Very well-researched and presented story of what happened to Monticello after Thomas Jefferson's death. A colorful family including an iconoclastic Navy commander and his nephew, a New York financial speculator, purchased and kept up Jefferson's home during many years in which no one else wanted it, and during which it would certainly have gone to ruin. Then, a vehement campaign on the part of a disgruntled woman, which may have been partially anti-Semitic in intent, browbeat the owner, Jefferson Levy, into putting the home up for sale, and it was eventually purchased by a historical foundation dedicated to Jefferson. But for years, the ownership and contributions of the Levy family were swept under the rug, until recent scholarship restored the "rest of the picture" of the saving of Monticello. Fascinating read.