America's Obsessives: The Compulsive Energy That Built a Nation Read Online Free PDF

away in the pursuit.”
    The more distressed Jefferson was, the more avidly he threw himself into his collecting, organizing, and list making. The loss of his wife would produce a veritable frenzy of classification. While his grief initially resulted in emotional paralysis, within a few months, he sought comfort by cranking out a host of new lists. In early 1783, the master collector created an Epistolary Record to track all his correspondence. Over the next forty-three years, he cataloged 19,000 letters of his own—he used a polygraph, not the modern day lie-detector but a primitive copy machine, as he wrote—and 25,000 from colleagues in a 656-page index. Not long after Martha’s death, he also recorded a second inventory of his slaves—the total came to 204—in his Farm Book. And around the same time, he completed the first catalog of his books. Following the Renaissance philosopher Francis Bacon, Jefferson classified his 2,640 volumes into the categories of Memory (history), Reason (mathematics and philosophy), and Imagination (art and literature). To console himself, the aging Jefferson repeatedly responded to his own query of “whether my country is the better for my having lived at all” by compiling lists of his achievements. Shortly before his death in 1826, he came up with a final “short list.” As he instructed his heirs, he wanted “the following inscription, and not a word more” placed on his tombstone:
    Here was buried
    Thomas Jefferson
    Author of the Declaration of American Independence
    of the Statute of Virginia for religious freedom
    and Father of the University of Virginia.
    So attached to lists was he that he wished to be remembered by one; and this summary of his career stressed his main obsessions and compulsions—advocating for freedom and organizing knowledge—rather than the prominent offices he held—governor, secretary of state, and president.
    For comfort, Jefferson often turned to data sets rather than to other people. A man who had difficulty connecting, he was convinced that “the most effectual means of being secure against pain is to retire within ourselves, and to suffice for our own happiness.” A loner with few close friends, he felt uncomfortable in most social settings. In fact, in a recent paper published in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease , a team of Duke University psychiatrists, based on the evidence contained in the major biographies, concluded that Jefferson met the diagnostic criteria for social phobia. A common symptom of this anxiety disorder is an intense fear of public speaking, the very problem that derailed Jefferson’s law career in the early 1770s. “His voice, if raised much above the loudness of ordinary conversation,” Randall notes, “began, after a few moments’ effort, to ‘sink in his throat’—in other words, to become husky and inarticulate.”
    Jefferson never said a word in the debates held during the Second Continental Congress. As president, he gave just two speeches—his first and second Inaugural Addresses. In sharp contrast with his predecessors, George Washington and John Adams, President Jefferson hardly ever appeared in public, except at his dinner parties, where he set strict rules (he invited members of one party— either Federalists or Republicans—in groups of twelve to twenty, and any political discussion was verboten). While Jefferson could be a lively conversationalist, he related more easily to others on the page than in person. His was an epistolary presidency. In his White House study, with his pet hummingbird, Dick, often perched upon his shoulder—the president kept the cage open when no one else was around—he spent ten to thirteen hours a day at his writing desk. As per his own calculations, in the first year of his administration, Jefferson received 1,881 letters and sent out 677.
      
    Thomas Jefferson was born on April 13, 1743, in Shadwell, Virginia. He was the third child and firstborn son of