More than a decade ago, historian and law professor Annette Gordon-Reed triggered a firestorm in academic circles with her book Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy. Gordon-Reed's work examined a contention that had long been rumored but never given this type of exhaustive examination: that America's third president and beloved Founding Father had a sexual relationship with the slave Sally Hemings, one that lasted long enough to produce seven children. Even after a separate DNA study came out a year later establishing a genetic link between Jefferson and the Hemings family, there were still skeptics who doubted the veracity of Gordon-Reed's findings.

Now she attempts to put any remaining doubts about the Hemings-Jefferson liaison to rest with The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family. A behemoth of a book that offers more information about the relationship than anyone might have envisioned, it represents seven years of research and spells out links, connections, bloodlines and familial ties so completely that it shreds any questions of authenticity. Gordon-Reed also carefully follows the genetic trail of the Hemingses from their origins in Virginia during the 1700s on through their dispersal after the death of Jefferson in 1826.

Gordon-Reed's book unravels some of the intricate, often confusing details about exact links and specific relationships. For example, Sally Hemings was the daughter of slave Elizabeth Hemings and slave owner John Wayles. Wayles in turn was the father of Jefferson's wife Martha. Thus Sally Hemings was the half – sister of Jefferson's "legitimate" wife, something that no doubt triggered the flood of denials when the relationship issue was initially raised.

Gordon-Reed is just as meticulous in tracking the connections between brother and sister, parent and child, aunt and uncle, sometimes spending so much time ensuring genetic accuracy that her narrative can become a bit daunting, though still fascinating. She also describes events at Monticello and elsewhere, providing intriguing detail about Philadelphia's emergence as a major city in the late 18th century, the workings of plantation life and Jefferson's later adventures in travel and diplomacy. Simultaneously, the Hemingses are embroiled in their own dramas and intrigues, even sometimes accompanying Jefferson on his travels, as when Sally and James Hemings went to Paris with Jefferson.

It was an unorthodox (to say the least) situation, particularly in later years as Jefferson increasingly tried to dictate choices, manage affairs and generally run the Hemingses' lives in a manner that resembles that of an aging but concerned father, rather than that of a dispassionate merchant trying to maximize his assets. Gordon-Reed understands that she's in delicate emotional territory here, since some readers will resist any attempt to humanize or explain the Jefferson – Hemings situation as anything other than rank exploitation. As she demonstrates, it was much more complicated than that, even with the ugly and dehumanizing reality of slavery always at the core of things. The Hemingses of Monticello explores a thorny but important chapter in American history with distinction and clarity, offering a poignant, if also often ugly, chronicle of slavery, secrecy and family tension.

Ron Wynn writes for the Nashville City Paper and other publications.

These days, it's hip to be Basque. After all, these inhabitants of northern Spain and a slice of southern France, so long unremarked by the outside world, just built the stunning Guggenheim Museum in their port town of Bilbao. They're on the cutting edge of a borderless European Union. Not least, their famous sauce of salt cod, cooked in olive oil with hot pepper and garlic, is likely to be simmering at the finest French restaurants anywhere.

Mark Kurlansky's insightful history shows that although the Basques have been extraordinary inventors and discoverers, they have not always enjoyed such acclaim. In fact, if there were a medal for the most underappreciated people on the planet, the 2.4 million Basques would win hands down.

These adventurers have a little-remembered history of firsts. They were the first Europeans to cultivate tobacco; the first to admire hot peppers imported from the Americas; and the first to break the Dutch monopoly on chocolate. They sailed in the Spanish Armada and built ships with venture capital. And sorry all you Francophiles, it was the Basques who popularized the beret as a fashion statement.

The Basques are also the only Spaniards who visibly resisted the dictator Franco in the early 1970s, and much of this book is devoted to following the political intrigue that made some Basques such terrorists throughout the 1980s. Kurlansky offers a fine opportunity to catch up on Spain's postwar political trials. He also gives a powerful account of the 1937 attack on Guernica, where German and Italian bombers flew low over the town square, dumping splinter bombs at the busiest moment of the market day.

Kurlansky, who wrote Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World, has again put his appetite to work. This book is peppered with recipes for traditional Basque dishes. A roasted sea bream swims in a touch of oil and garlic; red beans from the region of Tolosa are cooked in earthen crocks and garnished with pickled green peppers.

