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I'll Tell Me Ma: A Childhood Memoir
by Brian KeenanLocal rather than international, the dramas and privations described in this memoir are not the stuff of headlines. This is the story of an ordinary boy growing up in Belfast after the war; an ordinary boy who would go on to become world-famous as a hostage in Beirut and author of the extraordinary testimony of imprisonment and survival that was An Evil Cradling. Brian Keenan has captured the vanished world of 1950s Belfast in all its vivid vernacular and grey, post-war austerity. I'll Tell Me Ma is an affectionate story of a disaffected childhood. At the centre is a shy, self-conscious boy of unusual moral integrity; a boy puzzled by religion and sectarianism, in love with books and music and full of curiosity about the world outside. It is also a book about coming-to-terms with the past: a resounding, thrilling record of redemption.
I'll Tell You No Lies
by Amanda McCrinaFrom Amanda McCrina, the acclaimed author of Traitor and The Silent Unseen, I'll Tell You No Lies is a riveting YA novel of the Cold War era about a girl in post-World War II America who becomes entangled with an escaped Soviet pilot and must learn to decipher truth from lies.New York, 1955. Eighteen-year-old Shelby Blaine and her father, an Air Force intelligence officer, have just been wrenched away from their old life in West Germany to New York’s Griffiss Air Force Base, where he has been summoned to lead the interrogation of an escaped Soviet pilot. Still in shock from the car accident that killed her mother barely a month earlier, Shelby struggles with her grief, an emotionally distant father, and having to start over in a new home.Then a chance meeting with Maksym, the would-be defector, spirals into a deadly entanglement, as the pilot’s cover story is picked apart and he attempts to escape his military and intelligence handlers—with Shelby caught in the middle. The more she learns of Maksym’s secrets, including his detention at Auschwitz during the war, the more she becomes willing to help him. But as the stakes become more dangerous, Shelby begins to question everything she has been told, even by her fugitive friend. Allies turn into enemies, and the truth is muddled by lies. Can she trust a traitor with her life, or will it be the last mistake she ever makes?
I'll Watch the Moon
by Ann TatlockWinner, Midwest Independent Publishers Association, First Place-General Fiction! Winner; Best of Genre Library Journal, 2003 <p><p> A single mother embittered by an abusive marriage. An adventurous 14-year old son and the 10-year old daughter who adores him. A boarder in the house, a war refugee with a murky past. It s the summer of 1948, hot, and Polio stalks the children, taking them one by one. When it strikes the son, will he be in an iron lung the rest of life? And when redemption comes, it comes from a most unexpected source! <p> Tatlock continues to weave 20th-century history into absorbing, finely crafted literary tales with issues of spirituality springing naturally from the text. For all collections and readers who enjoy realistic and hopeful family dramas." -- Library Journal
Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency
by Larry DiamondFrom America’s leading scholar of democracy,a personal, passionate call to action against the rising authoritarianism that challenges our world order—and the very value of libertyLarry Diamond has made it his life's work to secure democracy's future by understanding its past and by advising dissidents fighting autocracy around the world. Deeply attuned to the cycles of democratic expansion and decay that determine the fates of nations, he watched with mounting unease as illiberal rulers rose in Hungary, Poland, Turkey, the Philippines, and beyond, while China and Russia grew increasingly bold and bullying. Then, with Trump's election at home, the global retreat from freedom spread from democracy's margins to its heart. Ill Winds' core argument is stark: the defense and advancement of democratic ideals relies on U.S. global leadership. If we do not reclaim our traditional place as the keystone of democracy, today's authoritarian swell could become a tsunami, providing an opening for Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and their admirers to turn the twenty-first century into a dark time of despotism.We are at a hinge in history, between a new era of tyranny and an age of democratic renewal. Free governments can defend their values; free citizens can exercise their rights. We can make the internet safe for liberal democracy, exploit the soft, kleptocratic underbelly of dictatorships, and revive America's degraded democracy. Ill Winds offers concrete, deeply informed suggestions to fight polarization, reduce the influence of money in politics, and make every vote count. In 2019, freedom's last line of defense still remains "We the people."
