The Libraries, Leadership, & Legacy of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson

摘要

Few collections of essays that come out of conference proceedings are as tightly organized and as uniformly solid as those in the volume under review here. The conference, 'John Adams and Thomas Jefferson: Libraries, Leadership, and Legacy', was held over a week in the summer of 2009 in Adams's Boston and Jefferson's Charlottesville. It was supported by seven institutions of higher learning, each of which is described in brief and insightful entries in 'Appendix 2: The Institutions'. For those of us who were not able to attend the conference, this volume provides a tantalizing taste of what was missed. As Robert C. Baron, one of the co-editors, explains in his introductory essay the volume is about more than Adams and Jefferson: 'This is a book about two special men and their time. But it is also about friendship, books and libraries, reading, understanding the wisdom of the past, and acting on this knowledge' (p. ix). The book's twelve chapters are by Beth Prindle, Mark Dimunation, Eric Stockdale, H. J. Jackson, R. B. Bernstein, David T. Konig, Frank Shuffelton, Billy Wayson, Martha J. King, Richard Alan Ryerson, Gregg L. Lint, and Keith S. Thomson, all of whom, along with the editors, have entries in 'Appendix 1: The Contributors'. Chapters are organized under four section titles: Collecting, Reading, Learning, and Acting.