New Yorker, ipad edition, review of Master of the Mountain
October 13, 2012 1 Comment
An excellent notice in the Oct 8 ipad issue of The New Yorker
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- Excerpt in Smithsonian Magazine
- Farrar, Straus & Giroux website for this title
- IndieBound
- Jonathan Yardley's Best Books
- Lecture about Jefferson and slavery at Charlottesville City Council Chambers
- Link to "The Cycle"
- Powell's Books
- Purchase "Master of the Mountain" at Barnes & Noble
- Purchase "Master of the Mountain" on Amazon
- Signed copies may be ordered through New Dominion Bookshop — ndb@cstone.net (There is a charge for shipping.)
Henry Wiencek 
I hope this book revives an old debate that claims it was Thomas Paine, not Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration of Independence. Paine was the first founder of an anti-slavery movement in America whose actual philosophy was that “all men are created equal.” Jefferson, as a frequent buyer and seller of slaves and a commenter on their inferior traits emphatically did not believe this idea. Furthermore, the writing style of the Declaration is nothing like Jefferson’s style, but completely like Paine’s. Even the use of the word “hath” in the Declaration was nowhere to be found in Jefferson’s works, but appeared regularly in Paine’s, who was a Quaker and inclined to speak and write in such Quaker terminologies.