- Brookhiser, Richard.
Founding Father.
New York: Free Press, 1996.
ISBN 0-684-83142-2.
-
This thin (less than 200 pages of main text) volume is an enlightening
biography of George Washington. It is very much a moral biography in
the tradition of
Plutarch's Lives; the
focus is on Washington's life in the public arena and the events in
his life which formed his extraordinary character. Reading
Washington's prose, one might assume that he, like many other framers
of the U.S. Constitution, had an extensive education in the classics,
but in fact his formal education ended at age 15, when he became an
apprentice surveyor—among U.S. presidents, only Andrew Johnson had
less formal schooling. Washington's intelligence and voracious
reading—his library numbered more than 900 books at his death—made
him the intellectual peer of his just sprouting Ivy League
contemporaries. One historical footnote I'd never before encountered
is the tremendous luck the young U.S. republic had in escaping the
risk of dynasty—among the first five U.S. presidents, only John Adams
had a son who survived to adulthood (and his eldest son, John Quincy
Adams, became the sixth president).
May 2005 