What a great book! It's not a biography and largely skips several periods in his adult life (such as his second presidential term), which was a bit disconcerting for someone with little knowledge of his life. But enough is included to give the reader the necessary background to follow the discussion at the center of the book: that is, what made Jefferson tick, and how did he juggle the many, many contradictions between his publicly stated philosophy and the actions he took in his personal life? The answer appears to be a real psychological disconnect, the ability to think, with integrity, that his philosophy and life decisions reflected each other, when to observers they clearly don't. This included an inability to entertain evidence about those contradictions and make adjustments to be more consistent.

The Epilogue is one of the best summations I've ever read. Especially helpful is Ellis' summation of the various changes to the American landscape which in effect killed off many of the underpinnings to Jefferson's legacy:
1 - the Civil War, ending not only "slavery but the political primacy of the South and the doctrine that the states were sovereign agents in the federal compact."
2 - the end of the Frontier and the urbanization of the population between 1890-1920.
3 - the New Deal, providing a more centralized government, now required to regulate the "inequities of the marketplace and discipline the boisterous energies of an industrial economy". In effect, the "death knell for Jefferson's idea of a minimalist government."
4 - the Cold War (requiring maintenance of a massive military) and civil rights legislation repudiating the "racial and gender differences that Jefferson regarded as rooted in fixed principles of nature."
5 - changes in the scientific understanding of the natural world (Freud, Darwin, Einstein). ( )

Despite my own personal inclinations towards Jefferson, it is not the criticism of America Sphinx that I find slightly disturbing but, rather, the somewhat disingenuous pose that Ellis assumes. A quick reading would almost make Ellis look sympathetic to Jefferson and this, I believe, is by design. However, a closer reading reveals more than a few heavy-handed moments of what appears to be disdain, even bordering on contempt. It’s no secret that Ellis, like many contemporary historians, finds Jefferson distasteful, especially in light of his previous work on John Adams.

Ellis claims that he is attempting to “steer an honourable course between idolatry and evisceration,” the two poles most identifiable in Dumas Malone’s biography and Conor Cruise O’Brien’s book on Jefferson and the French Revolution, “The Long Affair.” While American Sphinx is undoubtedly somewhere between those two extremes, it most certainly leans towards evisceration. Even the moments in which Ellis seems sympathetic to Jefferson come to appear somewhat contrived as though they are mere qualifications meant to keep Ellis on the “honourable course” which he has set for himself.

Ironically, Ellis’s book is fraught with as many contradictions as he claims for Jefferson. For instance, on page 79, he discusses the death of Jefferson’s wife and the alleged pledge he made to her not to remarry. He says, “We cannot know for sure whether, as family tradition tells the story, he promised his dying wife that he would never remarry. The promise he made to himself undoubtedly had the same effect. He would never expose his soul to such pain again; he would rather be lonely than vulnerable.” If we cannot know for sure whether he made a promise to his wife, how can we know anything about a promise he made to himself. Later on in the same chapter on page 110, he recounts Jefferson’s whirlwind “affair” and “rhapsodic adventure” with the married miniaturist, Maria Cosway, which culminates in the famous and more-than-vulnerable “Dialogue between the Head and the Heart.” He also, apparently, begins his affair with Sally Hemings in Paris, which Annette Gordon-Reed and Fawn Brodie have portrayed as a reciprocal relationship, rather than that of the common master-slave sexual paradigm. Two relationships begun within a few years of this “promise he made to himself,” one highly intense and the other lasting almost four decades, hardly makes Jefferson seem like a man who had promised himself to be lonely.

The title and supposed aim of the book is a bit misleading as well. It’s not so much a study of Jefferson’s character as amateur pop Psychology. This is especially ironic when in the 65th footnote to the third chapter he criticizes previous biographers’ attempts to posthumously psychoanalyze Jefferson. Ellis’s use of this theory of mental compartments or Jefferson’s “psychological agility” in the “orchestration of internal voices” seems more a way to avoid truly understanding Jefferson’s character and comes off as one of the contrived qualifications I mentioned before. Yet here it serves a purpose beyond mere qualification. It seems to be THE tool which Ellis has devised to allow him to walk. or think he’s walking, that tightrope between idolatry and evisceration. None of this even mentions the irony of Ellis’s interpretation considering his own use of “mental compartments,” and so the problem of projection enters into Ellis’s subject analysis.

