Q: We at UVA Press, along with Maurizio Valsania, were delighted to learn that you were reading his latest book, The Limits of Optimism: Thomas Jefferson’s Dualistic Enlightenment. How did you come to his work?

Gordon-Reed: My good friend Peter Onuf of the University of Virginia had read the book in manuscript and suggested I read it.

Q: Jefferson is well known as an enlightenment thinker. Did anything in Valsania’s book surprise you?

Gordon-Reed: Well, it’s such a fresh take on Jefferson. It moves beyond the “He was a man of contradictions” approach. That is true, but as Valsania shows, a lot of what Jefferson says and does hangs together.

Q: You co-wrote the introduction to Monticello historian Cinder Stanton’s “Those Who Labor for My Happiness” with Peter Onuf. Can you elaborate on how you’ve learned from and collaborated with her in her research on the lives of Jefferson’s slaves?

Gordon-Reed: I showed up at Monticello with a first draft of my book Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy. I sat in her office and played what we came to call “20 questions” or sometimes more or less. I drew on her unparalleled knowledge of TJ and Monticello to answer questions I had about some of the things the historians I was writing about had said about life on the plantation.

She has been a good sounding board for my ideas and interpretations. We do not always agree, and that is good. It’s so much better with a give and take, especially with a person who is so knowledgeable. Everyone has an opinion, but all too often those opinions are formed without anything approaching a sufficient base of knowledge. Information—basic information—is key. But that takes work and long years of study—all things she has done. It has been great to learn from her.

Q: As you know, a Smithsonian exhibit opened in January on Jefferson and slavery. Do you feel that the popular reception to the exhibition will be significantly different than it would have been fifteen or twenty years ago, before you wrote Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings?

Gordon-Reed: Well, I do think the Hemings-Jefferson relationship is not so big a deal to people now that the people who are most knowledgeable about Jefferson have incorporated it into the story of his life. People now want to think about the implications of it all.

Q: In the Boston Globe recently, you said you find history books more “vivid and exciting” than novels, and there have been much-cited essays by novelists such as Tom Wolfe and Jonathan Franzen on why American novelists don’t tackle big subjects. Do you think that big social novels are the answer, or is there some other reason why contemporary novels don’t grab your attention?

Gordon-Reed: I’m not sure that every book should be a “big social” novel.  I do like Wolfe, but more of his “new journalism,” the Wolfe of the 1970s. I suppose I’m just not as interested in the characters so much as I am interested in figures of history. I start reading and it’s fine. But then I wonder do I care enough about this person to continue? Most often, I answer no. I did love Marilynne Robinson’s novel, Gilead; that held my interest—and as I said in the Globe interview, I do like Christopher Isherwood’s novels.  It’s not the novelists, though. It’s me.

Q: What’s next for you in terms of research and writing?

Gordon-Reed: I’m working with Peter Onuf on a book about Jefferson. I have another volume of the Hemings family saga. Then it’s on to a two-volume biography of Jefferson.

Library Journal‘s Cheryl LaGuardia is currently offering her blog readers a login for free-trial access to The Presidential Recordings of Lyndon B. Johnson. Hurry and check it out—the login is good for one week only.

The online edition of The Presidential Recordings includes hundreds of hours of presidential tapes covering the major issues of the LBJ administration, from the War on Poverty to the Civil Rights Movement to the Vietnam War. Each conversation is fully transcribed and annotated, and accompanied by its audio file, allowing users to hear all of the collections conversations. This multimedia presentation also includes photo and video galleries, a linked timeline, and powerful XML-based searching ability.

CNN blogger Eric Marrapodi attended the event, and his report—including an illuminating interview with Donohue—has just been posted on CNN’s Belief Blog. You may read the Salomé post here.

Although an English speaker and writer, Wilde composed his play in French. Donohue sought to correct earlier translations written in a deliberately archaic idiom of traditional biblical language: his translation offers a fresh and briskly contemporary approach to Wilde’s play by drawing on the more spare and colloquial English of current American speakers. (Marrapodi provides an excellent example of the different translations in his blog post.) Donohue also addresses Wilde’s impressive fluency with the classical world. People who know the playwright mainly as a coiner of clever phrases will be surprised to learn that, at Oxford, Wilde was “a superb classical scholar.”

In case you’re wondering, the portrait above of Salomé and John the Baptist is by renowned illustrator Barry Moser. Moser created 23 engravings for the new edition, which is available now in hardcover and as a signed limited edition.

