American Sphinx

The Character of Thomas Jefferson

By: Joseph J. Ellis

Narrated by: Susan O'Malley

For a man who insisted that life on the public stage was not what he had in mind, Thomas Jefferson certainly spent a great deal of time in the spotlight - and not only during his active political career. After 1809, his longed-for retirement was compromised by a steady stream of guests and tourists who made of his estate at Monticello a virtual hotel, as well as by more than one thousand letters per year, most from strangers, which he insisted on answering personally. In his twilight years Jefferson was already taking on the luster of a national icon, which was polished off by his auspicious death (on July 4, 1896); and in the subsequent 17 decades of his celebrity - now verging, thanks to virulent revisionists and television documentaries, on notoriety - has been inflated beyond recognition of the original person.

For the historian Joseph J. Ellis, the experience of writing about Jefferson was "as if a pathologist, just about to begin an autopsy, has discovered that the body on the operating table was still breathing." In American Sphinx, Ellis sifts the facts shrewdly from the legends and the rumors, treading a path between vilification and hero worship in order to formulate a plausible portrait of the man who still today "hover[s] over the political scene like one of those dirigibles cruising above a crowded football stadium, flashing words of inspiration to both teams". For, at the grass roots, Jefferson is no longer liberal or conservative, agrarian or industrialist, pro- or anti-slavery, privileged or populist. He is all things to all people. His own obliviousness to incompatible convictions within himself (which left him deaf to most forms of irony) has leaked out into the world at large - a world determined to idolize him despite his foibles.

From Ellis we learn that Jefferson sang incessantly under his breath; that he delivered only two public speeches in eight years as president, while spending 10 hours a day at his writing desk; that sometimes his political sensibilities collided with his domestic agenda, as when he ordered an expensive piano from London during a boycott (and pledged to "keep it in storage"). We see him relishing such projects as the nailery at Monticello that allowed him to interact with his slaves more palatably, as pseudo-employer to pseudo-employees. We grow convinced that he preferred to meet his lovers in the rarefied region of his mind rather than in the actual bedchamber. We watch him exhibiting both great depth and great shallowness, combining massive learning with extraordinary naïveté, piercing insights with self-deception on the grandest scale. We understand why we should neither beatify him nor consign him to the rubbish heap of history, though we are by no means required to stop loving him. He is Thomas Jefferson, after all - our very own sphinx.

©1997 Joseph J. Ellis (P)2021 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“Fascinating...an erudite and illuminating study.” (The New York Times)

“This elegant book on Jefferson sets a standard - history at its best.” (Chicago Tribune Editor’s Choice)

“A brilliant, unconventional look at Jefferson...beautifully written, cogently argues, full of both zealous scholarship and lively imagination.”(Cleveland Plain Dealer)

“Magnificent.... Ellis has a Jeffersonian gift for language.” (Newsweek)

A good portrait of Jefferson’s character

The book does a good job displaying the contradictions and complexities of Jefferson, and while the Sally Hemings content hasn’t aged well, it does serve as another example of how elusive and contradictory Jefferson could be.

Jo, this hurts me as much as it’s gonna hurt you

Joseph Ellis is one hell of a great historian and writer – – probably my favorite. He really went out on a limb, though, which he cautions us not to do when studying history, when siding with the naysayers on the misogyny matter.

He convinced me that Thomas Jefferson was so very private and also perfectly comfortable living in painful paradox. Jefferson is also the sphinx – we don’t know what the hell he’s thinking.

That, and sally Hemmings was a drop-dead beauty who spent a lot of time in Mr. Jefferson’s chamber. He was very kind to his slaves, and he sorely yearned for the comfort of sexual intimacy which might also appear yet greater in temptation, knowing he could control this relationship and thereby the paradox and the wrongs. I find for the plaintiff, even in the absence of DNA

Hemming footnote was a HUGE error, which he notably corrects in at least one later work. He therefore remains among my top historians. Blame that scheming visionary Jefferson and that twisted curious institution that even today spews nuclear debris

Good book but goes in waves

It was interesting but had a lot of lag content wise. The reader was okay but if I sped it up then it became much hard to understand. Overall I really liked the book and would recommend to other it just wasn’t my personal favorite

Indelible portrait of a complex visionary

This book is a portrait of the personality of Thomas Jefferson more than a biography. It is propelled by beautiful and nuanced prose. It’s accessible to the general reader and contains a wealth of historiography. The audio book has two minor weaknesses. One, the chapters are far too long most approach two hours. Two, this audio does not capture the revised appendix which came out in 1998 that discusses DNA test results related to Sally Hemming’s children. Since the audio came out later this is inexplicable. But the book is a genuinely beautiful. It is certainly worthy of the National Book Award.

Jefferson, As Seen By Big Government

This is the "history" as it would have been written by the Federalists if they'd hired an academic prostitute to make some pretensions of objectivity. It's nasty towards Jefferson in every possible way. It portrays him as a shallow thinker (he wasn't) and a cartoon character (he wasn't that, either.)

The author repeatedly engages in his own fantasies about the current nature of America, and in wishful thinking about the Constitution. He is of the opinion that the 10th Amendment is a legal and cultural nullity; it is not. Even before the addition of Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett the Supreme Court had been trending far more Federalist than the author allows. He's also of the opinion that the New Deal and Great Society were unqualified successes. In fact they were catastrophic failures that have done NOTHING to improve the conditions of the vast majority of Americans--least of all those they were supposed to be helping--and their "crowning achievements," the Entitlement Programs, are bankrupting the country.

Why is Jefferson still an American icon, given the authors opinion of his irrelevance? Well, simply put, the author is a nincompoop. Americans remain deeply suspicious of government in all of its forms, just as Jefferson was. Americans aspire to a freer, more tolerant, and more open country, just as Jefferson did, even if we are almost as bad at realizing our aspirations as Jefferson was.

As for his view that Jefferson's approach to governance was simplistic idealism while the Federalists (and all later Big Government incarnations thereof) have been universally successful and that Jefferson's characterization of them as corrupt was nonsense, well, again, he is as completely mistaken as anyone can be. If we cannot characterize dangling bright expensive objects bought with money we do not have in front of voters as corruption, how should we characterize it? Stupidity? No, for it is done deliberately. Shortsightedness? But no, that doesn't do either. Hamilton knew he was writing checks the Treasury could not support. Indeed, he advocated it as a GREAT GOOD. Thirty-two trillion dollars later, we are the brokest country in history, and if Hamilton could not see it, surely from the vantage point of modernity the author must be blind as a mole rat if he can't.

Jefferson was correct about John Marshall, and the author is (as usual) mistaken. The Founders did NOT intend for the Supreme Court to have the power that it does, and contrary to his opinion, they did not even intend for the Federal Judiciary to have the extent of judicial review that Marshall thought himself entitled to. There already was a form of judicial review that had been exercised in England under the Common Law, and that was the extent of their endorsement. Indeed, they did not even intend the Federal Judiciary to be a co-equal branch of government. They set its personnel, its structure, and even the scope of laws it was permitted to adjudicate ENTIRELY under the power of Congress.

Finally, to comment on the Hemmings scandal, because another reviewer here--like many other misinformed people--seems to believe that Jefferson's paternity is now firmly established. This is false. All that the DNA test established is that some--but not all--of Hemmings children were fathered by someone in Jefferson's patrilineal line. That does not mean Jefferson. It does mean that Hemmings lied to her children about their patrimony, because one thing the test DID establish was that ONLY Eston Hemmings MIGHT have been fathered by Thomas Jefferson. But she told them they ALL were. And the man that disgusting Federalists used to impugn Jefferson's character in the first place, COULD NOT HAVE BEEN. The author, at least, gets this part right, although he has probably reconsidered his position since the DNA test, much as he has tried to toe the anti-Jefferson line everywhere else.

In fine and in sum: A book full of the author's opinions, conjectures, speculations, extrapolations and prejudices about Thomas Jefferson, but not very much history at all.

Best to avoid.