Jefferson's Daughters: Examining the Lives of Three Sisters - White, Black, and Young America

Kenneth Johnson: After visits to Monticello and Montpelier I was left with a hundred new questions about the Jeffersons, Hemingses, and Madisons. This book answered them all but left me with a hundred more. A masterpiece of historical research and deduction.

United States on Sep 08, 2023

Kindle Customer: Well written and informative

United States on Jul 18, 2023

desertwiffie: I loved the first half of this book, then it began to fall apart. The lives of Jefferson's two daughters were fascinating and I began to get a feel for what he was all about, too. But then I slowly began to see the agenda of the author in the remaining half of the book. By the end I was bored stiff reading the same information over and over and over again. I was reduced to skimming ahead, trying to perceive the real facts I hoped were buried in the agenda.
Over and over again I was given the same message - men were in control and if women had been educated it would have been different. This wasn't a history book, it was a feminist diatribe. I am a 77 year old woman, I embraced the feminist view decades ago, I agree with the principles the author espouses - women have been held back by men determined to control us and by the biology that makes us the ones burdened with childbirth and care.
But the same message, repeated and repeated and repeated, while snippets of information are artfully doled out wasn't interesting. And then, the icing on the cake, was the last third of the book, where the author gave us the supposed fate of the Jefferson's black children. All theory, all...

United States on Mar 09, 2023

Donn W. Leatherman: It is clear that the iconic depiction of Jefferson (in his Memorial in Washington D.C., or on Mount Rushmore) omits a great deal. He never seems to have come to terms with the unwarranted distinction which he made between people of purely European descent and everyone else in the world, including his own children born of his slave Sally Hemmings.

Canada on Oct 04, 2020

Luiz G. M. Lapertosa: Excepcionalmente bem escrito e detalhado, o livro aborda a vida das filhas de Jefferson em detalhes que somente o estudo criterioso poderia permitir; além, expõe as contradições na vida do 3º presidente dos EUA, signatário de sua Declaração de Independência e senhor de escravos, pai dedicado às filhas dentro do casamento e nem tão zeloso com os que teve com uma de suas escravas. Excelente para os que querem conhecer um pouco mais da história dos EUA que não se encontra em livros didáticos.

Brazil on Aug 31, 2020

Bob Calverley: The lack of hard factual evidence such as diaries, letters or other documentation present a challenge to anyone writing about the life of slaves. Even the lives of white women of the Revolutionary Era present a challenge since most accounts come from men. But the historian author's account of Jefferson's two white daughters, both well known in their time, and his secret slave daughter is revealing. Perhaps most revealing is that Jefferson, for all of his towering achievements, left his daughters essentially destitute. His slave daughter, released from servitude when reached 21 to pass into white society (Racially, she was 7/8 white.) probably fared better than her pure white half sisters. The author sometimes necessarily resorts to speculation, but her reasoning is persuasive. I highly recommend this book for anyone wanting to learn about slavery in late 18th and early 19th centuries.

United States on Jan 11, 2019

Ga303: I suspect some people may stumble upon this book not getting that it is a scholarly work and not a historical fiction, and those people will no doubt be disappointed, but if you're in it for what it is, you won't be -- and I wasn't.

I don't think I've ever read a work on history where, on reading, I more strongly found myself more obviously rooting for the historian to able to find what she seeks in her elusive subjects -- here, in Catherine Kerrison's case, most especially the elusive Harriet Hemings, about whom so frustratingly little is known. And after enjoying reading the fascinating research here, still feeling frustrated for Kerrison -- and for American history -- that we may never know more about her.

If you've read many other books on this topic, then no, maybe you won't feel that there's much new here in the way of information, but at this point in time, without the appearance of some truly revelatory discovery -- the likes of which become less and less likely to be found, as the years go by -- it may be necessary to expect that books on this topic don't have to present something new to present something freshly, as I think this book does.

Besides...

United States on Feb 27, 2018