Thaddeus Stevens review: the Radical Republican America should remember

There's more to the 19th-century reformer than Tommy Lee Jones's portrayal for Spielberg. Bruce Levine's book is a start

Thaddeus Stevens deserves to be better known. A leading radical Republican of the Reconstruction era, he is perhaps best known for Tommy Lee Jones's portrayal in Steven Spielberg's Lincoln. In his new biography, though, Bruce Levine dismisses the movie's story of Stevens and his mixed-race housekeeper Lydia Hamilton Smith as lovers by writing that no firm evidence substantiates it". Similarly, Jones's line Trust? Gentlemen, you seem to have forgotten that our chosen career is politics," falls into the category of too good to check".

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