American Sphinx:The Character of Thomas Jefferson

Joseph John Ellis is a Professor of History at Mount Holyoke College whose work focuses on the lives and times of the founders of the United States of America. His books American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson and Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation won a National Book Award... and a Pulitzer Prize. Both those books were bestsellers with hundreds of thousands of copies. He received his B.A. from the College of William and Mary, where he was initiated into Theta Delta Chi. He earned his M.A. and Ph.D. from Yale University in 1969. He served in the United States Army as a captain and taught for two years at West Point until 1972. That year Ellis joined the faculty at Mount Holyoke College; in 1979 he was made full professor. He is also Ford Foundation Professor. His work has concentrated on the founding fathers of the United States, including biographies of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, the revolution and the early federalist years. Ellis served as dean of faculty at Mount Holyoke ; following that, he was named by the trustees to the endowed Ford Foundation Chair in history.
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