Today’s edition: Annette Gordon Reed, author of The Hemingses of Monticello and Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy as well as co-author of Vernon Can Read! A Memoir.

In addition to her work as an author Ms. Reed is a professor of law at New York Law School and a professor of history at Rutgers University.

In The Hemingses of Monticello, Ms. Reed expands on her earlier work on the controversial and often denied relationship between Thomas Jefferson and his slave Sally Hemings to include the history and lives of the entire Hemings family; a family unique in their time because of their connection to the White House and to one another.