George Washington

This is a concise and edifying overview of the Washington administration which emphasizes the president's attitude to the structure of the nation's infant government through his votes and comments at the constitutional convention and, of course, the way that he established, or tried to, the workings of the federal government. The authors contrast this view of government, which the also identify with that of Alexander Hamilton, with the Jeffersonian and Madisonian models, and trace their influence through American history. The authors praise Washington's first term and are largely critical of his second, with the departure of so many good minds from the cabinet, a rather foundering foreign policy, and the president's lashing out at show more dissenters. The book is always well-written and its arguments well-supported. show less

I guess this could be viewed as a good short biography of Washington, with a focus on his presidential years. But I found the writing to be slack and in the end it was just a sort of timeline for me.

If I was writing a modern Plutarch's lives I would pair George Washington with Oliver Cromwell. Grim, reserved, principled, tough soldiers.

The American Presidents Series. Revolutionary hero, founding president, and first citizen of the young republic, George Washington was the most illustrious public man of his time, a man whose image today is the result of the careful grooming of his public persona to include the themes of character, self-sacrifice, and destiny.

As Washington sought to interpret the Constitution’s assignment of powers to the executive branch and to establish precedent for future leaders, he relied...