book review of M&D interest

[Doug Millison]

review of a book about a young Tom who shows up in M&D:

http://www2.h-net.msu.edu/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=266931004561117
"Yet Halliday asserts that "the 'sphinx' approach to Thomas Jefferson tends
to mystify rather than enlighten, and can lead to badly skewed
misinterpretations." Jefferson's "contradictions and paradoxes"--among
which Halliday includes his status as a slaveholding egalitarian and
"white-supremacist" miscegenator, his repeatedly-stated antipathy to public
service during his long career as public servant, his "firm belief in God"
despite his distaste for organized religion, and simultaneous admiration of
and chauvinism against women--"are reasonably understandable when observed
in the light of his personal and social circumstances, and considered in
the light of common human experience" (pp. xii, 169). "