The New Republic

Thomas Paine: Collected Writings edited by Eric Foner (The Library of America, 906 pp., $35) Thomas Paine: Apostle of Freedom by Jack Fruchtman Jr. (Four Walls Eight Windows, 557 pp., $30) Thomas Paine: A Political Life by John Keane (Little, Brown, 644 pp., $27.95) I. READ MORE >>

The Republic of Letters: The Correspondence Between Thomas Jefferson and James Madison 1776-1826 edited by James Morton Smith (W.W. Norton, 3 volumes, 2,073 pp., $150) READ MORE >>

A few months ago, Garry Wills wrote an erudite piece in the New York Review of Books called "Jefferson the Aesthete." Far from the radical populist of historical myth, Wills argues, Jefferson was an aestheticized elitist of excessive refinement, who went on reckless buying sprees in Paris and cluttered his mountaintop chateau with Houdon busts, Sèvre table sculptures and a fauteuil from Marie Antoinette's own ébéniste. READ MORE >>

For King and Country: The Maturing of George Washington, 1748-1760 by Thomas A. Lewis (HarperCollins, 203 pp., $27.50) Patriarch: George Washington and the New American Nation by Richard Norton Smith (Houghton Mifflin, 424 pp., $24.95) READ MORE >>

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Sport and the Spirit of Play in American Fiction: Hawthorne to Faulkner Christian K. Messenger From the dawn of time, the "hero" seems always to have been an athlete. Gilgamesh outwrestling Enkidu to prove who was strongest in Uruk is by no means a unique example. Perhaps the only trait d'union between the heroes of the two great Homeric epics is their common respect for sport. And Greek mythology reads like a veritable roster of champions: Herakles, Pelops, Theseus, Hippolytus, and Atalanta to name a few. READ MORE >>

At midnight last August 5, Wilbert Lee O’Daniel stood in his pajamas on the station platform at Beaumont, Texas. He made his last speech as Governor of Texas and climbed back into his berth on the train carrying him to Washington. READ MORE >>