As we endure another election year,

Undoubtedly one of the brightest spots in the tedious, tendentious slog of the Republican presidential debates came in Jacksonville, Florida on January 26, when Wolf Blitzer asked the candidates which of their wives would be the best First Lady. The Twitt-O-Sphere went wild, howling at Gingrich’s gaffe that made him sound like he was evaluating all his wives for the job, mourning the loss of a good “Mormon joke moment” at Romney’s expense. Many commenters did indeed see the question as an occasion for comedy.

But the inquiry about First Lady aptitude was trying to get at something, albeit in a clumsy way. The role of the First Lady can be as important as it is hard to quantify. A look at our history shows that a woman with the right personal gifts and a taste for politics can make a difference in how Americans feel about a president. And that is what is potentially at stake. The “job” of First Lady (unappointed, unhired) can encompass many things, but the most successful First Ladies have acted as “charismatic figures” for their husbands’ administrations, transmitting larger-than-life images and messages of reassurance, legitimacy, and hope. As wives by their husbands’ sides, as mothers with their families, as remarkable women in their own right, they can say much to the issue of character and help turn the abstraction of “Candidate” into a person.

Dolley Madison reassured both Americans and Europeans that the infant republic and the new capital city were secure and growing endeavors and that the Madisons were the right people to rule them both. In the depths of a depression that called into question the American character, Eleanor Roosevelt made us feel moral and caring. Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy was the symbol for a new era in US leadership, one that was young, bright, both cosmopolitan and American. A perfect fit for her husband’s presidency, Michelle Obama lets us know that people like us, middle-class strivers, have brought modern ideas and commonsense to Washington.

Every election season, some journalist asks me how much effect a First Lady or First Lady-hopeful has on the results. They’re looking for a percentage or some kind of number. Of course that’s impossible to provide (except perhaps in the case of the Ford election: don’t we think 100% of the Ford votes were for Betty?). But when a voter steps into the booth, how he or she feels about the candidate, whether the voter trusts one candidate over the other, that has everything to do with his wife.

So. Maybe not such a silly question after all.

Catherine Allgor has been thinking and writing about women and politics since the Clinton administration. A professor of history and Presidential Chair at the University of California at Riverside, Catherine’s books include a political biography of the First Lady who set the tone for all the others: A Perfect Union: Dolley Madison and the Creation of the American Nation (Holt, 2006). Her first book was with the University of Virginia Press, Parlor Politics: In Which the Ladies of Washington Help Build a City and a Government (2000). Her latest exploration of political women brings her home to Virginia with The Queen of America: Mary Cutts’s Life of Dolley Madison, due for release in Fall 2012.

Q: Apparently most of the Concordia‘s lifeboats could not even be launched, due to the way the ship listed. Nonetheless the captain managed to escape in one of the lifeboats, claiming he tripped into it and was somehow unable to get out. Is there no “women and children first” rule—or at least “passengers first” rule—during such an evacuation? And what constitutes abandoning one’s ship?

A: Merchant seamen have followed the unwritten law of the sea for well more than a century: passengers go first into the lifeboats, usually women and children and the infirm and injured first, in part because it is easier to board lifeboats before a ship begins to list, in part because if there are not lifeboats for all (if some have been damaged by fire or collision, for example), physically fit men have the best chance of surviving atop floating wreckage.  ”Abandoning ship” means everyone leaves the ship in lifeboats:  the master leaves only after making certain everyone else is off.

Q: If a listing ship cannot launch many of its lifeboats, are they much use outside of those situations where the sinking ship remains relatively upright as it goes down?

A: Typically merchant-ship masters order lifeboats boarded and lowered before lists become so severe as to prevent launching:  in extreme cases lifeboats can be launched empty and people can swim to them.  But lifeboats can be launched efficiently even from listing ships:  those on the lower side are kept close to the deck with lines until filled and once filled those on the upper side are skidded down the hull slowly.  Lifeboats and related safety systems are designed to work in emergency situations, most of which involve ships on less than even keels.

Q: What is one likely to encounter in the 21st century lifeboat?

A: A modern lifeboat often carries more than a hundred passengers, is enclosed, provisioned with food, water, medical, and other supplies, and nowadays fitted with a diesel engine:  it has seats and open, flat spaces in which injured people may lie down.  Unlike the old open boats fitted with sails and oars, it is not expected to go very far, but instead stay near the site of the sinking and await rescue forces.

