What might it have been like to be Thomas Jefferson? Just weighing such a question raises questions anew, implicitly demanding a rationale for reopening the locked box of agitated memory that an intimate history entails. As one of the most polarizing figures in all of American history, Jefferson bequeathed a strong heartbeat in the form of an extensive, often impassioned, correspondence. He dreamt big and made himself known, advertising himself as a man of whole-some public aims who marveled endlessly at the natural world, cherished hearth and home, and, when pressures built, valued his solitude. He wrote constantly, lyrically, affectingly.
In his mid-twenties, this completely self-taught architect decided to level a mountain and undertake construction of a unique residence, his awe-inspiring Palladian villa, Monticello. From this breathtaking location he collected thou-sands of books on every topic imaginable, from ancient history to modern medical practices. He looked out at the world with eagerness and readiness. In doing so, the occasional philosopher and steadfast correspondent was period-ically tripped up by secrets he could not keep hidden and words that went too far. Navigating the “rocks and shoals” of a life beset by emotional challenges, he lurched for safe harbor.
This book is about the extraordinary drama that punctuated the life of a famous man who had an unusual need to control his environment. As much as his cre-ative imagination led to memorable achievements, the capaciousness of his intellect exacted a price. When enticed by nature’s mysteries, his eyes were wide open to newpossibilities. But when it came to the clash of egos in public venues, he was acutely sensitive to slights. He rarely admitted error and, as a sensualist, rationalized the indulgences he allowed himself. Jefferson was a complicated man.
There is a good explanation for his vacillating moods when under pressure. The Age of Enlightenment that shaped his critical mind was also an age of nervous sensibility. The brain was seen as “the seat of sensations.” It exalted ethical deliberation and led a thinker to prize individual freedom. It promoted sociability while cautioning against wanton gratification of the natural passions. And it pronounced rigid expectations from men of letters, who were to guard against an incapacitating “irritability” of nerves that improper diet and agitated sleep brought on. An explosion of thought and theory—this new science of man—placed demands on both body and spirit. To be of the Enlightenment was to study desires and appetites, not just ways of knowing.
In this world, Jefferson contracted personal friendships that were marked by an intense resolve and that grew to encompass great names on both sides of the Atlan-tic. In the danger zone of politics, he deployed his personal relationships much as a battlefield commander would, aware that he had enemies who could never be won over. He convinced himself that they would destroy everything he valued if he remained passive.
Yet Thomas Jefferson was essentially an introvert, a bookish individual whose “alone time” was precious to him. He internalized a great deal of what sat on his bookshelves, and ordered his private world accordingly. As a student of science who experimented regularly, he approached situations with due deliberation. As a romantic, he imagined it possible to change the world for the better and wrote with high-flown expectancy. It was the latter trait that led the more criti-cal among his peers to label him a “philosopher,” which was their way of saying “dreamer.”
To write an intimate history is a formidable summons, because any approach to historical biography is autopsy, not a two-sided conversation. I have spent a sizable chunk of my career with Jefferson and have at length arrived at a place where I feel I can tackle the largest questions that have hamstrung a slew of professional historians. Being Thomas Jefferson emphasizes the drive for public celebrity that the subject scrupulously hid. As a study of inner life, the book’s central drama is the negotiation going on in his mind as he wavers between involvement and retreat, between conviction and irresolution.
Here was a family man, a gentleman scholar, a political actor. These three distinct layers to his personality—which is not to say that his identity lacked additional layers—fell out of alignment each time the serene farmer (“a son of nature,” he once called himself) surrendered to partisan combat. He bristled at the irritants that beset a politician’s life. More often than not, though he felt the friction of going against his stated desire, he couldn’t resist national office.
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“Public” versus “private” are convenient terms for what this book examines, although people are more complex than that. One does not carry around a private and a public self and opt to deploy one or the other in a given situation. The private Jefferson lived in areas set apart: the bedroom, the unseen room where strong feelings emerge, where sex occurs, where a woman gives birth surrounded by other women (midwife, servants), and where the waiting for death occurs, as it too often did at Monticello. Then there is the seen though still private realm, intimate settings where Jefferson performs as entertainer over food and drink, where the self is exposed to people; or, in writing a letter, where he lets his mind range with a single recipient in mind.
Jefferson’s instinct to guard his privacy was strong. As soon as he moved into the building that stands at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, which was less than a year old in 1801, he ordered the outhouse removed and an indoor water closet built to his specifications. He then set out to introduce adornments to the public spaces, adding decorative molding to the walls, colorful upholstery to the furnishings, and glass doors. He shaped environments with the same care he gave to written compositions.
From Being Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History Used with permission of Bloomsbury Publishing. Copyright © 2026 by Andrew Burstein.
