His Excellency: George Washington
by Joseph J. Ellis
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Book Summary Information
Author: Joseph J. EllisEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2005-11-08
ISBN: 1400032539
Number of pages: 352
Publisher: Vintage
Book Reviews of His Excellency: George Washington
Book Review: * * * 1/2 -- Straightforward book about Number 1
Summary: 3 Stars
Joseph Ellis, who in The Founding Brothers gave us one of the best history books I've read in a long time, here lays back a bit. This is a serviceable but rather ordinary biography of George Washington, short and readable, starting in his early land-surveying years and quickly moving to conflicts with mama England, the French and Indian War, where Washington became basically a self-taught military leader, the interval to the break with England, the Revolutionary War, where the Father of Our Country wasn't so much the best general around as the most dogged, and finally his years as president, where the modern reader may be surprised to learn how much muck and backbiting he suffered, as well as be surprised by a poor lapse in judgment late in his life that seriously blemished his overall reputation for good judgment as well as residing above the partisan fray. All in all not a bad book by any means, but I expected a little more heft from a writer as distinguished as Ellis. I get the impression this material was left over from mining he did for his other, more substantive books (including the magnificent American Sphinx biography of Thomas Jefferson). There is very little here that's original; also, I think Ellis gives Washington a little too much credit when it comes to the issue of his personal slaves. He (Ellis) seems both uncomfortable with the slavery issue and a little obsessed with trying to vindicate Washington by the end of his life, showing how he eventually saw the evil of his ways by freeing his slaves in his will. This reminded me of the tours of Mount Vernon I've taken where the guides are at pains to point out that Washington was a "nice master" and never abused his slaves. (How would we know? And did that make owning slaves any less morally abhorrent from a man who focused the revolution around the thought of liberty and freedom?) I felt Ellis was sort of grasping at straws to redeem his man there.
Still, if you've never read a bio of Number 1 before, this is a fine a place as any to start, and Ellis also recommends other texts in the beginning of his own book if you're even more curious about George. I have since read some of them, and found them more illuminating than this book.
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