IF you would like to read more about Thomas Jefferson
    here are a few suggestions by Clay Jenkinson
          

Joseph J. Ellis, American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson (Vintage Books, 1998).

Joe Ellis is an Adams scholar, deeply skeptical about Jefferson and clearly annoyed by the Cult of Jefferson. He has written a fascinating and irreverent study of Jefferson. His zeal to deride Jefferson's air-headedness and his constitutional evasiveness sometimes goes too far, I think, but the book is one of the most amusing and entertaining ever written about Jefferson and there is clearly a good deal of affection in Ellis's portrait. The last chapter is sublime.
 

Annette Gordon-Reed, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy (University Press of Virginia, 1998).

Everything you ever wanted to know about this business. Gordon-Reed makes no final judgement, but she explores the evidence, all of it circumstantial, with masterful impartiality.
 

Dumas Malone, Thomas Jefferson and His Time (6 volumes) (Little, Brown & Co., 1948-1989).

Dumas Malone is a hagiographer. He has a hard time acknowledging that Jefferson had a dark side. His massive, definitive apologia is the standard text for all scholars working on Jefferson. The last volume, The Sage of Monticello, is a masterful portrait of Jefferson in retirement. Malone's adoration for Jefferson is so great that in recent years revisionist historians have been criticizing Malone almost as much as Jefferson.
 

Forest McDonald, The Presidency of Thomas Jefferson (American Presidency Series) (University Press of Kansas, 1987).

Forest McDonald is no friend to Jefferson, but this is one of the best books written about Jefferson in our time. This study of Jefferson's two terms as president is insightful, concise, and fair-minded. Everyone who studies Jefferson should read the opposition press. McDonald is the best of the Jefferson detractors.
 

Merrill D. Peterson, Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation: A Biography (Oxford University Press, 1986).

          Merrill Peterson is the greatest living Jefferson Scholar. His work has set the standard
          of excellence in the last four decades. Not only has he edited several anthologies of
          Jefferson's writings, he has written a seminal book, The Jefferson Image in the American 
          Mind (University Press of Virginia 1998), which is the best one-volume biography ever  
          written about Jefferson. If you have time to read only one book about Jefferson, this has
          to be it. Peterson is never wrong, and though he is reluctant to judge Jefferson, he does
          not shrink from the dark side and the inconsistencies. And the book is well written, too.
 

Merrill D. Peterson, ed. Thomas Jefferson: Writings 1984

This is part of the magnificent Library of America series, the standard uniform edition of America's greatest writers.
 

Lester J. Cappon, ed. The Adams-Jefferson Letters. 1959

Bernard Mayo, ed. Jefferson Himself: The Personal Narrative of a Many-Sided American 1942

Books on Thomas Jefferson by Clay S. Jenkinson:
   
Clay S. Jenkinson, Thomas Jefferson: The Man of Light (The Marmarth Press, 2003)

Clay S. Jenkinson, Becoming Jefferson's People: Re-inventing the American Republic in
           the Twenty-first Century (The Marmarth Press, 2004) ISBN 1-930806-22-1

                    
               Telephone 208-791-8721 ~ Fax 208-746-3205~ email bek@odytours.net