For all his Basque boosterism, Kurlansky remains a wry observer of these neglected and maligned tribes living in the shadows of the Pyrenees. The singular remarkable fact about the Basques, he marvels, is that they still exist.

Jeff Byles is a reviewer in New York City.

In 1995, America witnessed the most publicized real estate transaction since the Oklahoma land rush. Buyers queued up, $1000 checks in hand, to enter a lottery. A low number guaranteed them the opportunity to buy a piece of a dream: a home in Disney's Utopian new community, Celebration.

Located adjacent to Disneyworld in Orlando, Florida, Celebration promised a return to the ideal of the American small town, and who better to serve up that dream than kindly old Uncle Walt?

It had been an idea a long time in the making. Disney's original idea for EPCOT (Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow) was very similar to Celebration, so similar in fact that an EPCOT promotional video made shortly before Disney's death in 1966 was expertly edited and used in the promotion of Celebration. Remarked one viewer, He hasn't changed a bit. EPCOT was to be a town of skyscrapers and monorails, a postmodern community of 20,000 with an eye to the future; Celebration, by contrast, found its muse in the past. Celebration promised state-of-the-art infrastructure, progressive schools, and high-tech shopping convenience, together with a sense of community unknown since the 1950s. Houses were to be spaced more tightly together than in the typical suburb to foster a feeling of togetherness. Front porches were to be located close to the street (and to one another) so that neighbors could be, well, neighborly. It was a dream that was to go horribly awry, a place where badly built homes sank into the swamp, where alligators were regular visitors to the family swimming pools. Encephalitis-bearing mosquitoes bred in the backyards, and people complained endlessly about the unfulfilled promises.

Two new books address the phenomenon of Celebration: The Celebration Chronicles by Andrew Ross and Celebration, USA by Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins. Although they touch on many of the same issues, their perspectives could scarcely be more different. Ross chose a rental apartment as his domicile, Frantz and Collins a $300,000 house. Ross moved from Manhattan, Frantz and Collins from suburban Connecticut. Ross is divorced, a rare solo denizen of Celebration; Frantz and Collins are married with school-age children.

Ross tells us of his humorous experiences with interior design consultants who helped in the decoration of his apartment:

"She warned me that she was itching to be let loose to redesign my 'little space.' Protocol demanded that she consult my tastes, however, and she promised that when the time came we would go shopping together in the showrooms. Passing on each of the national traditions on offer, I expressed my preference for Mediterranean colors and local decorative elements. This was a frank provocation, because it did not cater directly to the expertise of my guests . . . But they were undeterred by my lack of imagination. What colors interested me? Turquoise and jasmine. Both were 'in' at the moment. Everything I mentioned happened to be 'in.' We agreed on leopard-skin prints . . . "

Frantz and Collins on new neighbors:

"In Celebration, friendships, like the town itself, were instant, popping up as fast as the moving trucks unloaded new lives. The natural instinct was to resist these new relationships even as we went on forming them. On the surface, they sometimes seemed too easy. Yet what was this community itself except common interests and a shared outlook on life? The same dreams brought most of us to Celebration, just as the earliest city dwellers sought safety and better lives through group living five thousand years ago."

Both books, though quite different in nature, are insightful and thought-provoking. Each offers good humor, excellent research, compelling anecdotes. Celebration was (and is) a town of contradictions: modern vs. traditional, individuality vs. conformity, nature vs. mankind. A microcosm of America, with a uniquely Disneyesque twist.

Bruce Tierney is a writer and songwriter.

William Strachey wanted to be a writer. He hoped to publish travel narratives and sonnets; his best friend in London was John Dunne. Strachey enjoyed reading the chronicles of New World explorers and had seen indigenous people who were captured and brought to Europe. But in 1609, after 10 years in London without any notable success and his inheritance running low, the 32- year-old left his wife and two sons behind and signed on for the largest expedition ever sent to Jamestown by the Virginia Company.

Strachey’s extraordinary journey to Jamestown was interrupted by a hurricane and a shipwreck in Bermuda, where he was stranded for almost a year. He was a careful observer and gifted writer about that experience as well as about the life of the Jamestown colony, where he was especially interested in the native people. Strachey could not know until later that his writing would inspire the last play William Shakespeare wrote alone, and that the play would include many of Strachey’s own words, among them the play’s title: The Tempest.

