From Common-place, a special section on Thomas Paine, including an article on Paine, the new atheism movement, and the European skeptic tradition; and the unwanted rise of America's voluntary tradition: A review of Creating a Nation of Joiners: Democracy and Civil Society in Early National Massachusetts by Johann Neem. A review of Slavery's Constitution: From Revolution to Ratification by David Waldstreicher. A review of Deliver Us from Evil: The Slavery Question in the Old South by Lacy K. Ford. From NYRB, Lincoln off his pedestal: James M. McPherson reviews books on Abraham Lincoln. An article by Morris Dickstein about what 1930s depression art can teach us about our own hard times (and Joan Richardson reviews Dickstein’s Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Depression and more and more and more and

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