Publisher, Tantor Media (October 2008)

NOTE: RETAIL EDITIONS are packaged in attractive, compact cardboard, jewel-case or DVD shrink-wrapped cases, with full-color art.

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A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2008
2008 National Book Award Winner
A New York Times Editors' Choice
Winner of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for History
A New York Times Bestseller
2009 Audie Award Finalist
A Los Angeles Times Best Book of 2008
A Washington Post Top Ten Book of 2008
A New York Times Best Book of 2008
A New York Times Notable Book
Publishers Weekly Starred Review
Library Journal Starred Review

"Fascinating, wise and of the utmost importance.... Gordon-Reed's genius for reading nearly silent records makes this an extraordinary work." ---Publishers Weekly Starred Review

"Not simply a fascinating story in itself, but a new perspective on how the humanity of slaves and a slave owner could adjust and survive in circumstances designed to obliterate it." ---Edmund S. Morgan, author of American Slavery

"This work catapults Gordon-Reed into the very first rank of historians of slavery." ---John Hope Franklin, author of From Slavery to Freedom

"Annette Gordon-Reed is a prodigiously gifted historian and The Hemingses of Monticello is her masterpiece." ---Peter Onuf, author of Jefferson's Empire

"One cannot imagine another historian matching her exhaustive research and interpretive balance." ---David Levering-Lewis, author of W. E. B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century

"This is a masterpiece brimming with decades of dedicated research and dexterous writing." ---Library Journal Starred Review

"This revelatory American story provides some much needed insight into Southern antebellum life and the various contradictions involving the views and behavior of slave masters and their relations to their slaves." ---Los Angeles Times

"Gordon-Reed has given us an important story that is ultimately about the timeless quest for justice and human dignity." ---San Francisco Chronicle

"[Listeners] will find it absorbing." ---The New York Times

"Gordon-Reed is a true storyteller---and a truth-teller." ---The Philadelphia Inquirer

This epic work tells the story of the Hemingses, whose close blood ties to our third president had been systematically expunged from American history until very recently. Now, historian and legal scholar Annette Gordon-Reed traces the Hemings family from its origins in Virginia in the 1700s to the family's dispersal after Jefferson's death in 1826. It brings to life not only Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson but also their children and Hemings's siblings, who shared a father with Jefferson's wife, Martha. The Hemingses of Monticello sets the family's compelling saga against the backdrop of Revolutionary America, Paris on the eve of its own revolution, 1790s Philadelphia, and plantation life at Monticello. Much anticipated, this book promises to be the most important history of an American slave family ever written.

About the Author: Annette Gordon-Reed is a professor of law at New York Law School and a professor of history at Rutgers University. She is also the author of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy. She lives in New York City.

About the Narrator: Karen White is an actress who has performed on stage, film, and television, and whose work has taken her to Los Angeles, New York, and Boston. Her credits include many Shakespeare plays, the films The Out-of-Towners and Monument Ave., and appearances on The Drew Carey Show and Party of Five. Karen is also a voice coach, and she has taught voice and acting at Brandeis University and Emerson College. She has narrated more than forty audiobooks and has received two AudioFile Earphones Awards, one for Another Song About the King by Kathryn Stern and one for My Kind of Place by Susan Orlean. Karen's other audiobooks include The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, The Forest Lover by Susan Vreeland, the Miss Julia series by Ann B. Ross, and the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle series by Betty MacDonald. She lives with her family in Los Angeles, California.