JEFFERSON THE VIRGINIAN (484 pp.)—Dumas Malone—Little, Brown ($6).
"A few broad strokes of the brush would paint the portraits of all the early Presidents with this exception, and a few more strokes would answer for any member of their cabinets; but Jefferson could be painted only touch by touch, with a fine pencil, and the perfection of the likeness depended upon the shifting and uncertain flicker of its semi-transparent shadows."
With the second part, at least, of this famous statement by Henry Adams, Columbia's Professor Dumas Malone agrees. In this first installment of a...