Summary and Reviews of The Hemingses of Monticello by Annette Gordon-Reed

Media Reviews

The San Francisco Chronicle - Sanford D. Horwitt Much of Gordon-Reed's superbly told story takes place at Jefferson's beloved Monticello, where, she writes, "we can find the absolute best, and the absolute worst, that we have been as Americans. ... Gordon-Reed has given us an important story that is ultimately about the timeless quest for justice and human dignity.

The Washington Post - Fergus M. Bordewich In this magisterial book, she has succeeded not only in recovering the lives of an entire enslaved family, but also in showing them as creative agents intelligently maneuvering to achieve maximum advantage for themselves within the orbit of institutionalized slavery.

The Washington Post - Fergus M. Bordewich In this magisterial book, she has succeeded not only in recovering the lives of an entire enslaved family, but also in showing them as creative agents intelligently maneuvering to achieve maximum advantage for themselves within the orbit of institutionalized slavery.

San Diego Union-Tribune - Peter Rowe Early chapters slog through colonial Virginia, and the narrative halts often for musings about law and love, sexual attraction and family dynamics, freedom and slavery ... The tale gains speed whenever Thomas Jefferson and Sarah “Sally” Hemings appear, but this remains a serious history.

The New York Times - Eric Foner I am glad to hear that Gordon-Reed is at work on a second volume tracing the further history of this remarkable family.

Library Journal Starred Review. This is a masterpiece brimming with decades of dedicated research and dexterous writing. It is essential for any collection on U.S. history, Colonial America, Virginia, slavery, or miscegenation.

Publishers Weekly Starred Review. This is a scholar's book: serious, thick, complex ....Reed's genius for reading nearly silent records makes this an extraordinary work.

Kirkus Reviews Ponderous but sagacious and ultimately rewarding.

 Edmund S. Morgan, author of American Slavery. Annette Gordon-Reed has broken a path into territory that has hitherto eluded historians: what happens to intimate human relations, those between lover and loved, parent and child, brother and sister, when one among them is enslaved to another. In a richly detailed narrative of events, public and private, she reconstructs the feelings of the participants: Thomas Jefferson, his slave mistress, and her blood relatives. The result is not simply a fascinating story in itself, but a new perspective on how the humanity of slaves and a slave owner could adjust and survive in circumstances designed to obliterate it. We have had other studies of master-slave relationships, but none that has penetrated to the depth of this one.

 Joseph J. Ellis, author of American Sphinx. Thomas Jefferson often described his slaves at Monticello as 'my family.' Annette Gordon-Reed has taken that description seriously. Surely more seriously than Jefferson ever intended! The result, the story of the Hemings family, is the most comprehensive account of one slave family ever written. It is not a pretty story, but it is poignant beyond belief. And it demonstrates conclusively that we must put aside Gone With the Wind forever and begin to study Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom."