A second contrast is how revered he is some circles and how reviled he is in others. He earns his revilement, but I would argue his reverence is more suspect.
This book is neither a hagiography nor a polemic. It’s also not an attempt to split the difference. Connell wants to tell an accurate history, but not with the idea of balance or “correcting” any kinds of records. That approach works for me as history is not the middle between competing discourses. The story is quite a bit more fractured after that, but supremely interesting. If there’s fair criticisms of this book, I am not equipped to give them as I don’t know a lot of this history otherwise.