"The Only Unavoidable Subject of Regret": George Washington, Slavery and the Enslaved Community at Mount Vernon is a scholarly book on the history of slavery at Mount Vernon during the times of George Washington.

In the London Review of Books, Eric Foner wrote that virtually all the information Thompson draws on comes from whites; as she ruefully notes, "only occasionally can the voice of one of the slaves be heard."

Nonetheless, her command of the sources makes possible an almost encyclopedic description of the conditions of slave life.

On the much debated question of whether African elements survived in slave culture, Thompson acknowledges that the evidence is scanty but cautiously suggests that some naming practices, religious beliefs and methods of food preparation reflect an African inheritance....[2] In the Washington Independent Review of Books, Henry Wiencek wrote that Drawing upon decades of research and writings as staff historian at Mount Vernon, Mary V. Thompson has, in "The Only Unavoidable Subject of Regret", produced a superb, moving portrait of the plantation's enslaved community.

Thompson's admiration for George and Martha Washington is strong, but her focus is on the enslaved, whose stories she tells vividly and without sentimentality.