Illegal: How America's Lawless Immigration Regime Threatens Us All
by Elizabeth F. CohenA political scientist explains how the American immigration system ran off the rails -- and proposes a bold plan for reform Under the Trump administration, US immigration agencies terrorize the undocumented, target people who are here legally, and even threaten the constitutional rights of American citizens. How did we get to this point? In Illegal, Elizabeth F. Cohen reveals that our current crisis has roots in early twentieth century white nationalist politics, which began to reemerge in the 1980s. Since then, ICE and CBP have acquired bigger budgets and more power than any other law enforcement agency. Now, Trump has unleashed them. If we want to reverse the rising tide of abuse, Cohen argues that we must act quickly to rein in the powers of the current immigration regime and revive saner approaches based on existing law. Going beyond the headlines, Illegal makes clear that if we don't act now all of us, citizen and not, are at risk.
Illegal Tender: Gold, Greed, and the Mystery of the Lost 1933 Double Eagle
by David TrippIt's the most valuable ounce of gold in the world, the celebrated, the fabled, the infamous 1933 double eagle, illegal to own and coveted all the more, sought with passion by men of wealth and with steely persistence by the United States government for more than a half century—it shouldn't even exist but it does, and its astonishing, true adventures read like "a composite of The Lord of the Rings and The Maltese Falcon" (The New York Times). In 1905, at the height of the exuberant Gilded Age, President Theodore Roosevelt commissioned America's greatest sculptor, Augustus Saint-Gaudens—as he battled in vain for his life—to create what became America's most beautiful coin. In 1933 the hopes of America dimmed in the darkness of the Great Depression, and gold—the nation's lifeblood—hemorrhaged from the financial system. As the economy teetered on the brink of total collapse, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in his first act as president, assumed wartime powers while the nation was at peace and in a "swift, staccato action" unprecedented in United States history recalled all gold and banned its private ownership. But the United States Mint continued, quite legally, to strike nearly a half million 1933 double eagles that were never issued and were deemed illegal to own. In 1937, along with countless millions of other gold coins, they were melted down into faceless gold bars and sent to Fort Knox. The government thought they had destroyed them all—but they were wrong. A few escaped, purloined in a crime—an inside job—that wasn't discovered until 1944. Then, the fugitive 1933 double eagles became the focus of a relentless Secret Service investigation spearheaded by the man who had put away Al Capone. All the coins that could be found were seized and destroyed. But one was beyond their reach, in a king's collection in Egypt, where it survived a world war, a revolution, and a coup, only to be lost again. In 1996, more than forty years later, in a dramatic sting operation set up by a Secret Service informant at the Waldorf-Astoria, an English and an American coin dealer were arrested with a 1933 double eagle which, after years of litigation, was sold in July 2002 to an anonymous buyer for more than $7.5 million in a record-shattering auction. But was it the only one? The lost one? Illegal Tender, revealing information available for the first time, tells a riveting tale of American history, liberally spiced with greed, intrigue, deception, and controversy as it follows the once secret odyssey of this fabulous golden object through the decades. With its cast of kings, presidents, government agents, shadowy dealers, and crooks, Illegal Tender will keep readers guessing about this incomparable disk of gold—the coin that shouldn't be and almost wasn't—until the very end.
Illegally Dead
by David WishartWhen Corvinus receives a letter, with a tantalising PS, from his adopted daughter, Marilla, mentioning there might have been a murder, he hot-foots it to Castrimoenium at once. Not that everyone agrees that Lucius Hostilius was murdered. Poison was apparently the means of death, but Lucius was terminally ill: it was only a matter of time. Although he hasn't any official investigative status, Corvinus can't resist doing a little amateur sleuthing. And he has barely begun when two other corpses turn up and he is formally on the case. Lucius had been suffering something of a personality change because of his illness, so there is no shortage of suspects among friends and family whom he had antagonised. But Corvinus goes up many a blind alley before arriving at the heart of the mystery. As we follow Marcus Corvinus, clue by clue, on his twelfth case, we allow ourselves to be pleasurably diverted by rumours of Meton's love life - and by an authentic recipe for fish pickle sauce . . .
Illegally Dead
by David WishartWhen Corvinus receives a letter, with a tantalising PS, from his adopted daughter, Marilla, mentioning there might have been a murder, he hot-foots it to Castrimoenium at once. Not that everyone agrees that Lucius Hostilius was murdered. Poison was apparently the means of death, but Lucius was terminally ill: it was only a matter of time. Although he hasn't any official investigative status, Corvinus can't resist doing a little amateur sleuthing. And he has barely begun when two other corpses turn up and he is formally on the case. Lucius had been suffering something of a personality change because of his illness, so there is no shortage of suspects among friends and family whom he had antagonised. But Corvinus goes up many a blind alley before arriving at the heart of the mystery. As we follow Marcus Corvinus, clue by clue, on his twelfth case, we allow ourselves to be pleasurably diverted by rumours of Meton's love life - and by an authentic recipe for fish pickle sauce . . .
