Rating: 
Summary: Speculation, speculation, and hmmmm...more speculation
Review: "The past is never fully recoverable, and any history will indeed be fictional to some extent," writes Halliday in the closing chapter of his book "Understanding Thomas Jefferson." Oh the irony...Halliday's book reminded me, through the first half, of reading an (almost) trashy novel in which he goes on for greath lengths about Jefferson and his sexuality writing about Jefferson's infatuation with "Belinda" to his ten year romance with his wife Martha (in which Halliday writes that he literally "loved her to death"), to Maria Cosway and Sally Hemings and her arrival in France. Halliday seems to (conveniently) forget that Tom Woodson, Sally's first child conceived in Paris, has been shown through DNA testing that he is not Jefferson's son. Thus, throughout most of the part in describing the "affair" between Hemings and Jefferson in Paris, Halliday draws upon massive speculation and an abounding amount of "what ifs", "could haves", "perhaps", and "maybes". It is this theme of Jefferson and women that repeatedly appears throughout the book. Just as the reader thinks that he is now reading about Jefferson's political ideology or moral philosophy, Halliday always manages to somehow fit in a sentence or two concerning Sally Hemings or Jefferson's ideal woman. He seems bent on convincing the reader that Jefferson was a very sexual character who was a follower of "Nature" and so forth that often times, I wanted the throw the book across the room (or the bus) out of frustration of constant reminders of the author's insistence of Jefferson's "urges." The book does go into other aspects of Jefferson's life, occasionally touching on his family life (of course, without speculation as to why his daughter Patsy married so quickly upon arriving at Monticello from France -- could it be because of Sally Hemings?) and his thoughts upon organized religion, morals, and philosophy, including writing about Jefferson and his "Philosophy of Jesus of Nazareth." Halliday describes Jefferson's political struggle against Alexander Hamilton, but fails to mention the falling about between Jefferson and Adams. Of course, Halliday couldn't possibly write a book without mentioning Abigail Adams -- of course he does, and mentioning her often leads back into more about Jefferson and his love of "beautiful women". This book did not make me feel that I had understood Jefferson any further from what I had previously read. It was entertaining at times, but Halliday's gossip-like tone grew tiresome and weary. Read this book, but don't take everything for face value. To get to know Jefferson, keep reading, keep researching, and form your own opinions. Just make sure they're not Halliday's.
Rating: 
Summary: My first read on Jefferson
Review: ...I bought the title, "Understanding Thomas Jefferson" ... to use this book as my first real human introduction to Jefferson. Had I put down [money] or [money] instead of an arrogant [money]the publisher asked, I probably wouldn't be here writing this. It's not terrible in my opinion. He got depressed, spent time doing nothing at all productive, and spent time chasing women. Reading this book was not a waste of my time since it did reveal a human side to a man often portrayed as a god-like figure. However, it's this last part that gets to me about this book (and many other reviewers, it seems). One chapter, maybe two, about his love and sex life would have been fine for me to get the idea. Instead, everytime we start learning something interesting about the man, we get dragged back into a speculation that he masturbated as a teenager and a description of some 15 year old's succulent breasts and figure, making "urges" for a healthy older man nearly irresistible. So while I chose to read the book primarily to learn that he was human like me, maybe in the end I realized I just didn't care that much about his sexuality.
Rating: 
Summary: A Different View of a Founding Father
Review: A word of warning from the get-go: E. M. Halliday's "Understanding Thomas Jefferson" is not your standard biography of our third president. It does not fawn, nor does it marbleize Jefferson as some untouchable, unknowable, walking mystery so impenatrable that none but the most scholarly of biographers dare touch him.
What you come away with from this book is a sense that you know Jefferson just a bit better or, barring that, you at least have had a light shown upon areas of his life not heretofore illuminated for fear that doing so might "cut him down to size", make him merely mortal.
Halliday takes us through just about all the phases of Jefferson's life, from his youthful years, through his marriage, his various relationships with the three main women in his life (outside of his daughters): his wife, Martha, Maria Cosway and Sally Hemings. He shows us Jefferson's stormy relationship with Alexander Hamilton while the former served as Secretary of State and the latter Secretary of the Treasury in Washington's cabinet.
