?Taylor probes [Jefferson's] ambitious mission in clear prose and with great insight and erudition.??Annette Gordon-Reed, Atlantic
?By turns entertaining and tragic, this beautifully crafted history reveals the origins of a great university in the dilemmas of Virginia slavery. Thomas Jefferson shares center stage with his family and fellow planters, all dependent on the labor of enslaved black families. With Virginia in decline, Jefferson in 1819 proposed to build a university to educate and improve the sons of the planter elite. His intensive campaign to fund the university succeeds, but his vision of reform through education is hobbled by genteel students whose defiant sense of honor derived from owning slaves.