Illegible Will: Coercive Spectacles of Labor in South Africa and the Diaspora
by Hershini Bhana YoungIn Illegible Will Hershini Bhana Young engages with the archive of South African and black diasporic performance to examine the absence of black women's will from that archive. Young argues for that will's illegibility, given the paucity of materials outlining the agency of black historical subjects. Drawing on court documents, novels, photographs, historical records, websites, and descriptions of music and dance, Young shows how black will can be conjured through critical imaginings done in concert with historical research. She critically imagines the will of familiar subjects such as Sarah Baartman and that of obscure figures such as the eighteenth-century slave Tryntjie of Madagascar, who was executed in 1713 for attempting to poison her mistress. She also investigates the presence of will in contemporary expressive culture, such as the Miss Landmine Angola beauty pageant, placing it in the long genealogy of the freak show. In these capacious case studies Young situates South African performance within African diasporic circuits of meaning throughout Africa, North America, and South Asia, demonstrating how performative engagement with archival absence can locate that which was never recorded.
Illegitimacy and the National Family in Early Modern England
by Helen Vella BonavitaThis study considers the figure of the bastard in the context of analogies of the family and the state in early modern England. The trope of illegitimacy, more than being simply a narrative or character-driven issue, is a vital component in the evolving construction and representation of British national identity in prose and drama of the sixteenth and early seventeenth century. Through close reading of a range of plays and prose texts, the book offers readers new insight into the semiotics of bastardy and concepts of national identity in early modern England, and reflects on contemporary issues of citizenship and identity. The author examines play texts of the period including Bale's King Johan, Peele's The Troublesome Reign of John, and Shakespeare's King John, Richard II, and King Lear in the context of a selection of legal, religious, and polemical texts. In so doing, she illuminates the extent to which the figure of the bastard and, more generally the trope of illegitimacy, existed as a distinct discourse within the wider discursive framework of family and nation.
The Illegitimate Duke: Diamonds in the Rough (Diamonds in the Rough #3)
by Sophie BarnesUnited in a common cause…Lady Juliette Matthews longs to be much more than just another pretty ornament in society. But using her recently acquired fortune to do some good is more complicated than she anticipated. Young ladies are not expected to risk their safety in helping the less fortunate. And the one gentleman who could help in her mission is stubborn, infernally handsome—and far too honorable to act on their mutual attraction.And in a desire impossible to deny…Florian Lowell has suddenly been made heir to the Duke of Redding—a far cry from his status as a dedicated physician. Yet even with his new role as the country’s most eligible bachelor, the beautiful, fearless Juliette is utterly beyond his reach. The scandalous circumstances of his birth would destroy both their reputations if they became known. But when a more urgent danger threatens Juliette’s life, Florian must gamble everything…including the heart only one woman can tame.
Illegitimate Girl Takes World: Volume 1 (Volume 1 #1)
by Qing YuAt the peak of Mount Kunlun, at the precipice of a tall cliff, a fierce wind blew. A full moon hung high above the vast curtain of darkness. A woman covered in blood stumbled as she stepped on the broken stones. In the end, she had nowhere to retreat to …
Illegitimate Girl Takes World: Volume 2 (Volume 2 #2)
by Qing YuAt the peak of Mount Kunlun, at the precipice of a tall cliff, a fierce wind blew. A full moon hung high above the vast curtain of darkness. A woman covered in blood stumbled as she stepped on the broken stones. In the end, she had nowhere to retreat to …
Illegitimate Girl Takes World: Volume 3 (Volume 3 #3)
by Qing YuAt the peak of Mount Kunlun, at the precipice of a tall cliff, a fierce wind blew. A full moon hung high above the vast curtain of darkness. A woman covered in blood stumbled as she stepped on the broken stones. In the end, she had nowhere to retreat to …
The Illegitimate Montague (Castonbury Park Ser. #5)
by Sarah Mallory'Be careful who you get close to...'Adam Stratton is a new breed of Regency Man. A hero of Trafalgar, he is now an entrepreneur, rich beyond imagination. Yet all the money in the world can't erase the scandal and shame of his birth. Since childhood, Amber has been the only one to know Adam's true value. And her memories of the housekeeper's son at Castonbury were the only respite from her unhappy marriage. Now a widow, Amber finds her new-found freedom daunting, although the sight of Adam gives her hope. But, despite their simmering attraction, putting their faith in each other may be more dangerous than they had bargained for...
