How did Jefferson understand himself and what he wanted, and what exactly did he have to ignore? This book focuses on Jefferson’s self-understanding and private life, which he kept insisting was distinct from his politics. I guess I’m more interested in his politics, though the ending observation was quite sharp: He didn’t free Sally Hemings in his will because to do so he would have had to put her name in a public document, and Virginia law at the time required an explanation of how a formerly enslaved person of her age would be supported, which he was unwilling to do. So instead she just left and people treated her as having been freed. ( )

I’ll give it a three because the light it sheds on Jefferson’s character outweighs my dissatisfaction with it’s literary merit. The “Empire of the Imagination” of the subtitle seems to refer not only to the glorious republic that Jefferson imagined the new nation could become, but also to the self-image he cultivated, which was often at odds with reality. He extolled the virtues of home life, wherein, he thought were cultivated the spirit of fellowship and civility and moral values that would be the bedrock of the national comity. He often wrote about the central place that home played in his life. Yet he only spent a handful of years actually living in Monticello, and most of that time was in what he considered to be an illicit relationship with a slave. On that biggest question, that of slavery, he recognized its evil, yet came to an accommodation with it, thinking that he could ameliorate it with kindness, and wishfully thinking that his countrymen would quickly come to appreciate its corrosive effect on them and, thus, disavow it. He was a sensitive poet, who may have been out of place in politics, and I love him for his poetry, for his love and care for humanity, which has inspired us, but which, I suspect partly because of the excessive optimism he brought to bear on the practical matters of state, we have fallen short of. ( )

This biography focuses on Jefferson's personal life, his home, his family, and his attitudes about them. He was progressive in many ways, a man of the Enlightenment, but his beliefs about gender, race, and religion remained constrained by his times. The impression I'm left with from this book is that Jefferson sincerely meant well and did his best. ( )