Bernstein, Richard B. 1956-

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BERNSTEIN, Richard B. 1956-

PERSONAL: Born 1956.

ADDRESSES: Office—New York Law School, 57 Worth St., New York, NY 10013-2960. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Heights Books, New York, NY, director of online operations; Council on Citizenship Education, Russell Sage College, director of historical research; H-LAW (http://www.h-net.msu.edu/∼law/), book review editor for U.S. constitutional law; New York Law School, New York, NY, adjunct professor of law.

WRITINGS:

Are We to Be a Nation?: The Making of the Constitution, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1987.

(With Jerome Agel) Into the Third Century: The Supreme Court, Walker (New York, NY), 1989.

(With Jerome Agel) Into the Third Century: The Congress, Walker (New York, NY), 1989.

(With Jerome Agel) Into the Third Century: The Presidency, Walker (New York, NY), 1989.

(With Others) Where the Experiment Began: New York City and the Two Hundredth Anniversary of George Washington's Inauguration, New York City Commission on the Bicentennial of the Constitution (New York, NY), 1989.

(Editor, with Stephen L. Schechter) Well Begun: Chronicles of The Early National Period, New York State Commission on the Bicentennial of the Constitution (Albany, NY), 1989.

(Editor, with Stephen L. Schechter and Donald S. Lutz) Roots of the Republic: American Founding Documents Interpreted, Madison House (Madison, WI), 1990.

(Editor, with Stephen L. Schechter) New York and the Union, New York State Commission on the Bicentennial of the Constitution (Albany, NY), 1990.

(Editor, with Stephen L. Schechter) Contexts of the Bill of Rights, New York State Commission on the Bicentennial of the Constitution (Albany, NY), 1990.

(With Jerome Agel) Amending America: If We Love the Constitution So Much, Why Do We Keep Trying to Change It?, Times Books (New York, NY), 1993.

(With Jerome Agel) Of the People, by the People, for the People: The Congress, the Presidency, and the Supreme Court in American History, Wings Books (New York, NY), 1993.

Thomas Jefferson, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2003.

Thomas Jefferson: The Revolution of Ideas, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2004.

SIDELIGHTS: A law professor and historian, Richard B. Bernstein is also the author of numerous treatments of the U.S. Constitution and the history of American institutions. He has written on the presidency, the congress, the U.S. supreme court, New York City, and New York State in the early years of the American Republic, and has also authored general studies of the constitution and its Bill of Rights. His short biography of Thomas Jefferson, which provides an introduction to many of the historical puzzles and controversies surrounding this complex figure.

Thomas Jefferson, "the best short biography of Jefferson ever written," according to Gordon S. Wood in a review for the New York Times, explores the life of a man whose words and ideas have helped to shape the nation from the very beginning of its struggle for independence until the present day. It also addresses the hypocrisies and scandals of the freedom-loving slaveholder who almost certainly fathered at least one child with [black servant] Sally Hemings, according to Bernstein, although he also lays out the fact that we may never know with absolute certainty. "Jefferson's inconsistencies, however, do not dominate; rather, the author strongly emphasizes Jefferson's democratic ideals," according to Library Journal contributor Gilbert Taylor. For a Publishers Weekly reviewer, "there's little doubt that the book will become the standard brief one-volume biography" of this remarkably complicated Founding Father.