Illiberal America: A History
by Steven HahnIf your reaction to the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol was to think, 'That’s not us,' think again: in Illiberal America, a Pulitzer Prize–winning historian uncovers a powerful illiberalism as deep seated in the American past as the founding ideals. A storm of illiberalism, building in the United States for years, unleashed its destructive force in the Capitol insurrection of January 6, 2021. The attack on American democracy and images of mob violence led many to recoil, thinking “That’s not us.” But now we must think again, for Steven Hahn shows in his startling new history that illiberalism has deep roots in our past. To those who believe that the ideals announced in the Declaration of Independence set us apart as a nation, Hahn shows that Americans have long been animated by competing values, equally deep-seated, in which the illiberal will of the community overrides individual rights, and often protects itself by excluding perceived threats, whether on grounds of race, religion, gender, economic status, or ideology. Driven by popular movements and implemented through courts and legislation, illiberalism is part of the American bedrock. The United States was born a republic of loosely connected states and localities that demanded control of their domestic institutions, including slavery. As white settlement expanded west and immigration exploded in eastern cities, the democracy of the 1830s fueled expulsions of Blacks, Native Americans, Catholics, Mormons, and abolitionists. After the Civil War, southern states denied new constitutional guarantees of civil rights and enforced racial exclusions in everyday life. Illiberalism was modernized during the Progressive movement through advocates of eugenics who aimed to reduce the numbers of racial and ethnic minorities as well as the poor. The turmoil of the 1960s enabled George Wallace to tap local fears of unrest and build support outside the South, a politics adopted by Richard Nixon in 1968. Today, with illiberalism shaping elections and policy debates over guns, education, and abortion, it is urgent to understand its long history, and how that history bears on the present crisis.
Illiberal China: The Ideological Challenge of the People's Republic of China (China in Transformation)
by Daniel F. VukovichThis book analyzes the 'intellectual political culture' of post-Tiananmen China in comparison to and in conflict with liberalism inside and outside the P.R.C. How do mainland politics and discourses challenge ‘our’ own, chiefly liberal and anti-‘statist’ political frameworks? To what extent is China paradoxically intertwined with a liberal economism? How can one understand its general refusal of liberalism, as well as its frequent, direct responses to electoral democracy, universalism, Western media, and other normative forces? Vukovich argues that the Party-state poses a challenge to our understandings of politics, globalization, and even progress. To be illiberal is not necessarily to be reactionary and vulgar but, more interestingly, to be anti-liberal and to seek alternatives to a degraded liberalism. In this way Chinese politics illuminate the global conjuncture, and may have lessons in otherwise bleak times.
Illiberal Democracy in Indonesia: The Ideology of the Family State (Politics in Asia)
by David BourchierIlliberal Democracy in Indonesia charts the origins and development of organicist ideologies in Indonesia from the early 20th century to the present. In doing so, it provides a background to the theories and ideology that informed organicist thought, traces key themes in Indonesian history, examines the Soeharto regime and his ‘New Order’ in detail, and looks at contemporary Indonesia to question the possibility of past ideologies making a resurgence in the country. Beginning with an exploration of the origins of the theory of the organic state in Europe, this book explores how this influenced many young Indonesian scholars and ‘secular’ nationalists. It also looks in detail at the case of Japan, and identifies the parallels between the process by which Japanese and Indonesian nationalist scholars drew on European romantic organicist ideas to forge ‘anti-Western’ national identities and ideologies. The book then turns to Indonesia’s tumultuous history from the revolution to 1965, the rise of Soeharto, and how his regime used organicist ideology, together with law and terror, to shape the political landscape consolidate control. In turn, it shows how the social and economic changes wrought by the government’s policies, such as the rise of a cosmopolitan middle class and a rapidly growing urban proletariat led to the failure of the corporatist political infrastructure and the eventual collapse of the New Order in 1998. Finally, the epilogue surveys the post Soeharto years to 2014, and how growing disquiet about the inability of the government to contain religious intolerance, violence and corruption, has led to an increased readiness to re-embrace not only more authoritarian styles of rule but also ideological formulas from the past. This book will be welcomed by students and scholars of Southeast Asia, politics and political theory, as well as by those interested in authoritarian regimes, democracy and human rights.
