“It’s a classic enlightenment story: a novel in the history of ideas about how civilization is created from nothing.”
We present another installment of the Jefferson Hour Book Club this week, and the selection is Robinson Crusoe, written by Daniel DeFoe and published in 1719. It is a book Thomas Jefferson had in his library and reportedly read twice.
Further Reading
Thomas Jefferson: Author of America by Christopher Hitchens
Robinson Crusoe
The Jefferson Watch
What Would Jefferson Do?
“We need second and other voices, including voices of dissent.”
Tune in to your local public radio or join the 1776 Club to hear this episode of What Would Thomas Jefferson Do?
Over the past few days I have had the wonderful guilty pleasure of sitting down to read Robinson Crusoe cover to cover. I know I should have been doing other things, some of them pressing, but I just sat there and read this famous and fabulous account of a man who is shipwrecked on a small island off of Venezuela and spends 28 years there, 26 alone with a parrot and some semi-domesticated flocks of goats.
"It’s a classic enlightenment story: a novel in the history of ideas about how civilization is created from nothing."
— Clay S. Jenkinson
We present another installment of the Jefferson Hour Book Club this week, and the selection is Robinson Crusoe, written by Daniel Defoe and published in 1719. It is a book Thomas Jefferson had in his library and reportedly read twice.
"He's never happier than when he can recommend a course of reading to somebody else."
— Clay S. Jenkinson
President Jefferson tells us what books he might recommend to juvenile readers, and it turns out to be a fairly limited list. He does, however, recommend Don Quixote, Gulliver’s Travels and Robinson Crusoe.