We get another illustrative contradiction when on page 102 he speaks of “Jefferson’s personal belief that slavery was morally incompatible with the principles of the American Revolution.” However, using this idea of mental compartments in the aid of self-deception, on page 106 he writes, “it was nonetheless a disconcerting form of psychological agility that would make it possible for Jefferson to walk past the slave quarters on Mulberry Row at Monticello thinking about mankind’s brilliant prospects without any sense of contradiction.” In one sentence he is claiming that Jefferson saw the incompatibility or contradiction and in another he does not. This is followed by one of the more memorable lines in the entire book when he writes, “He had the kind of duplicity possible only in the pure of heart.” It is as if Ellis hopes the subsequent qualifying statement will disguise the evisceration which it follows.

What American Sphinx is exactly I’m not quite sure, but, it does not strike me as a “character analysis.” If Ellis could be so wrong in his psychological analysis of Jefferson’s “character,” or more accurately, personality, by refusing to even entertain the idea that Jefferson had had a relationship or even an affair with Sally Hemmings, how much faith should we then put in his analyses of other aspects of Jefferson’s “character?” Sometimes I wonder how much of Jefferson’s “contradictory” nature is actually derived from those looking at him. Ideologies in the 20th century have come to be seen as rigid constructs ,but Jefferson was never a rigid thinker or politician. By trying to define Jefferson, or, perhaps more detrimentally, Jeffersonianism, we lock Jefferson in a box of our own construct with a single hanging light bulb inside which has the effect of illuminating these “contradictions” but hiding Jefferson himself in a shadow in the corner.

In Ellis’s defense, Jefferson is probably the most enigmatic of subjects that a historian or biographer can take on and in many ways he deserves a lot of credit for what he has attempted here. However, I believe the truth of Jefferson, if there actually is A truth of this larger-than-life figure whose intellectual net is cast over the entirety of America’s politics, ideology and identity, it must lie somewhere between the hyperbole of Malone and the “vicious attacks” of O’Brien. Ellis tried to walk that line but too often strayed from it to have succeeded completely. ( )

There's been a lot of words written about Thomas Jefferson. It seems like everyone has tried to claim his legacy to further their own cause. In American Sphinx, Joseph Ellis tried to get past the ideal Jefferson to the real man and his real thoughts, especially in the political arena. He mostly succeeds in this goal - this book is a great exploration of Jefferson. Rather than a biography, Ellis uses vignettes of Jefferson's life during significant periods to explore how his thinking changed throughout his life and to reveal the man behind the American saint. The format assumes some knowledge of Jefferson's life and early American history, so this may not be the best place to start for novice. I read it just after reading McCullough's biography of John Adams, which provided the historical context for Ellis' analysis. ( )

Finished this terrific read! Makes me think twice about calling Jefferson a positive influence as I recognized the threads of conservative republican politics in his thoughts and actions. ( )

Thomas Jefferson throughout this book appears as paradox, constantly revealed as a mass of contradictions between his written word and his actions. His flaws are specifically enumerated throughout.
He was apparently chosen to draft the Declaration of Independence since he was not an accomplished speaker and frequently used the written word in its place.
Early in his public career, Jefferson advocates the elimination of slavery, however as the years progress his standpoint shifts and he is dramatically quiet about his position on the difference between blacks and whites.
His personal debts influenced him so much that during his Presidency his goal was to eliminate the National Debt. Even while working toward this aim, he continued to overextend his personal expenditures with continuing construction at Monticello.
He was uncomfortable with situations that had any controversy and frequently set social situations to avoid any confrontations.
Jefferson often retreat into silence or propelled others to do his "dirty work" by simply mentioning something did not please him.
His administrative skills were lacking while he was Governor of Virginia leaving the state's fiscal standing in jeopardy. His stance on states' rights and slavery were trumped by the War between the States.
His disgust for a large central government advocated by Hamilton and his belief in the necessity of religious freedom continue to resound even today.
Critics over the years have "cast Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton in the lead roles of a dramatic contest between the forces of democracy and the forces of aristocracy."
How ironic that it was Hamiltonian methods by FDR that brought about Jeffersonian goals of economic equality.
"His life had always been about promise. And his enduring legacy became the most resonant version of the American promise in national mythology. But in his life, if not his legacy, there were some promises he could not keep."
Thomas Jefferson was multitalented - a writer, architect, diplomat. However, his greatest contribution to our nation, in my opinion, is his vision for the future and his determination to provide for western expansion and the continuation of the American Dream which he envisioned for all - "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." ( )