In this volume, Kevin J. Hayes collects thirty accounts of Thomas Jefferson written by his granddaughters, visiting dignitaries, fellow politicians, and others who knew him as a family man, public servant, intellectual, and institution builder. The letters and reminiscences of those who knew Jefferson personally reveal him to be a warm, funny man, quite unlike the solemn statesman so often limned in biographies.

 

To friends and enemies alike he was the model of a republican gentleman, profoundly knowledgeable in philosophy and natural history, able to converse in several languages, and capable of great wit but contemptuous of ceremony and fancy dress. Through these excerpts, we can see the nation’s third president as his family knew him—a loving husband, father, and grandfather—and as his peers did, as a tireless public servant with a fondness for tall tales. 

"John George Nicolay played a pivotal role in Abraham Lincoln’s presidency and the preservation of his legacy. Whereas Lincoln’s other secretary, John Hay, has received extensive attention, Nicolay, until now, has remained somewhat hidden. In this important work, Allen Carden and Thomas J. Ebert bring Nicolay to life and examine the role he played in Lincoln’s administration and as coauthor with Hay of a massive Lincoln biography. The result is a work that should be read by all students of Abraham Lincoln."  —Louis P. Masur, Distinguished Professor of American Studies and History and author of Lincoln’s Last Speech and Lincoln’s Hundred Days
 

John Vinci: Life and Landmarks is the first authoritative survey of the life and work of one of Chicago’s most acclaimed architects and preservationists. Long awaited by scholars as well as by architecture aficionados, John Vinci provides an intimate look at an architect whose portfolio spans half a century and includes the restoration of some of the city’s most important historic structures as well as numerous award-winning original projects.

This illustrated biography traces Vinci’s origins as a child of Italian immigrants on Chicago’s South Side and his coming of age at the Illinois Institute of Technology, which was then under the direction of the legendary Modernist architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. It follows his career through his subsequent immersion in the historic preservation movement and the work of such early Chicago architects as Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, and John Wellborn Root.

Vinci’s pioneering restoration projects include Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie House and Home Studio, Sullivan’s Chicago Stock Exchange Trading Room and the Carson Pirie Scott Building, and Root’s Monadnock Building. His original work, meanwhile, includes notable buildings such as the Arts Club of Chicago, numerous award-winning residences, and more than fifty major exhibitions at the Art Institute of Chicago and other museums.

John Vinci: Life and Landmarks also features portraits and profiles of Vinci’s friends and mentors over the years, including the architectural photographer Richard Nickel, the landscape designer Alfred Caldwell, the Art Institute curators James Speyer and Anne Rorimer, the architects Crombie Taylor and Myron Goldsmith, and the City of Chicago’s cultural historian Tim Samuelson.

The book includes new photos of twenty projects by noted architectural photographer William Zbaren as well as more than one hundred vintage photos and floorplans from Vinci’s personal archives, many never before published. A comprehensive catalogue raisonné rounds out this handsome and definitive work.