Thomas Jefferson's Academical Village: The Creation of an Architectural Masterpiece - Hardcover

Thomas Jefferson's design for the University of Virginia is widely hailed as a masterpiece. It is his greatest architectural accomplishment, the summation of his quest for intellectual freedom. The story of the University encompasses the political and architectural worlds, as Jefferson struggled against great opposition to establish a new type of educational institution. ""Thomas Jefferson's Academical Village"" offers a comprehensive look at Jefferson's design for the University, at how it came into being, at the different perceptions of its successes and failures, and at the alterations that have taken place down through the years. The revised edition incorporates research that has been ongoing since the book first appeared in 1993, and includes a preface by Richard Guy Wilson, essays on architecture and education and the Lawn, additional architectural drawings and historic photographs, a foreword by President John T. Casteen III, and numerous color illustrations.

Richard Guy Wilson holds the Commonwealth Professor's Chair in Architectural History at the University of Virginia, where he is also Chair of the Department of Architectural History. His specialty is the architecture, design, and art of the eighteenth to the twentieth century, both in America and abroad. He is curator of the University of Virginia's Art Museum exhibition Thomas Jefferson's Academical Village: The Creation of an Architectural Masterpiece, 1817-1824, which will run from September 2009 to January 2010, and the editor (with Shaun Eyring and Kenny Marotta) of Re-creating the American Past: Essays on the Colonial Revival (Virginia).