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We are said to be living in an icon-smashing age, but the odd thing is how few shards can be found on the floor. Joe DiMaggio may now be chilly and Bing Crosby charmless, but the essential pantheon of heroes remains in place. Lincoln, John Adams, Lewis and Clark, Seabiscuit--those who matter most to us are intact, and the common activity is not to smash their images but to trace on them, as though with a diamond pen, the signature of our own favored flaws, allowing their heroism to shine through more brightly. The thrust of popular history has been to remake old heroes as more like us than we knew, and better than us than we could imagine. (Even John Kennedy, if sicker ...