Regrettably, even I have yet to visit Monticello, the estate of third U.S. president Thomas Jefferson, who spent more than forty years designing, dismantling, and reimagining this "essay in architecture," as he called it.  The property is regarded a national treasure -- both for its historical significance and beauty. It's perched atop a lofty hill in Albemarle County, Virginia, not far from Jefferson's birthplace of Shadwell.  Franklin Delano Roosevelt once wrote, "Monticello speaks to me as an expression of the personality of its builder."  Indeed, if you were to pick the president with the widest range of hobbies and abilities, Jefferson would have to be in the Top 3. He was a writer, inventor, philosopher, architect, scientist, scholar, gardener, statesman, founder of the University of Virginia, viticulturalist, and the list goes on. Unlike any of the other 43 men to take office, Jefferson was a polymath -- a true intellectual and Renaissanc...