Washington biography chernow
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The thematic approach is also used for Washington’s presidency, with chapters devoted to Washington’s domestic troubles, including his suppression of the Whiskey Rebellion, as well as foreign policy issues, mainly, the troubling turn of the French Revolution from an anti-monarchial movement to an orgiastic frenzy of beheadings.
He kept his own pulled teeth and tried to make them into dentures.
Washington: A Life
There aren’t many multivolume biographers working any more (Robert Caro being one of the few).
But that’s less a criticism than a reality of the confines of a one-volume work. Ron Chernow, the author, has attempted to tell George Washington's complete and complicated life story in a remarkable single volume. George was an expert at the "...subtle art of seeking power by refraining from too obvious a show of ambition." In other words, he played hard to get and clamored to get power by pretending he didn't want it, a scheme that works just as well today.
Apparently J.P. Morgan (1837-1913) owned some letters written by Washington, and destroyed them in the 1920's, claiming they were too "smutty." J.P. Morgan is now my enemy.
George's human quirks are too delightful to be ignored. He also provides a lavishly detailed portrait of his marriage to Martha and his complex behavior as a slave master.
At the same time, Washington is an astute and surprising portrait of a canny political genius who knew how to inspire people.
Thus, the image we have of him comes from highly-subjective, often exaggerated, sometimes striking (a lazy eye! With that faded art, though, you lose a lot of context. Washington’s ambush of the French diplomat Jumonville made him a chief instigator in starting a world war, while his actions at Fort Necessity and during the Braddock Massacre give us glimpses of the man – flawed yet great – that Washington would become.
However, Washington was instrumental in designing the expectations and the powers of the executive office of his new country. At the same time, Chernow never lets you forget that kind or not, Washington owned people, and he shows time and again how ignorant Washington was of this fact (he and Martha were always surprised when slaves, rather than being grateful for their masters’ benevolence, ran away).
Chernow doesn’t succeed by reinventing our notions of George Washington.
Washington’s greatest contribution as president, of course, was setting a precedent for how the executive office should be handled. The majestic view of the Potomac from his luxurious piazza remains nearly unchanged, and even his bedroom where he died in 1799 is untouched, forever holding the ghost of the man who is perhaps one of the most famous American historical figures of all time.
But that’s what makes the story great.