He unsparingly comments on previous, "god-like" biographers of Jefferson, including Dumas Malone and Merrill Peterson, pointing out their (to him) flaws and blindnesses (especially on the subject of Sally Hemings). He steers the reader in other directions of thought that these men did not see fit to address, which failure, as Halliday would have it, presents an incomplete picture of their celebrated subject and cheats posterity of a history which is "meaningful".
There are blunt discussions and speculations upon the nature of Jefferson's sexual development, both before, during and after his ten years of relative marital bliss with Martha Wayles Skelton. If you are someone who just cannot abide the thought that Jefferson had a sexual and, apparently, long-term and loving relationship with Sally Hemings (despite acknowledged DNA evidence to the contrary), or who thinks that after Martha Jefferson's death, her husband turned off his sexual desires like one turns off a kitchen faucet and became an emotionless stone statue, then perhaps this book might not be your cup of tea.
Try it anyway. Mr. Halliday makes his case rationally, calmly and gradually, debunking a few things and confirming others along the way, for example, rendering the supposedly "long-lasting" passion of Jefferson for Maria Cosway (the married English lady with whom he flirted - and we really don't know what else - while he was ambassador in Paris) much shorter than it actually was, primarily because ... well, Maria was apparently a bit of a fluff-head. And you can well imagine that Jefferson, of all people, with his love of learning and books and education, could not long have endured a ditzy female.
If you had read nothing about Jefferson, and wanted to use this as a first introduction to the man, I'd discourage it, recommending that you read at least one other "mainstream" conventional biography before reading E. M. Halliday's work in order to see the sharp contrast between the two resources. If you approach Thomas Jefferson in that fashion, then Halliday's honesty and open style, as well as his obvious desire that history consider all aspects of its subject, no matter how unthinkable or "forbidden", will become, I believe, quite appealing.
You will find this book a refreshing look at one of the most respected figures in American history, no less so because he is examined unsparingly and who, while found wanting in some aspects of his life, emerges less of an enigma and more of an "every man" than most biographies of Jefferson would have you to believe.
Rating:
Summary: Still Don't Understand
Review: After reading Founding Brothers and being a bit disappointed in the overactive imagination of Joseph Ellis, I was looking forward to avoiding his American Sphinx by reading this book. I have no doubts about the knowledge or competency of the author, it's just that the story was told in a somewhat disjointed manner. I can't say that I would recommend this book unless you've read so much of Jefferson that you're just looking for something extra.
Rating:
Summary: A Retelling Of The Tom and Sally Myth
Review: Despite the puff reviews on the jacket, this is not the book to read to "get to know" Thomas Jefferson. It is an entry in the Tom and Sally myth, mostly based on secondary sources, which attempts to raise Fawn Brodie's 1974 musings ("Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History")to historical fact. The narrative flows smoothly under Halliday's writing style and will reinforce the opinions of those who are predisposed to accept the claim that Jefferson fathered children by his slave Sally Hemings. The book will be frustrating for one who is reading about this issue for the first time because Halliday piles inference on supposition and kneads them together so that it is difficult to separate fact from imagination. The agreed historical record on Sally Hemings is scant: Hemings was inherited as a baby by Jefferson's wife; while in her early teens she spent about about two years in Paris as a maid to Jefferson's daughters; she returned to Monticello and bore four children who survived to adulthood; she lived about eight years as a free woman after Jefferson's death. Halliday skirts, as have other proponents of the paternity claim, that during the thirty-five years Hemings lived at Monticello after her return from France she was treated as a slave, and not one person made a direct reference to so much as a glance between her and Jefferson. This includes many of Jefferson's grandchildren who lived at Monticello, his two daughters, countless other relatives and visitors, and those slaves who could read and write, which included three of Sally's brothers freed by Jefferson, one of whom was in France with Sally. For proof of paternity, we are asked to accept a newspaper interview of one of Sally's sons, Madison Hemings, conducted some fifty years after he was freed by Jefferson. Madison relates events that occurred before his birth, including the claim that Sally's first child was fathered by Jefferson in Paris, an oft repeated legend, unsupported by any record or witness. However, Halliday accepts the hearsay of the Madison Hemings interview, but then, on the grounds it is "hearsay," rejects the interview given by Jefferson's grandson, who spent much of his youth at Monticello, and who denied that his grandfather had a relationship with a slave. Halliday also asserts that the relationship has been accepted by most scholars. Actually, there have been very few. There was the strange concession by the Trustees of the Monticello Foundation that Jefferson was probably the father of Sally's children after DNA tests showed that the descendants of Sally's youngest son, Eston, carried a y haplotype common to the Jefferson male line. Recently, a panel of distinguised scholars considered the DNA results, as well as the historical record, and released a detailed report which concluded Jefferson was not the father of Sally's children. Even though Halliday makes Jefferson into a public and private fraud, he inexplicably concedes at the end that Jefferson deserves his spot on Mount Rushmore.
