When it was first published, Uncle Tom’s Cabin “became the most influential novel in American history and a catalyst for radical change both at home and abroad. Today, of course, the book has a decidedly different reputation.” The title character “has become a byword for a spineless sellout … [and] we tend to think of the novel itself as an old-fashioned, rather lachrymose affair … But this view is egregiously inaccurate.”