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Thomas Jefferson’s legal reading list going on line

The almost four hundred legal books that Thomas Jefferson recommended all lawyers should read are about to go on line for everyone to read.

The book list goes back to the creation of the University of Virginia, a project Jefferson took on after he finished serving two terms as America’s third president. A voracious reader himself, Jefferson believed the school’s library would be the heart of the new university, which opened in 1825. So he drew up a list of about 7,000 books ranging in topic from agriculture to zoology that he believed the school should have in its collections. At the time, books were pricey, and Jefferson thought part of the duty of the university was to make great works available for study. “Great standard works of established reputation, too voluminous and too expensive for private libraries, should have a place in every public library, for the free resort of individuals,” Jefferson wrote of the list of works he drew up.

The books were the starting point for the university’s collection, but they didn’t last. Most were destroyed in an 1895 fire that gutted a historic campus building called the Rotunda, the same building that was the endpoint of an August torch-light rally by white nationalists whose demonstration in the city the following day over the removal of a Confederate statue descended into chaos.

It was a law librarian at the university who, 40 years ago, got the idea of re-creating the collection of law books Jefferson recommended. Since then, the university has collected 336 of the 375 legal works listed by Jefferson, a lawyer himself. It’s those works that are now being put online.

I guarantee that a reading of these books would also teach any lawyer about the philosophical foundations of western and British culture, based on individual rights, freedom, and the rule of law.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

2 comments

  • wodun

    the same building that was the endpoint of an August torch-light rally by white nationalists whose demonstration in the city the following day over the removal of a Confederate statue descended into chaos.

    They don’t say the cause of the fire but create the association of the fire with the tiki torch protest. This is an unethical way to blamecast. The white supremacists had nothing to do with the fire and ironically, were marching to preserve history. The people who are trying to destroy history are not the white supremacists but rather the progressives.

    White supremacists have a horrible ideology but that is easy enough to argue against on the merits rather than use deceitful journalism.

    That complaint aside, the article showed how difficult and time consuming it is to digitize books. And all they were doing was taking pictures, no mention of scanning the text so it could be turned into a document that could be edited and reformatted.

  • Orion314

    This is based on a fundamentally flawed premise i.e. THAT , the USG , in anyway shape or form, represents the deplorable , flyover white populus e.g the people on this website. MAYBE they did 200 yrs ago. Today , they only serve the filthy rich. JAIL and death to the tyrants is the only thing that has a chance to right the ship of state. We have to find a work-around for the USG, since it is buried in corruption. Rhetoric seems ineffective .HRC walks free.
    WHY?

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