Rating:
Summary: Finding a Father for our nation
Review: How curious that almost 200 years after the events, we remain fascinated by the inner life of our third president, Thomas Jefferson! The strength of the vivid arguments for and against the evidence of his long love affair with Sally Hemings demonstrates more about our crabbed turn-of-the-century mores than it reveals about Jefferson the man. This book is flawed: it is breezy, casual in its research, and narrowly focussed. However as a portrait of Jefferson as the sensual intermingling of intellect, philosophy, and emotion it is first-rate and to be admired. Jefferson, through his relationship with Sally, found his humanity, a gritty reality that necessarily was contradictory, complex, and unresolved. When I picked up Halliday's book in the history shelves I found near it a wonderful picture essay on "Jefferson's Children" showing the gorgeous physical diversity of his descendants, spanning the entire color spectrum of America. These two books together suggest what is most profound about the story of Jefferson and Sally: in some intimate, almost unacceptable manner, they are indeed the splendid ancestors of what is distinctively American about our nation.
Rating:
Summary: A Human View of an American "Superhuman"
Review: I selected this book somewhat blindly from my library after learning that Thomas Jefferson was, if not officially, predisposed to a Unitarian belief system and desiring to learn more about who he was as a person. I was pleasantly surprised to find this book showed a real insight (even though speculative in some cases) into who Jefferson was as a living, breathing, feeling human being, and I recommend it highly. Most biographies are full of what I like to call "textbook" prose. They try to pass themselves off as interesting reads, but they are usually no more than boring recitations of dates and places with cautiously worded speculation about what these facts might have meant. They focus on the history of the nation more than the history of the person (which is what I thought biographies were supposed to be about!). This book is far from that! In short, if you are looking for a glimpse into what the personal life of Jefferson probably was like, you will love this book! It is truly engrossing, and a liberating view of one of the founding personalities in our nation. I personally do not believe that you can understand the impact a person has on history without knowing what their underlying personal motivations are. If, however, you prefer your history with only those details that can be proved beyond any doubt and clean of the "distraction" of the messiness of real life that we all endure, no matter how famous or great (emotion, personal failure, and, oh, yes, even sex), don't even consider this read. But if you're willing to suspend your discomfort with knowing the starkly human and ordinary details of the "superhuman" lives in our history (that might change your hallowed view of these great figures), you will have a real treat awaiting you. And, I truly believe, the insights necessary for really comprehending the usual recited historical facts.
Rating:
Summary: Unusual, but Thoughtful and Entertaining
Review: If you're looking for a good, all around biography of Thomas Jefferson, this is not the book for you. "Understanding Thomas Jefferson" attempts to do exactly what the title suggests-understand Thomas Jefferson, but as a human being rather than as a statesman. E. M. Halliday's thesis is that virtually every standard biography of Thomas Jefferson describes him as a complex individual and highlights the contradictions in his life that border on hypocrisy (maybe even cross that border), but few try to put them in perspective. This book attempts to do just that. Much of it (especially the first part of the book) deals with Jefferson's relationships with the women in his life. Admittedly, much of it is conjectural, because there's not much documentation extant. For example, Jefferson burned all his correspondence with his wife and mother. But Halliday has done a lot of research and puts his conjectures in context with documented events in Jefferson's life as well as with the social norms in which he lived. If the author attacks the renowned Jefferson biographers (e.g., Dumas Malone and Joseph Ellis) for concluding that Jefferson's relationship with Sally Hemings was a myth, the criticism is well deserved. I read Joseph Ellis's biography "American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson" when it was first published in 1997 and was astonished with his conclusion (in the Appendix of the book) that the "rumors" about Jefferson's relationship with Sally Hemings were not true. Now, this was the first biography I had ever read about Thomas Jefferson, so after having read what Ellis himself had written, I was shocked that he could come to that conclusion. If you find Thomas Jefferson to be a fascinating individual (as I do) and have already read some mainstream history/biography about him, then you will probably enjoy this book immensely (as I have). It's different, it's conjectural, and that's its appeal.