Illiberal Reformers: Race, Eugenics, and American Economics in the Progressive Era
by Thomas C. LeonardIn Illiberal Reformers, Thomas Leonard reexamines the economic progressives whose ideas and reform agenda underwrote the Progressive Era dismantling of laissez-faire and the creation of the regulatory welfare state, which, they believed, would humanize and rationalize industrial capitalism. But not for all. Academic social scientists such as Richard T. Ely, John R. Commons, and Edward A. Ross, together with their reform allies in social work, charity, journalism, and law, played a pivotal role in establishing minimum-wage and maximum-hours laws, workmen's compensation, progressive income taxes, antitrust regulation, and other hallmarks of the regulatory welfare state. But even as they offered uplift to some, economic progressives advocated exclusion for others, and did both in the name of progress. Leonard meticulously reconstructs the influence of Darwinism, racial science, and eugenics on scholars and activists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, revealing a reform community deeply ambivalent about America's poor. Economic progressives championed labor legislation because it would lift up the deserving poor while excluding immigrants, African Americans, women, and "mental defectives," whom they vilified as low-wage threats to the American workingman and to Anglo-Saxon race integrity. Economic progressives rejected property and contract rights as illegitimate barriers to needed reforms. But their disregard for civil liberties extended much further. Illiberal Reformers shows that the intellectual champions of the regulatory welfare state proposed using it not to help those they portrayed as hereditary inferiors, but to exclude them.
Illiberal Transitional Justice and the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (Palgrave Studies in the History of Genocide)
by Rebecca GidleyThis book examines the creation and operation of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), which is a hybrid domestic/international tribunal tasked with putting senior leaders of the Khmer Rouge on trial. It argues that the ECCC should be considered an example of illiberal transitional justice, where the language of procedure is strongly adhered to but political considerations often rule in reality. The Cambodian government spent nearly two decades addressing the Khmer Rouge past, and shaping its preferred narrative, before the involvement of the United Nations. It was a further six years of negotiations between the Cambodian government and the United Nations that determined the unique hybrid structure of the ECCC. Over more than a decade in operation, and with three people convicted, the ECCC has not contributed to the positive goals expected of transitional justice mechanisms. Through the Cambodian example, this book challenges existing assumptions and analyses of transitional justice to create a more nuanced understanding of how and why transitional justice mechanisms are employed.
An Illicit Engagement: The Gentlemen Next Door (The\gentlemen Next Door Ser. #2)
by Cecilia GrayIn the spirit of Georgette Heyer, this delightful Regency romp offers a humorous and heartwarming tale... The whole series was freaking adorable and fun. --Shari, the Delighted ReaderLord Lucas Willoughby earned his moniker as the Matchmaking Baron after his six engagements ended with each lady happily wed--to someone else. He swears off marriage proposals, until his headstrong neighbor proposes something else entirely.Chastity Drummond has her sights set on a man who barely sees her as a woman, much less a potential wife. She can't seem to get him on bended knee, but knows an engagement to the Matchmaking Baron will turn his head.Lucas and Chastity's charade takes on a life of its own. As feigned attraction becomes real, they wonder if they might already be perfectly matched. Their illicit engagement will inevitably end in marriage--but to whom?* * *ABOUT THE GENTLEMEN NEXT DOOR SERIESThe complete series of novellas is available now! Don't miss The Gentlemen Next Door, because sometimes a lady in need of love need look no further than next door. Each of these shorter, sweet stories can be enjoyed as a standalone, but if you love one, then you'll probably love the entire series.Book 1: A Delightful ArrangementBook 2: An Illicit EngagementBook 3: A Dangerous ExpectationBook 4: A Flirtatious RendezvousCharacters you meet in The Gentlemen Next Door also appear in the Kiss A Belle series, which features longer novels. While each story can be enjoyed as a standalone, you may want to read them all. Books 1-3 occur concurrently and can be read in any order; Books 4 and 5 follow respectively.Book 1: Kiss Me AfterBook 2: Kiss Me DarklyBook 3: Kiss Me SweetlyBook 4: Kiss Me SoftlyBook 5: Kiss Me Again* * *MORE PRAISE FOR THE GENTLEMEN NEXT DOORI can't wait to read the next one. That is how addicting this series is. --Lady Armstrong, NetgalleyThese books are like a Snickers bar... a satisfying snack for the romantic's proverbial sweet tooth. --J. Yaggi, NetgalleyThis is a charming, sweet tale with vibrant, believable characters and witty, humorous dialogue. Ms. Gray has outdone herself with this poignant, character-driven novella. --Joyously Retired Teacher, Amazon.comCaptures your attention from the first page. --The Lady Reads @ AmazonA wonderful book and a great read. --Bunny's ReviewThis is a delightful story, well-written, historically accurate and intriguing. --B.S. Andrews @ Amazon
An Illicit Indiscretion
by Bronwyn ScottLondon, 1835Dashiell Steen, heir to the Earl of Heathridge, is tired of boring dinner parties and matchmaking mamas. He craves one final adventure before he's forced to settle down-and finds it with a vivacious beauty escaping from a manor window! Elisabeth Becket's intelligence and rebellious sprit excite both his mind and his body, stirring a mutual attraction that neither can resist. But will their illicit encounter last when she discovers Dashiell is the unwanted suitor she was trying to escape?
