Search results for ""Author Peter S. Onuf""
University of Virginia Press The Mind of Thomas Jefferson
In ""The Mind of Thomas Jefferson"", one of the foremost historians of Jefferson and his time, Peter S. Onuf, offers a collection of essays that seeks to historicize one of our nation's founding fathers. Challenging current attempts to appropriate Jefferson to serve all manner of contemporary political agendas, Onuf argues that historians must look at Jefferson's language and life within the context of his own place and time. In this effort to restore Jefferson to his own world, Onuf reconnects that world to ours, providing a fresh look at the distinction between private and public aspects of his character that Jefferson himself took such pains to cultivate. Breaking through Jefferson's alleged opacity as a person by collapsing the contemporary interpretive frameworks often used to diagnose his psychological and moral states, Onuf raises new questions about what was on Jefferson's mind as he looked toward an uncertain future. Particularly striking is his argument that Jefferson's character as a moralist is nowhere more evident, ironically, than in his engagement with the institution of slavery. At once reinvigorating the tension between past and present and offering a new way to view our connection to one of our nationis founders, ""The Mind of Thomas Jefferson"" helps redefine both Jefferson and his time and American nationhood.
£23.24
University of Notre Dame Press Statehood and Union: A History of the Northwest Ordinance
This new edition of Statehood and Union: A History of the Northwest Ordinance, originally published in 1987, is an authoritative account of the origins and early history of American policy for territorial government, land distribution, and the admission of new states in the Old Northwest. In a new preface, Peter S. Onuf reviews important new work on the progress of colonization and territorial expansion in the rising American empire.
£73.30
WW Norton & Co "Most Blessed of the Patriarchs": Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imagination
Thomas Jefferson is still presented today as an enigmatic figure, despite being written about more than any other Founding Father. Lauded as the most articulate voice of American freedom, even as he held people in bondage, Jefferson is variably described as a hypocrite, an atheist and a simple-minded proponent of limited government. Now, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and leading Jefferson scholar team up to present an absorbing and revealing character study that finally clarifies the philosophy of Jefferson. The authors explore what they call the "empire" of Jefferson’s imagination—his expansive state of mind born of the intellectual influences and life experiences that led him into public life as a modern avatar of the enlightenment, who often likened himself to an ancient figure—"the most blessed of the patriarchs".
£15.13
John Wiley and Sons Ltd Thomas Jefferson: An Anthology
Agrarian; confident champion of freedom and uneasy slaveholder; advocate of a government strictly limited to the needs of his time - Thomas Jefferson remains a force in our political and social thought. Part of the continuing interest in him comes of curiosity about a statesman as withdrawn and elusive in personality as he was clear and eloquent in words. Recent DNA evidence that he probably fathered one or more children by one of his slaves deepens the mystery about him. The greater question has to do with his pronouncements about the nature and foundations of liberty, so direct and simple in expression. In this anthology of Jefferson's writings, Peter Onuf begins with an Introduction entitled, "Making Sense of Jefferson," which is then followd by 86 selections from a variety of documents: letters, official papers, public addresses, and opinions, including an extensive selection from Notes on the State of Virginia, making this an ideal reader for a variety of venues.
£27.68
John Wiley and Sons Ltd Jeffersonian America
This book analyzes Thomas Jefferson's conception of American nationhood in light of the political and social demands facing the post-Revolutionary Republic in its formative years.
£44.64
University Press of Kansas A Union of Interests: Political and Economic Thought in Revolutionary America
From the onset of the Revolution in 1776 to the inauguration of the federal government in 1789, the American political culture was transformed. The movement for an effective continental republic is here linked to the groundswell for development and economic freedom set off by the Revolution. A Union of Interests reconstructs the discourse of American federalism, a discourse grounded in the debate over the role of government in the regulation of the economy. Cathy Matson and Peter Onuf integrate analyses of economic ideas and interests with many of the critical problems facing the union after the war such as jurisdictional disputes, threats of secession, and new prospects for frontier settlement. The revolutionary ideology that had justified the creation of sovereign states under the Articles of Confederation seemed increasingly ""artificial"" in light of the pressing need to create a ""natural,"" extended republic that would be truer to the changing circumstances of the American people. The authors demonstrate that the movement for the Constitution drew upon increasingly popular political-economic ideas that sought to reconcile the apparent conflicts between a national interest and the ""enlightened"" self-interest of citizens. A pivotal chapter argues that the Constitutional Convention was itself both a product of this broad public discussion about America's future and a contribution to it in which the founders debated the limits to which they should compromise their distinct goals to fit this emerging vision.
£30.70
