacts that relate to Jefferson's life on the mountain. She organized the landmark 1993 exhibition that commemorated the 250th anniversary of Jefferson's birth and produced the exhibition catalog The Worlds of Thomas Jefferson at Monticello.
Table of Contents
Many books have been devoted to Monticello; this stands with the best. (
Richmond Times-Dispatch) This is a rare coffee-table book, not only handsome but full of worthwhile text and insights into the life and thinking of Jefferson as president, architect and Renaissance man. (
Los Angeles Times) This book takes us on a photographic and textual adventure into the spirit of Monticello and its architect, Thomas Jefferson. (
Southern Living) This beautiful book captures the home's aesthetic appeal, and the experts writing the text bring new information on the way Jefferson lived, studied, and created there. (Garry Wills, author of
Lincoln at Gettysburg)