Q: Passengers climbing into lifeboats and fleeing a sinking ship has a distinctly 19th-century (or, at best, early 20th-century) ring to it. Is today’s lifeboat a mandated but never-used ornament (like the airline seat that is a “flotation device”)?

A: Modern lifeboats are used more than contemporary Americans suspect.  Recent cruise-ship disasters off Alaska (the Prinsendam), the horn of Africa (Achille Lauro), and other places I describe in Lifeboat involved everyone abandoning ship in lifeboats and awaiting rescue. The freighter Hawaiian King rescued the thousand Achille Lauro castaways after they spent twenty-four hours in lifeboats. While it will take a Court of Inquiry to explain what happened to the Costa Concordia, it appears that a 150-foot-long gash sank the ship. Consider a similar ship striking, say, a nearly submerged derelict ship floating upside down, which is a very real hazard in the mid-ocean: if it were to sink as quickly, you would have all those passengers boarding lifeboats and requiring long-distance rescue.

The cloth edition of John Stilgoe’s Lifeboat is available for a limited time at its paperback price of $18.95. This large-format (7 x 9 1/4) book with 21 period illustrations is an engrossing read or a great gift. Grab one by emailing or by calling or faxing to our toll-free numbers and mentioning this special offer.

Jabalí en adobo
Serves 6 to 8  as part of a selection of tapas

4 cloves garlic, peeled
3 teaspoons Spanish pimentón (sweep paprika)
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 cup white wine
1/4 cup wine vinegar
6 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 pound slightly fatty stewing boar meat, cut into 1-inch-square pieces
Salt and freshly ground pepper
1 bay leaf
1 cup water

1. In a food processor, blend the garlic,  pimentón, cumin, oregano, wine, vinegar, and 4 tablespoons of the oil.
2. Place the boar in a glass bowl and mix with this marinade. Cover, refrigerate, and marinate overnight.
3. Drain the boar, reserving the marinade.
4. In a terra-cotta, cast-iron cazuela (casserole), or heavy skillet,  heat the remaining two tablespoons of oil over medium heat. Season the boar with salt and pepper an add to warm oil. Turning occasionally, cook until browned, about 5 minutes.
5. Pour in the reserved marinade and add the bay leaf. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to low, and simmer until the wine in the marinade has reduced, about 20 minutes. Add the water and continue to simmer until the meat is tender, about 20 or 30 minutes.
6. Remove the bay leaf and discard. Transfer the boar to a plate, spoon over the sauce, and serve.

As this is a tapa, it should be served with other dishes, such as pimientos del piquillo, morcilla de Burgos, or some pintxos made with bread rounds topped by a mound of fried morcilla and fried quail egg. And don’t forget the wine—try a young red, fruity with a hint of spice.

This recipe, and many others, may be found in Jeffrey Green’s The Golden-Bristled Boar:  Last Ferocious Beast of the Forest.

A reading of Joseph Donohue’s new translation of Oscar Wilde’s one-act tragedy Salomé was staged at Charlottesville’s Live Arts theater on December 2, 2011. This clip comes at a crucial moment in the play’s action, when Salomé, having danced for her stepfather Herodias, reveals to him what the price will be.

You may also view the video on youtube.

Aside from coming up with possibly the greatest haul of Egyptian artifacts ever to reach the West, Belzoni is perhaps most famous for sparking controversy among critics who feel this former circus “strong man” was more vandal than archaeologist. The Wall Street Journal notes this same contradiction in their new review of the Noël Hume biography : “in this entertaining and graceful account of Belzoni’s adventures, Mr. Hume opens a window on the raffish days of early Egyptology, when an Italian giant towered over his competitors.” The New York Times’ review of the book also touches on the “tomb robber” side of Belzoni: “While it’s entirely possible to cringe at Belzoni’s methods. . .it’s nearly impossible to resist the story of [his] life…”

Ivor Noël Hume’s Belzoni: The Giant Archaeologists Love to Hate is available now.

Join the University of Virginia Press and Joseph Donohue at Live Arts on Friday, December 2nd at 7:30 pm for a staged reading of this new translation of Salomé, directed by UVA Department of Drama Professor Kate Burke. $25 to RSVP in advance (with reserved seating) or pay what you can at the door. The reading will take place from 7:30-8:30. Following the performance will be a discussion with the cast and a book signing with the translator. Guests 21 and older are then invited to join us after the performance for a reception on the terrace, hosted by C&O Restaurant.

For more information, please contact Emily Grandstaff at egrandstaff@virginia.edu / 434-982-2932.