Jefferson in His Own Time: A Biographical Chronicle of His Life, Drawn from Recollections, Interviews, and Memoirs by Family

“In this marvelous compilation of recollections by family members, friends, colleagues, and casual acquaintances, Kevin Hayes introduces us to the Thomas Jefferson contemporaries knew. Modern readers will be disarmed–as so many visitors were–by Jefferson’s warmth, humor, and capacity for friendship. Well edited and beautifully introduced, Jefferson in His Own Time is a timely and welcome contribution to Jefferson studies.”–Peter Onuf, Thomas Jefferson Foundation Professor of History, University of Virginia

“Kevin Hayes has done a great service to anyone interested in Jefferson. Thanks to Hayes we can see Jefferson through the eyes of those who knew him, from family members to visiting European aristocrats. The result is a complex, multilayered, and fascinating portrait. This is a wonderful collection.”–Francis D. Cogliano, author, Thomas Jefferson: Reputation and Legacy and editor, The Blackwell Companion to Jefferson

“The author of the deservedly acclaimed The Road to Monticello, Kevin J. Hayes has created an anthology of thirty of the best contemporary accounts describing Thomas Jefferson. These portrayals offer glimpses and insights into the character and private world of a man often regarded as the most enigmatic and elusive of the Founding Fathers. The reader is able to bypass historians to read firsthand eyewitness descriptions of ‘The Sage of Monticello.'”–Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy, Saunders Director, Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson Foundation

“Thomas Jefferson today has many detractors. Kevin Hayes has collected a wealth of contemporary anecdotes to reveal instead the wonderfully human, charming, self-deprecating, and unexpectedly witty side of the third president’s complex personality.”–Keith Thomson, author, A Passion for Nature: Thomas Jefferson and Natural History

Kevin J. Hayes is a professor of English at the University of Central Oklahoma. His books include An American Cycling Odyssey, 1887; The Road to Monticello: The Life and Mind of Thomas Jefferson; The Mind of a Patriot: Patrick Henry and the World of Ideas; and The Library of William Byrd of Westover, for which he received the Virginia Library History Award. In addition, he coedited, with Isabelle Bour, Franklin in His Own Time (Iowa, 2011).