Hobson Woodward masterfully tells this fascinating, harrowing story of adventure and survival in A Brave Vessel. Drawing on Strachey’s journals and other authoritative sources, Woodward shows, in a most compelling manner, how dangerous such a voyage was.

The place in Bermuda where Strachey and his shipmates finally landed after being tossed by the storm was the only place on the island’s entire coast deep enough to allow a large ship to approach so close. On the island, there were much hard work and mutinies, but the voyagers had found a generally wonderful place that was free of disease, unlike plague-ravished London. Many did not want to leave, but most did. What they found when they finally arrived in Jamestown, however, shocked them. Only about 90 of the 245 original settlers had survived a winter of starvation and Indian attacks. Conditions were so bad, the colony was abandoned and only the arrival of a new governor, Lord Delaware, reversed the decision that would have perhaps changed the course of history, and even theatrical and literary history. Strachey was appointed secretary of the colony, allowing him to do officially what he hoped to do on his own—write about events and people in the New World.

Strachey also wrote to a possible patron, Lucy, Countess of Bedford, who had earlier supported Dunne. The narrative sent to this “Excellent Lady” is most likely the source from which Shakespeare read Strachey’s work. In two excellent chapters, Woodward discusses in significant detail the parallels between Strachey’s writings and The Tempest. They include the use of certain words, expressions and themes unique to Strachey. Woodward also notes, for example, that Shakespeare’s character Caliban had attributes that appeared to come from a mix of animal allusions in Strachey’s text.

Woodward believes that while Strachey would have been flattered to see his influence in the play, he would have also believed that The Tempest was merely popular entertainment that would fade away. He would have felt it was up to him to write a work of literature that would endure.

Roger Bishop is a retired Nashville bookseller and a frequent contributor to BookPage.

While it’s easy enough to show that the events of any given year were pivotal to one cause or another, Fred Kaplan makes a persuasive argument in 1959: The Year Everything Changed that the highlighted year was a real political, scientific and artistic watershed. It was the year Fidel Castro came to power in Cuba, the U.S. Civil Rights Commission issued its withering report on racial discrimination in America, the microchip and the birth control pill were introduced, and the first American soldiers were killed in Vietnam.

In addition, relations eased between the U.S. and Russia, thanks to high-level diplomatic exchanges; scientists probed deeper into space; courts overturned literary censorship laws; and jazz musicians, painters and comedians debuted exciting new forms of expression. (Having been a 24-year-old and reasonably culturally aware graduate student in 1959, this reviewer thinks Kaplan should have also mentioned the then rising tide of politically tinged folk music.)

Fortunately, the author does a great deal more than merely enumerate this torrent of transitional wonders. He also fills in each of their backstories and demonstrates subtle connections between seemingly discrete occurrences. Naturally enough, he ends the book with a chapter on Sen. John F. Kennedy laying the groundwork for what would turn out to be his successful run for the presidency the following year.

As Kaplan correctly concludes, 1959 set the stage for the massive “upheavals of the subsequent decades.” America would quickly end its love affair with Castro. The Cuban missile crisis would soon sweep away the threads of harmony between the two reigning superpowers. Civil rights would move from the courts into the streets of Little Rock, Montgomery, Birmingham and beyond. The pill would enable Americans to make love without fear even as they made war with increasing fearfulness in Vietnam.

“Above all,” says Kaplan, “there was suddenly a palpable sense [in 1959]—brought on by jet travel, space exploration, and the shift from nuclear domination to a competitive arms race—that the world was shrinking and that America was part of that world, locked into it, no longer merely affecting events but also affected by them. . . . ”

Fifty years later, the country is still coming to terms with those realities. 

