Basic Books, 2005

Jefferson’s Secrets is a portrait of Thomas Jefferson in the years after his retirement from the presidency, 1809-1826.  It addresses questions about the ex-president’s personal and political legacies: How did he confront his own mortality? What were his views on religion and the possibility of an afterlife? Did he love his slave Sally Hemings, as the positive DNA test of 1998 has suggested to many, or did she merely satisfy his physical needs?  Jefferson’s Secrets posits a richer explanation, based on medical and sexual knowledge in the unfamiliar world of post-Revolutionary America.  And finally, the book asks, how did Thomas Jefferson wish to be remembered by his country?