Description: Thomas Jefferson's views on slavery have long been seen as paradoxical or incoherent. Jefferson's Wolf shows that he was, in fact, a consistent advocate of racial exclusion. Although he criticized slavery, he also insisted throughout his life--like many, but not all, Americans of his time--on the need to remove Black people from the United States.
Brief description: Christa Dierksheide is Brockman Foundation Jefferson Scholars Foundation Professor of History at the University of Virginia. She is the author of Beyond Jefferson: The Hemingses, the Randolphs, and the Making of Nineteenth-Century America and Amelioration and Empire: Progress and Slavery in the Plantation Americas, 1770-1840. Formerly the Historian at the Robert H. Smith Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello, she has curated and contributed to numerous related exhibitions.
Review Quotes: A nuanced history of the giant mote in the eye of the great thinker and revolutionary.-- "Kirkus Reviews" (3/23/2026 12:00:00 AM)