The Persian Gulf War is replete with stories of warriors who rose to the occasion and displayed those leadership attributes necessary to produce victory for the Allies. As the Air Component Commander for the US Central Command (CENTCOM) during Operation Desert Storm, Air Force General Chuck Horner epitomized the highest level of leadership. He masterfully designed and then flawlessly executed one of the most devastating air campaigns in history. In his second nonfiction book in a series that began with the acclaimed Into the Storm: A Study in Command, Tom Clancy once again offers an insider's look into the processes that forged victory in the 1991 Middle East War. Every Man a Tiger is a provocative look at the personalities and intricacies of military command. Writing with now-retired General Horner, Clancy verifies that he is a master at storytelling. Clancy and Horner trace the organizational success story of the U.S. Air Force's rise from the tribulations of Vietnam to the heights of victory in the Persian Gulf.

This book is both a comprehensive study of how the air campaign matured into an awesome display of power and precision, and a coming-of-age story of the United States Air Force. Then-Lieutenant General Chuck Horner wore two hats by mid-1990. As the Ninth Air Force Commander stationed in the continental United States, Horner was part of the United States Tactical Air Command, ready to provide air power to any one of the regional commands positioned throughout the world. However, when war was inevitable in the Middle East, Horner donned his second hat, that of leading the Central Command's Air Force, the air arm of General Norman Schwarzkopf's Central Command.

This is where Clancy picks up the story. He places the reader center stage on that fateful day in August 1990, when Horner was alerted to form the air forces that, some eight months later, would punish the Iraqi enemy. Interjecting stories about Horner's career, Clancy analyzes battle damage assessments, new information on sortie missions flown during the war, and details about how the massive Allied coalition was formed. Exploring the career of a fighter jock in combat, Clancy offers a peek into what makes a warrior like Chuck Horner great, and at the same time provides a useful analysis of how this warrior achieved victory.

Major Dominic Caraccilo is the Operations Officer of the 3rd Brigade, 101st Airborne (Air Assault) in Fort Campbell, Kentucky.

By now every literate American knows who Stephen E. Ambrose is. The author of the best-selling Undaunted Courage, about the Lewis and Clark expedition, he was also Ken Burns's primary source for the TV documentary. Now Ambrose returns with Lewis and Clark: Voyage of Discovery. More than a rerun of the author's favorite topic, this beautiful new book combines Ambrose's personal account of his family's retracing of the journey, along with historical background and excerpts from Lewis and Clark's journals. As always with Geographic publications, all the illustrations and layout are wonderful, with paintings, drawings, maps, and dozens of stunning photographs by National Geographic veteran Sam Abell. The result is as much a photographic journey as it is a historical one. The Corps of Discovery, as Jefferson designated them, performed one of the great explorations, and created an enduring American myth. No one describes it better than Stephen Ambrose.

The tale of the Donner party is one of the mythic tragedies of American history. In The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of a Donner Party Bride, Daniel James Brown brings the myth to life, transforming faint history class memories into gripping reality. Through painstaking research and powerful narrative, Brown tracks the disparate groups of pioneers who ended up snowbound in the High Sierras in the winter of 1846-1847, infamously turning to cannibalism when their food ran out. While the book ostensibly focuses on Sarah Graves, a young bride traveling with her family and new husband, its scope is panoramic, taking in everything from the Mexican-American War, to mid-19th-century hygiene practices, to conflicts over money, leadership and routes.

Drawing on contemporary accounts, historical research, scholarly studies of topics like survival psychology and the physiology of starvation, and his own retracing of the Donner party’s steps, Brown vividly depicts the sights, sounds and smells of the Emigrant Trail. Most strikingly, he plausibly reconstructs how Graves and other members of the Donner party would have felt, physically and emotionally, as they pushed their wagons up the Wasatch mountains, staggered across Utah’s salt desert, tried to protect themselves from powerful winter storms, and finally faced the choice—or so they thought—of eating the flesh of family and friends or starving to death. It’s not a pretty tale, but Brown makes it utterly compelling, creating a horror story that we keep hoping will have a happy ending, even as we know it won’t.

Except that for some, it did. For much of the book, Graves is an inadequate heroine. Brown himself points out that there is “little record” of her, and she often seems less a focal point than a minor character. But unlike her husband and parents, she survived the horrors, ultimately making a successful life in California for herself and her surviving sisters. In the end, Graves becomes a symbol, not just of the ability to withstand inconceivable hardship, but of hope itself. This book is a fitting tribute to her story.

Rebecca Steinitz is a writer, editor and consultant in Arlington, Massachusetts.