FEBRUARY 2023 - AudioFile
Mark Bramhall uses a soft Piedmont accent to differentiate Thomas Jefferson’s words from the rest of the text in this audio version of master biographer Fred Kaplan’s latest work. Jefferson was one of our best presidential writers, possibly the very best, so a biography based on his writing life is long overdue. Bramhall captures both the passion and the cool reason in works ranging from the Declaration of Independence through his political arguments and his voluminous correspondence. Kaplan, while he clearly admires Jefferson, never lets us forget his humanity, including how he was trapped financially and ideologically by his inherited position. Bramhall’s voice is easy to listen to and leads us through the considerable complexities of Jefferson’s life. D.M.H. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine
Publishers Weekly
09/26/2022
Biographer Kaplan (Lincoln and the Abolitionists) focuses on Thomas Jefferson’s “growth and development as a writer” in this intriguing if uneven study. Among the works analyzed are the Declaration of Independence (“Jefferson’s most remembered and celebrated accomplishment”); the one book he published in his lifetime, Notes on the State of Virginia (which “provides Jefferson’s fullest comments on race and slavery”); and Notes of a Tour into the Southern Parts of France. Kaplan also delves into more private writings, including a series of “personally expressive and revealing” letters Jefferson wrote to Maria Cosway, a painter and musician with whom he shared a “few months of romantic attachment” in 1786. Kaplan draws out some revealing themes in Jefferson’s writing, including his hypocritical use of the “slavery trope” to describe the plight of American colonists under the British crown; the tension between his support for “small independent farmers” and his membership among the elite class of landowners who accumulated most of the country’s wealth; and his paternalistic tone when addressing Native American tribal leaders. But the balance between biography and literary analysis feels out of proportion, and the lack of a narrative through line sometimes makes for disjointed reading. The result is a tantalizing yet frustrating portrait. (Nov.)
From the Publisher
"In His Masterly Pen, a thoroughly engrossing study of Thomas Jefferson, Fred Kaplan demonstrates that he, too, wields a masterly pen. . . . The skill with which the author wields his own masterly pen ensures a better understanding of this brilliant and talented 18th-century man who could not fully escape the moral failings of his social class or the weaknesses of his own character as he helped give birth to a new nation. . . . [A] nicely paced and well-written narrative.” — Washington Post
“Kaplan smoothly combines analysis of Jefferson’s rhetorical strategies with an authoritative portrayal of his world. A sensitive probing of a complex man.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Kaplan fluently, and in fascinating detail, portrays all aspects of Jefferson’s character." — Portland Press Herald
"Fred Kaplan’s bona fides as a biographer should immunize him against the obvious charge: 'Oh, no, not another book about Thomas Jefferson.' Fortunately, Kaplan’s trademark skills shine through His Masterly Pen: exhaustive research; the instincts of a born storyteller; and a keen sense of irony and paradox. And there is a fresh idea. Namely, that Jefferson’s verbal felicity often deluded him into believing that an uplifting idea on paper assured its triumph in the world." — Joseph J. Ellis, author of The Cause: The American Revolution and its Discontents.
Kaplan . . . . delves into more private writings, including a series of “personally expressive and revealing” letters Jefferson wrote to Maria Cosway . . . . Kaplan draws out some revealing themes in Jefferson’s writing, including his hypocritical use of the “slavery trope” to describe the plight of American colonists under the British crown; the tension between his support for “small independent farmers” and his membership among the elite class of landowners who accumulated most of the country’s wealth; and his paternalistic tone when addressing Native American tribal leaders. — Publishers Weekly
“Readers interested in American history will enjoy this deep dive into a different aspect of Thomas Jefferson." — Booklist
"The accomplished biographer of great writers, Fred Kaplan turns his keen insights on an author usually thought of as something else: revolutionary, president, architect, and slaveholder. His Masterly Pen reveals Thomas Jefferson's genius for deploying words to persuade, inspire, manipulate, and deceive others. In the process, Kaplan helps us understand how the author of our most dazzling declaration could generate so much controversy in his lifetime as well as ours." — Alan Taylor, author of American Republics: A Continental History of the United States, 1783-1850.
