Welcome to Litsy!

I went down a Wikipedia rabbit hole this afternoon while looking up something entirely unrelated, and now I‘m watching an old episode of Oprah about the Jefferson-Hemings descendants (I totally remember watching it 22 years ago) and adding books to my TBR.

On the way to this destination, I discovered that Napoleon Bonaparte‘s brother lived in NJ and that they pretaped the Washington Crossing the Delaware re-enactment last month due to COVID-19.

Very interesting books about the lives of the Hemings family from its founding with Elizabeth Hemings‘ mother through the aftermath of Thomas Jefferson‘s death. It is also a great examination of the slave experience in Virginia and how differently the Hemings family was treated because of their familial ties to the Jeffersons.

This was recommended to me when I finished the Hamilton bio by Ron Chernow and I am loving it!
Like, everybody knows Jefferson was knocking boots with Sally Hemings, but did you know Sally and Jefferson‘s wife were half sisters?!

The skies are about to open any second, but Tom and I are outside doing our respective things for as long as we can manage. #CurrentRead #30JuneBooks #catsoflitsy #TomKitten

I don't know why it's taken me literal years to get to this, but LET'S GO! #currentlyreading

The third book on my Christmas wishlist. I am very interested to see how this story is told.

This one has been on the shelf for a while. Visiting Charlottesville next week!

Inspired to pick this up after recent events.

Still working on my history refresher for my trip in April, looking for suggestions for books on Washington DC, Monticello, Mount Vernon, and the Revolution. Right now working on this book from my library that looks to be very good

I might be biased because I had the privilege of being a student in a couple classes taught by the author, and I thought she was amazing even before I read this book. (I was not a great student that year either, so this isn't me being a teacher's pet.) She digs into what people in the 1700s really meant when they wrote certain things and where their heads were at based on their life experiences, and that is what makes this book awesome.