Although Ms. Zolkover indicates she will not reply further,  I want to address one particular statement that has been repeated persistently and insistently through this entire thread.  I beg the List's indulgence:

"When """historical experts""" write biographys and IGNORE exculpatory 
evidence that would most reasonably point to a reading of history much 
different than theirs, in my opinion they are liars for not stating at the 
outset that this is their interpretation; and to the extent they have 
ignored exculpatory evidence, is fiction."

Historians gather evidence from various sources -- sometimes this evidence is very concrete, sometimes it is based on direct inference, and sometimes it is based on conjecture drawn from larger patterns -- they then take that evidence and analyze it, that is, ask _relevant_ questions of it, and from that analysis draw conclusions and frame their interpretation.  This is the training that professional academic historians undertake, and it substantially supplies the methodology not only of professionals, but also of thoughtful amateur historians --- many of whom make solid contributions to this very list.   To demand the sort of statement Ms. Zolkover indicates is entirely superfluous: to write history or biography _is_ to engage in interpretation.  None of the authors who have been repeatedly labelled "liars" in this thread has made any claim that I can see of having produced an unalterable holy writ on the life of Thomas Jefferson.  To imply otherwise is a disservice to anyone interested in gaining a better understanding of the past.

David Kiracofe




David Kiracofe
History
Tidewater Community College
Chesapeake Campus
1428 Cedar Road
Chesapeake, Virginia 23322
757-822-5136

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