The Essential Thomas Jefferson

Extract

The Essential Thomas Jefferson, Jean M. Yarbrough, ed., Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2006, pp. xxxvii, 287.

This is a useful collection of Jefferson's political writings well suited to undergraduate and graduate courses in political theory and especially in American political thought. There are twelve public papers and addresses (including “A Summary View of the Rights of British America” and, of course, the Declaration of Independence, excerpts from the “Notes on Virginia,” and 44 letters to various correspondents. This compares favourably with an older and larger anthology edited by the distinguished Jefferson scholar Merrill Peterson (The Portable Thomas Jefferson, New York: Viking, 1975), which features roughly the same number of public papers and addresses but also contains the “Notes on Virginia” in its entirety and some 75 letters. While the Peterson volume is more inclusive, Yarbrough's decision to excerpt the “Notes” is understandable, given how few chapters bear directly on political questions, and the selected correspondence provides an ample survey of Jefferson's views on a variety of topics.