"Master of the Mountain," Henry Wiencek's eloquent, persuasive book--based on new information coming from archaeological work at Monticello and on hitherto overlooked or disregarded evidence in Jefferson's papers--opens up a huge, poorly understood dimension of Jefferson's world."--

During the 1930s, the Federal Writers' Project undertook the task of locating former slaves and recording their oral history. Here are 21 narratives from interviews with former Virginia slaves.

"It is accepted by most acholars that Thomas Jefferson had a lengthy affair with his slave Sally Hemings and fathered at least one of her children. This conclusion is based on a 1998 DNA study published in Nature and on the work of historian Annette Gordon-Reed, assumed by many to be the last word on the subject. But as author M. Andrew Holowchak argues compellingly in this eye-opening investigation, the DNA evidence is inconclusive and there are...