“Washington: A Life” by Ron Chernow

I recently finished reading Ron Chernow’s latest book about George Washington and found it to be a complete, single-volume, and quite readable biography of the first President of the United States.

What else is there to write about Mr. Washington, you might ask? Many other biographies have already been written. Some only focus on parts of his life such as his time in office or as the leader of the Continental Army. Others are multi-volume sets of seemingly day-by-day analyses of every moment in his life. Since the publication of the last detailed work on the president, many new personal letters and diaries of Washington’s have been published. Mr. Chernow has made extensive use of these as evidenced in the acknowledgment and endnotes of this book.

Any biographer who writes about George Washington has a wealth of material to research. Aside from what has already been written about him, Washington documented his daily life through diary and journal entries, almost as if he recognized he was creating his own place in history. These entries, along with the personal letters he wrote, he treated as valuable documents. They were carefully preserved, they made the journey from his estate at Mt. Vernon to the capitol and back as he took and left office, and their future ownership was declared upon the execution of his will. There are some letters we do not have – those personal letters shared between he and his wife, Martha Washington. Martha disposed of their correspondence after George’s death in 1799. She set the letters aflame as a grieving widow, a practice at the time that was not uncommon.

Chernow’s portrait of Washington is complete and well-balanced. He has created an image of Washington that rightfully secures his place as a leader in early American history, but does not ignore his faults. Slavery was a lifelong contradiction for the Father of Our Country. He was laying the foundations of a country based on liberty and freedom and yet owned hundreds of slaves that were “necessary” to maintain his farms at Mt. Vernon. These slaves would not be freed until Washington’s death.

Chernow spent equal time writing about George Washington’s life as president and statesman as he did describing his early life as frontiersman and army general, leading armies in the French and Indian War and the Revolutionary War. The description of Benedict Arnold’s experience paints quite a different picture than the one I remember from my childhood history class. However my favorite aspect of Chernow’s book is how well he describes the emotional side of George Washington. Washington’s appearance was stoic, but the emotions he felt underneath were anything but. This trait translated into his wartime tactics. As a general he kept his adversaries (and his own men) under the impression that he had sufficient manpower, and sufficient gunpowder and artillery, but the reality was quite the opposite. And then, there are a few points in the story of his life where Washington cannot hold his emotions back. He was brought to tears by the reception he received by the public as he went to take the office of president for the first time, and by unanimous vote. Chernow’s descriptions of events like this were quite moving and made Washington seem very human. I think that is the ultimate goal of any biographer and in this Ron Chernow has succeeded.

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Washington/Ron-Chernow/e/9781594202667/?itm=1&USRI=washington