Rating:
Summary: Unusual, but Thoughtful and Entertaining
Review: If you're looking for a good, all around biography of Thomas Jefferson, this is not the book for you. "Understanding Thomas Jefferson" attempts to do exactly what the title suggests-understand Thomas Jefferson, but as a human being rather than as a statesman. E. M. Halliday's thesis is that virtually every standard biography of Thomas Jefferson describes him as a complex individual and highlights the contradictions in his life that border on hypocrisy (maybe even cross that border), but few try to put them in perspective. This book attempts to do just that. Much of it (especially the first part of the book) deals with Jefferson's relationships with the women in his life. Admittedly, much of it is conjectural, because there's not much documentation extant. For example, Jefferson burned all his correspondence with his wife and mother. But Halliday has done a lot of research and puts his conjectures in context with documented events in Jefferson's life as well as with the social norms in which he lived. If the author attacks the renowned Jefferson biographers (e.g., Dumas Malone and Joseph Ellis) for concluding that Jefferson's relationship with Sally Hemings was a myth, the criticism is well deserved. I read Joseph Ellis's biography "American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson" when it was first published in 1997 and was astonished with his conclusion (in the Appendix of the book) that the "rumors" about Jefferson's relationship with Sally Hemings were not true. Now, this was the first biography I had ever read about Thomas Jefferson, so after having read what Ellis himself had written, I was shocked that he could come to that conclusion. If you find Thomas Jefferson to be a fascinating individual (as I do) and have already read some mainstream history/biography about him, then you will probably enjoy this book immensely (as I have). It's different, it's conjectural, and that's its appeal.
Rating: 
Summary: Understanding Thomas Jefferson
Review: Understanding Thomas Jefferson by E.M. Halliday is a book mainly about the rumor of an amorous relationship between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings. Sally Hemings was a half sister to Jefferson's wife. She was fathered by Jefferson's Father-In-Law. But more importantly, this book is about the mores of that time. Remember that it is very hard to compare mores of today with those of that time... things and life were vastly different. Jefferson believed that slavery was a product from a corupt King of England and the colonists had to endue this evil via the proxies of that government. Along these lines of thought, Jefferson was not the only Founding Father to have a fancy for the ladies. Washington, Franklin, Hamilton were known for their love of the ladies. These men were like rock stars today with the expected groupies and all of the trapings. Of course, what you do with these trapings is a matter of your moral standards. Remember, around the world, women were treated maybe, just maybe a little better then cattle. I know... your saying what has this to do with the book. Well, my answer is that Jefferson being a well dressed man with striking appearance also traveled Europe and was exposed to this practice. So, the women involved with Jefferson throughout the book knew what they were doing. Just as Jefferson knew how the game was played. As to the Sally Hemings claims, it could be any of the male Jefferson extended family that MAY have impregnated Sally Hemings... there is NO concrete evidence that it was Thomas Jefferson. The book is full of conjecture, heresay and second hand information. The only way we will know for sure is more DNA testing. So, discretion being the better part of valor, to whom do we believe. Jefferson was a man, not a celibate monk and if we go by his word he abhored miscegenation, but he professed that "all men are created equal." So, the debate goes on and on, only Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings know for sure what transpired. All we have is conjecture. As for the writing in the book and the storytelling it moves shrewdly and you keep reading. Whether you believe what is written is not for me to say, but I took it with a grain of salt. The dichotomy of Jefferson still continues, as one of the most human of the Founding Fathers, Jefferson will be forever elicit adamant opinions.
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