"What Would Thomas Jefferson Say"

Author Thomas C. Williams will discuss the recent US election seen through the lens of Volney’s Ruins of Empires, a popular post-Enlightenment review of human history translated into English by Thomas Jefferson. Irony of Ironies: Everyone used to read Volney’s Ruins—Washington, Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Walt Whitman, Robert Ingersoll, among others—but no one knew Thomas Jefferson translated it. Today, we know Thomas Jefferson translated it. But no one is reading Volney’s Ruins.

This event is sponsored by the New Orleans Secular Humanist Association.