This is sad news indeed about Prof. Evans's death.

We had been exchanging e-mails about his last book, "A Topping People."  I told him how much I admired his effort, how it was the kind of book that could only come from of decades of close work with the subject matter.

He said he thought he had one more book in him, a biography of Robert "King" Carter--we both agreed one was sorely needed for someone whose long shadow hung over colonial Virginia in the way that Carter's did. I suggested that perhaps historians and biographers were somehow afraid of the ancient curmudgeon as one might fear a powerful, authoritarian grandfather, but added that if anyone could do it right he surely could.  

And then the exchange abruptly stopped. Now I understand why.

The Carter book still needs to be written.

Thomas Katheder

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