Illicit Love: Interracial Sex and Marriage in the United States and Australia (Borderlands and Transcultural Studies)
by Ann McGrathIllicit Love is a history of love, sex, and marriage between Indigenous peoples and settler citizens at the heart of two settler colonial nations, the United States and Australia. Award-winning historian Ann McGrath illuminates interracial relationships from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century through stories of romance, courtship, and marriage between Indigenous peoples and colonizers in times of nation formation.The romantic relationships of well-known and ordinary interracial couples provide the backdrop against which McGrath discloses the “marital middle ground” that emerged as a primary threat to European colonial and racial supremacy in the Atlantic and Pacific Worlds from the Age of Revolution to the Progressive Era. These relationships include the controversial courtship between white, Connecticut-born Harriett Gold and southern Cherokee Elias Boudinot; the Australian missionary Ernest Gribble and his efforts to socially segregate the settler and aboriginal population, only to be overcome by his romantic impulses for an aboriginal woman, Jeannie; the irony of Cherokee leader John Ross’s marriage to a white woman, Mary Brian Stapler, despite his opposition to interracial marriages in the Cherokee Nation; and the efforts among ordinary people in the imperial borderlands of both the United States and Australia to circumvent laws barring interracial love, sex, and marriage.Illicit Love reveals how marriage itself was used by disparate parties for both empowerment and disempowerment and came to embody the contradictions of imperialism. A tour de force of settler colonial history, McGrath’s study demonstrates vividly how interracial relationships between Indigenous and colonizing peoples were more frequent and threatening to nation-states in the Atlantic and Pacific worlds than historians have previously acknowledged.
An Illicit Temptation (Undone!)
by Jeannie LinTang Dynasty China, 824 A.D.Dao was raised as a servant, but when her half-sister flees an arranged marriage to a chieftain, Dao is sent in her place as Princess An-Ming. Such a future is better than she could have hoped for, yet she dreads a passionless union with a stranger.Taken as a virtual hostage to the Imperial court, Kwan-Li is torn between his people and his duty to the emperor. He is bound by honor to escort the princess safely across the wild and untamed steppe, but the greatest danger they face on the long journey may be the forbidden temptation of each other...
The Illimitable Freedom of the Human Mind: Thomas Jefferson’s Idea of a University
by Andrew J. O’ShaughnessyAlready renowned as a statesman, Thomas Jefferson in his retirement from government turned his attention to the founding of an institution of higher learning. Never merely a patron, the former president oversaw every aspect of the creation of what would become the University of Virginia. Along with the Declaration of Independence and the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, he regarded it as one of the three greatest achievements in his life. Nonetheless, historians often treat this period as an epilogue to Jefferson’s career.In The Illimitable Freedom of the Human Mind, Andrew O’Shaughnessy offers a twin biography of Jefferson in retirement and of the University of Virginia in its earliest years. He reveals how Jefferson’s vision anticipated the modern university and profoundly influenced the development of American higher education. The University of Virginia was the most visible apex of what was a much broader educational vision that distinguishes Jefferson as one of the earliest advocates of a public education system.Just as Jefferson’s proclamation that "all men are created equal" was tainted by the ongoing institution of slavery, however, so was his university. O’Shaughnessy addresses this tragic conflict in Jefferson’s conception of the university and society, showing how Jefferson’s loftier aspirations for the university were not fully realized. Nevertheless, his remarkable vision in founding the university remains vital to any consideration of the role of education in the success of the democratic experiment.