Reviews of three new books.   Burr, Hamilton and Jefferson: A Study in Character by Roger G. Kennedy (Oxford, 476 pages, $30) FEUDING FATHERS Aaron Burr has long been dismissed as one of the bad boys of American history. The Revolutionary War hero and onetime VP under Jefferson shot his political future through the heart when he killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel in 1804 and was later tried for treason for conspiring to invade Mexico. Here Roger Kennedy retrieves Burr from the slag heap of history and rehabilitates him as perhaps the most progressive of the founding fathers: a fervent abolitionist, early feminist and friend to the Indians long before such ideals were considered kosher. To Hamilton and Jefferson, Kennedy is not so kind. Hamilton cuts an almost pathetic figure as a frustrated politician who projects his own failures onto Burr and determines to ruin him even at the cost of his own life. Meanwhile, Kennedy's Jefferson is craven, duplicitous and vindictive. But Burr's image has suffered because he could never match Hamilton's skills as spin doctor, nor could he compete with the voluminous paper trail left behind by Jefferson. Whereas the sage of Monticello meticulously copied every scrap he wrote, most of Burr's papers were lost at sea, along with his last surviving daughter and would-be biographer, Theodosia. Despite this imbalance in the documentary evidence, Kennedy presents a compelling case that Burr was not a traitor, as Jefferson charged in 1806. (Burr was later acquitted of treason by four separate juries, an indication of Jefferson's stubbornness as much as Burr's probable innocence.) Instead, Kennedy shows that Burr exhibited every sign of loyalty to the young republic, whose borders he probably hoped to expand by force--much as Jefferson would do by checkbook with the Louisiana Purchase. Matt Buckingham   Waiting by Ha Jin (Pantheon, 308 pages, $24)   MUNDANE TO THE MAX National Book Award-winning novels are supposed to be something special. This year's fiction winner is not. Waiting's dogged simplicity--its nonspecialness--is what makes it the nation's outstanding book. The story documents the mundane drudgery of everyday life within the complicated rules of Communist China after the Cultural Revolution. Lin Hong, an army doctor stationed far away from his family, falls in love with Manna, an attractive nurse and co-worker. He vows to divorce his wife, but each year when he returns to his village to appear before the judge, something happens to thwart the decree. After 18 years, Lin is finally eligible to obtain a divorce without his wife's consent, thus freeing him to marry Manna. As expected, there is more to the story. Lin's true character gradually emerges, exposing his many flaws. He is embarrassed about his arranged-marriage wife and her old-fashioned bound feet, despite her caring for his parents as they become ill and die. He finally gets around to writing his daughter a letter after she's grown into an adult. He plots to find his mistress a husband when he fears their affair will hurt his career advancement. In public, Lin is a role model, but in private he's a jerk. Waiting is a deceptively austere novel with rich descriptions of ordinary things: food, throwaway characters and medical procedures. The depiction of the Cultural Revolution's aftermath is told from an American perspective (the author emigrated from China in 1985) but includes a multitude of interesting tidbits probably never before revealed in this country. Susan Wickstrom   Potential by Ariel Schrag (Slave Labor Graphics, 224 pages, $24.95) SEXUAL DEALING The problem with any accurate account of adolescence is that it reminds adults of the things they hope their kids aren't going through. As a result, honest work gets shunned and glossed-over material gets praised, entertaining neither adults nor the intended teen audience. Potential is the third graphic novel in Ariel Schrag's autobiographical saga of her own high-school experience. Though a second-year college student now, Schrag began crafting Potential at the end of her senior year, when the pain and frustration of a crucial teenage experience was still fresh in her mind. While the previous books, Awkward and Definition (chronicles of the 9th and 10th grades, respectively), dealt with getting into the swing of schoolwork and Schrag's emerging homosexuality, Potential details Schrag's desire to act on that sexuality. Despite a frighteningly frank detour when she loses her virginity to a boy, the narrative hovers around the difficulties of her first same-sex relationship--a sad tale of unrequited love that's given a thrust of innocence by Schrag's often childish linework and the big, hopeful eyes of her character. The drawings ache with the crippling lack of confidence teen-age lovers must endure, utilizing the physical space of a comics panel to illustrate the emotional distance between the young couple. It's often a painful read, displaying an unflinching insight that is sure to make goody-two-shoes adults uncomfortable while striking to the heart of anyone who has felt alone even while someone is sleeping right next to them. Jamie S. Rich   - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Willamette Week | originally published March 1, 2000