“Fred Kaplan’s new life of Jefferson is a beautifully written portrait of a great writer and a welcome contribution to our understanding of a controversial founder.” — Peter S. Onuf, Thomas Jefferson Foundation Professor of History, Emeritus, University of Virginia
"In discussing the role of rhetoric and persuasion, His Masterly Pen identifies a key lens for understanding the political influence of Thomas Jefferson. Engagingly written, with lively chapters, it contains admirable discussions of some of his major writings, such as The Summary View of the Rights of British America and Notes on the State of Virginia." — Dr. Andrew J. O’Shaughnessy, Vice President of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation and Saunders Director of the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies, University of Virginia
"One always knows a Fred Kaplan treatment by its arresting detours into his subject’s distinctive use of language. Who, then, would be a better historical actor to get to know in this way than Thomas Jefferson? The bookish politician’s dynamic pen generates conflict, which its wielder refuses to admit to. With artful hyperbole, Jefferson takes on enemies he swears he doesn’t deserve, driven by what Kaplan denotes the “secrecy and repression” that combine in shaping a fascinating founder’s private character." — Andrew Burstein, author of Jefferson’s Secrets and coauthor of Madison and Jefferson and professor at Louisiana State University
"Tantalizing." — Publishers Weekly
"[An] absorbing new book…. Kaplan is effective in showing how the young lawyer and slaveowner gradually inched away from his steadfast loyalty to the Crown, until by 1774 he was actively involved in the effort to end British rule…. Much of Jefferson’s most important writing was completed by the end of the 1780s, when he returned from five years as America’s minister to France, a fascinating spell that Kaplan handles adroitly.... About the glaring contradiction at the core of the Declaration’s statement for equality – the institution of slavery – Kaplan is both clear and measured." — Times Literary Supplement (London)
FEBRUARY 2023 - AudioFile
Mark Bramhall uses a soft Piedmont accent to differentiate Thomas Jefferson’s words from the rest of the text in this audio version of master biographer Fred Kaplan’s latest work. Jefferson was one of our best presidential writers, possibly the very best, so a biography based on his writing life is long overdue. Bramhall captures both the passion and the cool reason in works ranging from the Declaration of Independence through his political arguments and his voluminous correspondence. Kaplan, while he clearly admires Jefferson, never lets us forget his humanity, including how he was trapped financially and ideologically by his inherited position. Bramhall’s voice is easy to listen to and leads us through the considerable complexities of Jefferson’s life. D.M.H. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2022-09-06
The literary prowess of a Founding Father.
As he did in Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer, Kaplan examines the life and thought of Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) through an astute reading of his copious writings. Jefferson, he notes, “was a superb writer, with a genius particularly suited to his needs as a Virginia legislator, wartime propagandist, governor, Congressional delegate, secretary of state, vice president, president, and the premier intellectual, cultural, and moral voice of the republic he helped create and then lived in for fifty years.” Trained as a lawyer, Jefferson found the practice of law “intellectually thin and repetitive” and became immersed, instead, in the Colonies’ political fortunes. In 1774, his A Summary View of the Rights of British America “put Jefferson’s name on the transatlantic map,” and the text served as a template for his crafting the Declaration of Independence. That powerful document, reflecting the views of the incipient nation’s elite leaders, “was to be philosophy, argument, and propaganda combined and raised to the highest level of political literature. Its purpose was to help make and change history.” Jefferson navigated through tumultuous times, partisan dissent, war, and the fraught matter of slavery. He claimed to abhor slavery “in principle,” yet he “still defined slaves as property” and kept hundreds of enslaved people as “his irreplaceable labor force.” He also believed that freed slaves and Whites could never coexist. He advocated limited government, a priority on agriculture, and fiscal economy, in sharp conflict with Federalists such as Washington and Hamilton. Certainly, his political views are more easily discerned than personal revelations. Even in the memoirs he began late in life, or even in epistolary flirtations, “secrecy and repression in regard to private matters were hallmarks of Jefferson’s personality.” Among those private matters were his feelings for his wife, who died in 1782, and his mistress Sally Hemings. Kaplan smoothly combines analysis of Jefferson’s rhetorical strategies with an authoritative portrayal of his world.
A sensitive probing of a complex man.
